[In which another one of my local issues goes national/global...] The international legal fight has been going on for at least a decade. Meanwhile, the exposed oil pipeline is vulnerable to boat...
[In which another one of my local issues goes national/global...]
It’s little known to the throngs of tourists who gawp at the wonder of the Great Lakes but at the meeting point of Lake Huron and Lake Michigan, a combined system that forms the largest lake in the world, there is a 70-year-old pipeline, battered and dented by dropped boat anchors.
The pipeline pushes a million gallons of oil each hour through the heart of this vast ecosystem.
The operators of this pipeline, which is called Line 5, now wants to embark upon an enormous tunneling project to burrow the exposed section that lies on the lakebed underneath the Great Lakes and prolong its life for another century, starting a labyrinthine battle that has enmeshed the governments of the US and Canada, the state of Michigan and various industry and fishing interests.
At the centre of this maelstrom are the native Great Lakes tribes that cherish the Straits of Mackinac, the four mile-wide stretch of water the ageing pipeline bisects, in creation stories as the birthplace of North America itself. They claim Line 5, which cuts through swathes of native land in its 645-mile route, is a “ticking time bomb” that imperils the Great Lakes, which contain a fifth of Earth’s entire surface fresh water, and risks severing deep, existential bonds of cultural connections that stretch back millennia.
The international legal fight has been going on for at least a decade. Meanwhile, the exposed oil pipeline is vulnerable to boat traffic and weather. The Anishinaabe people here have tiny reservation properties and marginal economic opportunities. It's a crime against humanity that a place of great religious and cultural significance, as well as inestimable environmental value, may be irreversibly damaged without recourse.
"When the last tree is cut down, the last fish eaten and the last stream poisoned, you will realize that you cannot eat money." An indigenous quote (and inspired a great Aurora song too...)
"When the last tree is cut down, the last fish eaten and the last stream poisoned, you will realize that you cannot eat money." An indigenous quote (and inspired a great Aurora song too...)
Was not ready for Canada to be the bad guy here. I live in Michigan and I support shutting it down. The lakes are already struggling due to several human factors. A big portion of water systems in...
The tribes’ official complaint alleges that Line 5 is a “current and foreseeable threat to a broad range of human rights” and that Canada has “repeatedly violated” its international obligations by intervening on behalf of the pipeline’s operator, Enbridge, a Canadian company.
Was not ready for Canada to be the bad guy here.
I live in Michigan and I support shutting it down. The lakes are already struggling due to several human factors. A big portion of water systems in Michigan are directly connected and I can’t imagine what a massive oil spill would yield.
I hadn’t heard about line 5, so went on a learning journey a bit and found this:
Compounding our concerns, Line 5 is owned by Enbridge, the Canadian company responsible for the 2010 Kalamazoo River disaster – the worst inland oil spill in U.S. history.
I love Canada, and would happily trade my U.S. citizenship to live there. Or at least, can Canada acquire Michigan, like the Louisiana Purchase? We'd be so good together... However, Canadian...
I love Canada, and would happily trade my U.S. citizenship to live there. Or at least, can Canada acquire Michigan, like the Louisiana Purchase? We'd be so good together...
However, Canadian extractive industries (mining, timber, fossil fuels) are just as bad as extractive industries anywhere, and they're a bigger portion of the Canadian economy (7% of GDP) than those in the U.S. (2% of GDP).
I know, right? It seems crazy that industries accounting for such small portions of the economy have such enormous political influence.
We can't maintain modern industrial economies without their products, but the ability of these industries to destroy environmental value is nearly unbounded. It's our obligation as stewards of the Earth for future human generations and all of life to see that critical ecosystems are protected in perpetuity. There's nothing else like the Great Lakes region on Earth, millions of people depend on the lakes for drinking water, so you'd think that status would supercede the paltry few million dollars Enbridge gets from the pipeline.
Wouldn't moving the pipeline underground make it safer? Right now it's literally getting dinged by ship anchors. All that oil is going to be transported somehow, get rid of the pipeline they'll...
Wouldn't moving the pipeline underground make it safer? Right now it's literally getting dinged by ship anchors. All that oil is going to be transported somehow, get rid of the pipeline they'll just switch to rail and boat. At a million gallons an hour, that's a lot of trains and ships.
I'm not some big O&G supporter, I wish we were on 100% nuclear and renewable, but right now we're not and nobody is going to leave a resource so valuable just sitting there. Pipelines can be bad, but I don't know if a few thousand extra oil tankers crossing those lakes every month would be much better.
I think the article mentions that there are potential explosion risks with the proposed pipeline tunnel. Not to mention that it's an unproven construction method to drill a hard rock tunnel deep...
