The pipeline of course is still there. It’s a massive, destructive and in many ways illegal behemoth that crosses hundreds of sensitive wetland areas as it runs more than 1,000 miles from the massive tar sands extraction sites surrounding Hardisty, Alberta, through Anishinaabe territory across Minnesota, to the shores of Lake Superior, Wisconsin. The giant pipeline company Enbridge is desperately trying to fast track this project to expand its capacity to transport one of the dirtiest forms of fossil fuel through tribal lands and into the United States.
Everything about this pipeline is wrong—it will greatly exacerbate our climate crisis. It illegally cuts through Indigenous treaty lands and waters. Its construction is creating human rights violations every day—and it needs to be stopped immediately. Everyone involved understands that the implications of this showdown will ripple far beyond the headwaters of the Mississippi where it’s occurring. That’s why thousands are answering the call from Indigenous leaders like those from the Giniw Collective and Honor the Earth, to join them in this fight for their rights, their water, their wild rice beds and all of our collective future. And that’s how other water protectors and I were charged with felony theft for participating in an act of nonviolent protest shutting down work at a pipeline construction site.
I return from this lush lake country shocked and dismayed by the brazen abuses of both established tribal treaty rights and basic constitutional rights I witnessed. A small army of local sheriff agencies, state police and the Department of Homeland Security forces have aggressively arrested more than 600 people for protesting this contentious pipeline, including the use just recently of chemical weapons and rubber bullets against Indigenous water protectors. Thousands more have traveled from around the nation to lend their support to the multiple resistance camps established along the pipeline route. Many of the arrests and enforcement tactics have been arbitrary and clearly designed to intimidate, harass and dissuade further peaceful protests. Bold acts of direct resistance continue to occur on a daily basis at this time.
The United Nations recently issued the most stark, unambiguous call for an immediate transition to a clean energy economy and an end to the expansion of fossil fuel projects if we are to avoid catastrophic consequences for all of humanity. Relentless heat domes and catastrophic wildfires are again raging across the West and millions of acres are ablaze across Siberia. China and Germany are counting the dead from unprecedented flash floods. As of today, we are all on the frontlines of the climate crisis. And yet, disastrous fossil fuel projects that will only lock us into decades of more pollution are being funded, insured and built every day. It is beyond illogical. It is criminal.
Far from being a routine replacement of existing infrastructure as the Canadian oil giant Enbridge claims, this massive new multi-billion dollar fossil fuel infrastructure expansion represents a doubling down on one of the worst forms of energy on the planet. This pipeline is an investment in decades more use and dependence on toxic tar sands oil at exactly the moment in history when we need to be pivoting in totally the opposite direction.
The finished pipeline is predicted to carry nearly a million barrels of Canadian tar sands oil per day, tar sands being perhaps the most toxic and polluting of all forms of extreme fossil fuels. Over its lifetime this pipe is designed to carry the carbon emissions equivalent of building 50 new coal fired power plants. And all of this is being rammed through vulnerable remote communities, during a pandemic, under hundreds of sensitive rivers and waterways at the headwaters of the Mississippi River.
It is hard to overstate how important it is that the world start to pay closer attention to what is happening in northern Minnesota right now. And it is beyond time that the environmental and climate movements begin to incorporate Indigenous leadership more seriously into our work at a fundamental level. One of the most highly charged flashpoints in the fight for climate justice in America today is unfolding in dramatic, daily fashion. Yet, despite the clear and present danger this project poses to all of us, there remains relatively little mainstream media coverage doing justice to this urgent story.
There is simply no form of climate leadership compatible with support for this pipeline. This is Joe Biden’s first major make or break climate test moment. The importance of this decision is such that his failure to use the clear power he possesses to stop Line 3 would expose his lofty climate rhetoric as hollow and undo the significance of any other actions he takes.
As we face these perilous times of escalating climate chaos, it is crucial that we recognize the critical choice points when they occur, those moments where the direction we take together can make all the difference to how all of this ultimately plays out. This innocuously named tar sands pipeline represents one of those moments and it is time for all hands on deck. If you can go to join the frontlines in Minnesota, I encourage you to do so. If you can send money to support the Indigenous-led organizations and legal defense teams working tirelessly to stop this slow motion tragedy, then please do.
Any of us can at least sign petitions from organizations like stopline3.org or organize to show up at branches of banks like JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and MUFG that bankrolled the Dakota Access pipeline at Standing Rock and are now shelling out billions to make Line 3 possible. And finally, it is absolutely critical that the Biden administration hears loudly, clearly and constantly that he will be held accountable for his role here and that his legacy will be measured by the decisions he makes on this issue.
Ginger Cassady is executive director of Rainforest Action Network.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
