by Jeffrey Insko | Jun 28, 2023 |
The next essay in our ongoing series How to Know About Line 5 will drop soon (I hope you’ve read the first four!). In the meantime, as I look out at the haze and smoke and read the news that the Michigan air quality today is probably the worst it’s been since the Canadian fires began, I’ve been having a few thoughts about Enbridge and Line 5. Believe it or not, these things not unrelated.
As readers of this blog know, this is not the first time an ecological disturbance way up in Alberta has had a dramatic effect upon Michigan. The last time was in 2010. But rather than wildfires, it was tar sands oil extracted in Alberta, and transported via pipeline through Michigan. Enbridge’s Line 6B ruptured and spilled over a million gallons of the stuff into the Kalamazoo River. By now, we all know most of this story by heart.
But it wasn’t just the river that was spoiled. Air quality was pretty bad then too. In fact, benzene concentration levels were high enough to require evacuation near the spill site. And we still don’t know what else was released into the air and breathed in by nearby residents. To this day, there have been no human health studies on the effects of those airborne toxins.
But there’s more. Back in those days, Enbridge was running around talking about its “Tree for a Tree, Acre for An Acre” program. It was supposed to be a way to neutralize the company’s planetary footprint. From 2009 to 2013, for example, they claimed to have planted some 800,000 saplings (that’s less than the number of gallons of oil they spilled into the river btw!).
Where did they plant all those saplings? They sure as hell didn’t plant them in my backyard, where they cut down over 100 trees. So it’s hard to say for sure. But it appears that a lot of those trees were planted in… Alberta! https://createyourforest.ca/partner/enbridge-pipelines-inc
You see, that’s where a lot of trees get planted—in large “tree plantations” created as part of those “carbon offset” schemes that oil and gas companies love so much. They get to pretend like it somehow gets them off the hook. Here’s a great, informative twitter thread on the role of tree plantations in the current wildfires.
Enbridge stopped talking about the “Tree for a Tree” program about a decade ago. It’s not entirely clear why, but my hunch is that it’s because the program was always designed as greenwashing p.r. for their ill-fated Northern Gateway project. When that project died, or so it appears, so too did their tree program.
But they still love talking about “net zero” and about planting trees. In fact, not so long ago they were planting trees over in Lambton county—which just happens to be where Line 5 ends.As far as I know, those tree plantations aren’t currently ablaze. But the air there is still pretty bad…
But then again, for some populations, the air there has been very bad for a very long time, not because of forest fires, but because of the refineries Line 5 feeds that emit toxic pollutants (into the water and soil as well as the air).
All of which is to say that while Enbridge isn’t directly responsible for the Canadian wildfires, they are a major player in a system that inevitably produces those fires, a system they work hard to sustain and perpetuate. And a system, more importantly, that also produces lots of other harms, including global warming, that are often less visible and less dramatic but in many ways far more devastating even than the current fires.
by Alma Dukovic | Jun 22, 2023 |
[Note: this essay is part of a series of six essays on How to Know about Line 5. You can read the series introduction and find links to the other essays as they are posted here.]
In 1952, Sarnia, Ontario began to undergo what a Detroit Free Press staff writer, James Pooler, dubbed a “Blue Water Boom”: an $80,000,000 expansion of Sarnia’s petrochemical industry (known as “Chemical Valley”), born out of the area’s production of synthetic rubber during World War II. Imperial Oil, a refining company historically and presently reliant on Enbridge’s Line 5 pipeline, shared in $15,000,000 worth of this expansion. Dr. J. L. Huggett, the superintendent of Imperial Oil at the time, boasted that oil would produce 752 different products.
News reports of the petrochemical industry expansion also promoted a narrative about “prospering Indians” who sold parts of their reservation near Sarnia to the expanding petrochemical industry. In fact, Pooler concludes one of his reports on Sarnia’s Chemical Valley with: “Today the Indian is being chased right off the reservation by expanding industry. And you should be chased off your land by that kind of money!”