I think the article mentions that there are potential explosion risks with the proposed pipeline tunnel. Not to mention that it's an unproven construction method to drill a hard rock tunnel deep under the Great Lakes, then run combined utilities and pipelines through it.
I'm not any more enthusiastic about tankers. The Great Lakes are notorious for unpredictable weather systems and choppy waves that have sunk thousands of ships.
I haven't dug deeply into the history of Line 5, but when the pipeline was built in 1953, there was probably an international maritime law loophole that made the short direct trans-lake route cheaper and less subject to objections than a longer land pipeline across borders.
But you'd think an extended overland pipeline route would still be less costly than tunneling or tankers.
Yeah, that's a good point. Gosh it would be nice if we could just get off the stuff. Even if we don't render the planet completely uninhabitable by continuing to burn fossil fuels, they're...
But you'd think an extended overland pipeline route would still be less costly than tunneling or tankers.
Yeah, that's a good point. Gosh it would be nice if we could just get off the stuff. Even if we don't render the planet completely uninhabitable by continuing to burn fossil fuels, they're eventually going to run out. What do we do then? Kinda hard to build a sustainable energy grid when you've run out of energy. Gotta do that while we have the readily available energy to get it built in the first place. Once that last drop of oil or last lump of coal comes out of the ground, that's it. Good luck building a nuclear power plant or a solar farm without factories or vehicles.
[In which another one of my local issues goes national/global...]
The international legal fight has been going on for at least a decade. Meanwhile, the exposed oil pipeline is vulnerable to boat traffic and weather. The Anishinaabe people here have tiny reservation properties and marginal economic opportunities. It's a crime against humanity that a place of great religious and cultural significance, as well as inestimable environmental value, may be irreversibly damaged without recourse.
"When the last tree is cut down, the last fish eaten and the last stream poisoned, you will realize that you cannot eat money." An indigenous quote (and inspired a great Aurora song too...)
Was not ready for Canada to be the bad guy here.
I live in Michigan and I support shutting it down. The lakes are already struggling due to several human factors. A big portion of water systems in Michigan are directly connected and I can’t imagine what a massive oil spill would yield.
I hadn’t heard about line 5, so went on a learning journey a bit and found this:
https://www.environmentalcouncil.org/line_5
I love Canada, and would happily trade my U.S. citizenship to live there. Or at least, can Canada acquire Michigan, like the Louisiana Purchase? We'd be so good together...
However, Canadian extractive industries (mining, timber, fossil fuels) are just as bad as extractive industries anywhere, and they're a bigger portion of the Canadian economy (7% of GDP) than those in the U.S. (2% of GDP).
I know, right? It seems crazy that industries accounting for such small portions of the economy have such enormous political influence.
We can't maintain modern industrial economies without their products, but the ability of these industries to destroy environmental value is nearly unbounded. It's our obligation as stewards of the Earth for future human generations and all of life to see that critical ecosystems are protected in perpetuity. There's nothing else like the Great Lakes region on Earth, millions of people depend on the lakes for drinking water, so you'd think that status would supercede the paltry few million dollars Enbridge gets from the pipeline.
Wouldn't moving the pipeline underground make it safer? Right now it's literally getting dinged by ship anchors. All that oil is going to be transported somehow, get rid of the pipeline they'll just switch to rail and boat. At a million gallons an hour, that's a lot of trains and ships.
I'm not some big O&G supporter, I wish we were on 100% nuclear and renewable, but right now we're not and nobody is going to leave a resource so valuable just sitting there. Pipelines can be bad, but I don't know if a few thousand extra oil tankers crossing those lakes every month would be much better.
I think the article mentions that there are potential explosion risks with the proposed pipeline tunnel. Not to mention that it's an unproven construction method to drill a hard rock tunnel deep under the Great Lakes, then run combined utilities and pipelines through it.
I'm not any more enthusiastic about tankers. The Great Lakes are notorious for unpredictable weather systems and choppy waves that have sunk thousands of ships.
I haven't dug deeply into the history of Line 5, but when the pipeline was built in 1953, there was probably an international maritime law loophole that made the short direct trans-lake route cheaper and less subject to objections than a longer land pipeline across borders.
But you'd think an extended overland pipeline route would still be less costly than tunneling or tankers.
Yeah, that's a good point. Gosh it would be nice if we could just get off the stuff. Even if we don't render the planet completely uninhabitable by continuing to burn fossil fuels, they're eventually going to run out. What do we do then? Kinda hard to build a sustainable energy grid when you've run out of energy. Gotta do that while we have the readily available energy to get it built in the first place. Once that last drop of oil or last lump of coal comes out of the ground, that's it. Good luck building a nuclear power plant or a solar farm without factories or vehicles.