Minnesota oil pipeline fight highlights Democratic dilemmas

[thackney]

Minnesota oil pipeline fight highlights Democratic dilemmas
https://www.apnews.com/2150e9f93fac47ec99e45465992792fa
September 9, 2019

...Progressive candidates Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have condemned a Canadian company’s plan to replace its old and deteriorating Line 3 pipeline, which carries Canadian crude across the forests and wetlands of northern Minnesota and into northern Wisconsin. They’ve sided with environmental and tribal groups that have been trying to stop the project for years, arguing that the oil should stay in the ground....

...Enbridge Energy’s Line 3 project has generated opposition on two main grounds: that the oil it would carry would aggravate climate change and that it would risk spills in pristine areas of the Mississippi River headwaters where Native Americans harvest wild rice. Enbridge says replacing the 1960s-era pipeline, which is increasingly prone to corrosion and cracking, will be safer for the environment while allowing it to restore the line’s original capacity and ensure reliable deliveries to refineries. Labor unions, once the bedrock of Democrats’ support in northern Minnesota, backed the plan on the promise it will create scores of new jobs.

Regulators in Canada, North Dakota and Wisconsin have given the necessary approvals, and some work on those segments already has been completed. In Minnesota, the Calgary, Alberta-based Enbridge is still waiting for permits while court challenges play out.

While it waits, the pipeline has become a political weapon. Democrats and Republicans in Minnesota are in a tug of war over working-class, rural voters needed to win statewide. Trump won enough of those voters to come within just 1.52 percentage points — fewer than 45,000 votes — of beating Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016. He has said repeatedly he intends to win Minnesota in 2020, something not done by a Republican since Richard Nixon in 1972.

[IsailedawayfromFR]

Epitomizes what liberals have in store for us.

Take away our energy supplies that gives us comfort so all we can do is to go back to harvesting wild rice

[Joe Wooten]

Epitomizes what liberals have in store for us.

Take away our energy supplies that gives us comfort so all we can do is to go back to harvesting wild rice

Not if you are not what they consider a "Native American". A white man harvesting wild rice would be cultural appropriation.....

[IsailedawayfromFR]

Not if you are not what they consider a "Native American". A white man harvesting wild rice would be cultural appropriation.....

I agree.  The libs would demand we grow and gather potatoes instead.

[Smokin Joe]

NOT replacing the pipeline just ensures that, sooner or later, there WILL be a problem with a leak.
A new pipeline, with better metallurgy, high quality weld inspection, updated sensor technology, valves, etc. would be the way to go if they really want to protect their resources.
That's the patent stupidity of this whole objection. Replacing aging infrastructure before there is a problem is the only way to go, and if the locals can't see that, they are being misled.

My bet is that like the "Water Protectors" at Standing Rock, these people are being funded and serving as a front for 'Big Environment', which is opposed to any development of any kind. (Of course, they don't live where the weather is nasty or rely on the energy industry for a living).

[Fishrrman]

Joe wrote:
"NOT replacing the pipeline just ensures that, sooner or later, there WILL be a problem with a leak."
"Replacing aging infrastructure before there is a problem is the only way to go, and if the locals can't see that, they are being misled."

The left doesn't want new pipelines, but...
They don't want the old ones either.

Get your "thinking attuned to theirs":
It's not just about "stopping new construction" any more.
Soon it will become:
If the pipeline infrastructure is aging, don't repair it -- SHUT IT DOWN.
If the pipeline is working, shut it down and then REMOVE IT.

That's the direction their thinking is going...

[Smokin Joe]

Joe wrote:
"NOT replacing the pipeline just ensures that, sooner or later, there WILL be a problem with a leak."
"Replacing aging infrastructure before there is a problem is the only way to go, and if the locals can't see that, they are being misled."

The left doesn't want new pipelines, but...
They don't want the old ones either.

Get your "thinking attuned to theirs":
It's not just about "stopping new construction" any more.
Soon it will become:
If the pipeline infrastructure is aging, don't repair it -- SHUT IT DOWN.
If the pipeline is working, shut it down and then REMOVE IT.

That's the direction their thinking is going...

Well, you see, that just exposes what their thinking is....not.

They don't want to 'save the planet' because they know they can't.

They don't give a sh*t about 'the environment' or they would take the best steps to ensure the safest transport method would be allowed to proceed along an already used right of way with the best and newest equipment, to greatly reduce the likelihood of any spills, now and in the future (and keep the rice harvests pristine for decades to come). 

Nope, they want to do the classic holdup, where they will hold up the project until they get more funds to hold up other projects.

They are invoking the sacred fallacy of all indigenous residents in harmony with nature--which these bands of Chippewa may well be, but I'd wager they are using some gasoline here and there to get around, even if they are paddling to do the rice harvest, because that's the most effective way to get around. I notice a quick search for traditionally harvested wild rice shows the product in plastic bags, the bags, ironically, a product of good chemistry from petroleum feedstocks.

(I'm not belittling the Lake bands of Chippewa by any means, nor their relationship with the environment, just the whole overall theme of 'earlier residents living harmoniously with nature', and if we only went back to wearing animal skins and living in wikiups, all would be well with our dung fired world).

So we can add BANANA (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything) to the Fruits of NIMBY.

If I had the operation to 'think' like these people allegedly do, my skull would implode.