2021-09-03 The Fight Over Pipelines

Host: Greg Dalton

Guests:

Mike Fernandez, senior vice president, Public Affairs, Communications & Sustainability, Enbridge

Daniel Raimi, fellow, Resources for the Future

Kelly Sheehan Martin, senior director of energy campaigns, Sierra Club

Canadian company Enbridge is building an oil pipeline from the Alberta tar sands through Minnesota to the Wisconsin border. The new pipeline, which is nearly complete, is a replacement for the existing Line 3, built in the 1960s. That pipeline has a history of leaks, and Enbridge says the new pipeline will be safer and allow them to transport more oil. The company plans to start moving oil through the new pipeline in October.

Indigenous and environmental activists say the new route for Line 3 opens up more of Minnesota to risk of water contamination and locks in burning more fossil fuels for years to come. They’ve been protesting the construction with civil disobedience, leading to hundreds of arrests and serious clashes with police along the pipeline route. 

We’re not going to get off fossil fuels overnight. But Kelly Sheehan Martin with the Sierra Club says we shouldn’t be building more pipelines.

“The science is telling us that we have to stop building fossil fuel infrastructure, new fossil fuel infrastructure today, if we want to avert the worst impacts of the climate crisis.  Our window to act on climate is closing and Line 3 poses an unacceptable threat, not only to our climate but to land and clean water and tribal sovereignty,” she says. 

Sheehan Martin says we need to listen to the voices of those most impacted by the climate crisis, and who object to a pipeline crossing their land and water. “Pipelines are one of the things that mobilize folks as a line in the sand, in part because they can traverse thousands of miles of land and so they impact people all along that way all along the proposed routes. They give people a voice in a place where they don't have a voice to speak up.” 

Mike Fernandez with Enbridge says we still need to transport oil, and pipelines are the least carbon-intensive means of doing so. 

“What we’re doing is what the Biden administration laid out all the way back in their campaign. We’re building back better. This is safer. This is cleaner. This is better,” he says.

As we move toward a less-carbon-intensive future, Fernandez says it comes down to what degree of dislocation we’re willing to tolerate. “This isn't an easy jump cut, you know, to move from fossil fuels over to wind, solar and other renewables. It really does require some level of transition and to be smart about it. And that's what we want to do,” he says. “We want to have those conversations around ‘how do we best get there.’ But you don't get there by certainly by just shutting things off.”

It’s no surprise that pipelines have become flashpoints in the debate over America’s energy transition. But Daniel Raimi, a fellow at D.C.-based Resources for the Future, says it’s difficult to quantify the impact of one pipeline on overall fossil fuel use and climate disruption.

“And any individual pipeline will have fairly modest effects on global and national gasoline prices in the United States. However, the local effects both environmentally and economically of pipelines can be really significant,” Raimi says. 

“Burning fossil fuels in the United States was recently estimated to cost 300,000 excess deaths,” Raimi says. “And so, we know that there are challenges of the transition, but we are almost certain across the economics and policy community that the damages from letting climate change continue at the pace that we are currently at is unacceptable.”

Related Links:

Resources for the Future

Sierra Club Stop Line 3

Enbridge Line 3 Information Page

Host: Greg Dalton

Guests:

Mike Fernandez, senior vice president, Public Affairs, Communications & Sustainability, Enbridge

Daniel Raimi, fellow, Resources for the Future

Kelly Sheehan Martin, senior director of energy campaigns, Sierra Club

Canadian company Enbridge is building an oil pipeline from the Alberta tar sands through Minnesota to the Wisconsin border. The new pipeline, which is nearly complete, is a replacement for the existing Line 3, built in the 1960s. That pipeline has a history of leaks, and Enbridge says the new pipeline will be safer and allow them to transport more oil. The company plans to start moving oil through the new pipeline in October.

Indigenous and environmental activists say the new route for Line 3 opens up more of Minnesota to risk of water contamination and locks in burning more fossil fuels for years to come. They’ve been protesting the construction with civil disobedience, leading to hundreds of arrests and serious clashes with police along the pipeline route. 

We’re not going to get off fossil fuels overnight. But Kelly Sheehan Martin with the Sierra Club says we shouldn’t be building more pipelines.

“The science is telling us that we have to stop building fossil fuel infrastructure, new fossil fuel infrastructure today, if we want to avert the worst impacts of the climate crisis.  Our window to act on climate is closing and Line 3 poses an unacceptable threat, not only to our climate but to land and clean water and tribal sovereignty,” she says. 

Sheehan Martin says we need to listen to the voices of those most impacted by the climate crisis, and who object to a pipeline crossing their land and water. “Pipelines are one of the things that mobilize folks as a line in the sand, in part because they can traverse thousands of miles of land and so they impact people all along that way all along the proposed routes. They give people a voice in a place where they don't have a voice to speak up.” 

Mike Fernandez with Enbridge says we still need to transport oil, and pipelines are the least carbon-intensive means of doing so. 

“What we’re doing is what the Biden administration laid out all the way back in their campaign. We’re building back better. This is safer. This is cleaner. This is better,” he says.

As we move toward a less-carbon-intensive future, Fernandez says it comes down to what degree of dislocation we’re willing to tolerate. “This isn't an easy jump cut, you know, to move from fossil fuels over to wind, solar and other renewables. It really does require some level of transition and to be smart about it. And that's what we want to do,” he says. “We want to have those conversations around ‘how do we best get there.’ But you don't get there by certainly by just shutting things off.”

It’s no surprise that pipelines have become flashpoints in the debate over America’s energy transition. But Daniel Raimi, a fellow at D.C.-based Resources for the Future, says it’s difficult to quantify the impact of one pipeline on overall fossil fuel use and climate disruption.

“And any individual pipeline will have fairly modest effects on global and national gasoline prices in the United States. However, the local effects both environmentally and economically of pipelines can be really significant,” Raimi says. 

“Burning fossil fuels in the United States was recently estimated to cost 300,000 excess deaths,” Raimi says. “And so, we know that there are challenges of the transition, but we are almost certain across the economics and policy community that the damages from letting climate change continue at the pace that we are currently at is unacceptable.”

Related Links:

Resources for the Future

Sierra Club Stop Line 3

Enbridge Line 3 Information Page