Beyond The Pipelines

Photo courtesy of NASA. Source: https://www.nasa.gov

I want to offer warm congratulations to the native peoples and activists who endured police abuse and freezing temperatures in their protest of the Dakota Access Pipeline. The images of dogs with bloodied mouths and hoses sprayed on the peaceful brought back unwelcome memories of Bull Connor in the 1960's. The Army Corps of Engineers, by order of President Obama, have declared that the pipeline by rerouted in such a way that it doesn't threaten native water or sacrilege native burial grounds. However, even if the pipeline is not pushed through that land, it seems likely to built elsewhere. This is still a problem. The current fight is all too similar of the one waged against the Keystone XL Pipeline, which would've transferred oil from the Alberta tar sands to the United States. (A project which the incoming president wishes to revive.) While it is great to protest individual pipelines, unless we transition quickly towards a green economy, stopping a single pipeline won't mean much in the long-term battle to preserve our environmental safety.

Unless we are able to harness the available reservoirs of solar, wind, geothermal, and perhaps even nuclear energy, America will inevitably have to rely on fossil fuels to sustain its energy economy. It's easy to point the finger at coal miners, pipeline builders, and offshore drillers, but these are all parts of an archaic system. Can individuals really be blamed for exacerbating environmental crises when the only tools for maintaining a decent life do just that? Should the responsibility not fall on the government to provide the people with greener alternatives, instead of lecturing them to cut back? When Republicans speak of energy independence, they often mean independence from reliance of Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia for our oil. Given how regressive we know many of these Arab tyrants can be, a liberation sounds well and fine, until you realize that this means a further exploitation of fossil fuels at home. This isn't independence. It's another form of servitude.

We can protest every constructed pipeline and attempted drill, but unless serious alternative energy sources are developed in a way that can compete on a comparable level, it seems improbable to ask of our engineers and entrepreneurs to stop full tilt. Green Party candidate Jill Stein was roundly criticized in the media (and not without good reason), but many outlets failed to emphasize what made her platform so popular in the first place. Stein offered a "Green New Deal" akin to the "New Deal" that Franklin D. Roosevelt passed in response to the crisis of the Great Depression. This phrase also refers to the radical economic mobilization we underwent domestically during World War II, in which we changed our economic tools to meet the threats of the Axis Powers.

Of course, many environmental activists already know and want these things. I preach to the choir, but I think it prudent to further emphasize this to the wider public. We cannot properly combat this problem by asking that a pipeline stop here or that we don't drill there. These are, again, important victories, but unless they become a part of a larger whole, they will turn pyrrhic. Whatever won't go by pipeline will go by rail. Whatever cannot be drilled will be fracked. So long as fossil fuels remain the only practical means by which we can gather energy: our air, water, land, and indeed, our way of life will all be at risk. It must emphasized to the incoming administration, as well as to the Republican Party, that anything less than a radical response to growing environmental catastrophe is both insufficient and unacceptable.