Accounts like these attempt to situate the Indigenous community as fortunate to have the petrochemical industry’s expansion near and into their territory. But the overt reality is that the refinery expansions dispossessed the “prospering Indians” near Sarnia — the Aamjiwnaang First Nation — of their land. It was ongoing colonialism. This dispossession can be seen, in part, in the First Nation’s resistance to the 1953 construction of Enbridge’s Line 5 pipeline, which terminates in Sarnia’s Chemical Valley.
In July of 1953, Canada’s ministry approved a right-of-way over the Aamjiwnaang First Nation’s reserve near Sarnia. In the order, the ministry required that the Interprovincial Pipe Line Company (the precursor to Enbridge) compensate the First Nation, since Line 5 crosses their territory. Just months prior, Interprovincial had received pushback from the Aamjiwnaang community, who refused to let the pipeline cross the proposed section of their land and suggested that the company construct the line along an alternative route. The First Nation’s primary objection to the pipeline’s construction through their reserve was that the area requested was “the most valuable they have left.” The Star’s Sarnia Bureau claimed that the First Nation’s Council “foresaw the day when the reserve might become simply a network of pipe lines buried four feet under the sod and useless on the surface.”
After the reserve was pressed to accept some form of compensation, the First Nation suggested that the company rent that section of their territory annually, rather than obtain an easement. Interprovincial ultimately rejected Aamjiwnaang’s proposal, but did consider and adopt a new route. The original proposal would have had the pipeline nearly cut through the center of the First Nation’s reserve. The new route no longer cut through the reserve’s center, but still crossed LaSalle and Churchill roads, which the Aamjiwnaang community claimed as part of their reserve. In the order, Canada’s Minister of Transport acknowledged that the Aamjiwnaang’s Chief and Council were opposed to the government’s granting of the right-of-way through their territory. The government acknowledged the First Nation’s ownership over at least a section of LaSalle street.
The First Nation responded to the order by continuing to resist Line 5’s encroachment. They cited Treaty 29 (1827) to assert that their reserve is not a part of Canada; hence, they argued, the Canadian federal government did not have the right to grant the right-of-way decision, as the pipeline would trespass their territory. They even threatened to take the issue up to the United Nations.
At the time, Interprovincial began laying the pipeline in the areas permitted by the order. As a result of the forced easement, the First Nation eventually appealed to the county court for compensation. Judge E. A. Shaunessy — the judge who oversaw the case — demanded that the Aamjiwnaang community provide proof of ownership over all or a part of LaSalle street. This demand was given despite the fact that the Canadian federal government had already acknowledged this ownership when the ministry provided Interprovincial with the right-of-way order. Interprovincial then provided the court with documentation that indicated the area was located outside of the reserve; in turn, Shaunessy didn’t hold the company accountable for any compensation to the First Nation, as was initially required by the federal government’s right-of-way order.
But what if Shaunessy was given proof that the Aamjiwnaang First Nation owned that section of LaSalle street? Would the outcome have been any different? The current dispute over Enbridge’s Line 5 trespass across the Bad River Band’s territory seems to provide an answer to that question. Despite concluding that Line 5 has been trespassing on the tribe’s territory since 2013, U.S. District Judge William M. Conley has not met the Band’s demand for the pipeline’s immediate shutdown. Conley recently issued an order for Enbridge to compensate the tribe with roughly $5.15 million (a shamefully paltry sum), and to either shut down or reroute that section of the pipeline by 2026. Enbridge is already planning to appeal the ruling, arguing that the company is not trespassing on tribal territory and that the order does not provide enough time for a reroute. More importantly, the Bad River Band had already stated that they have no interest in being compensated in place of Line 5’s immediate shutdown, or in its reroute. A spill along the pipeline’s current and alternative routes poses a threat to their cultural practices and ways of life — rights they have guaranteed to them by Treaties from 1837 and 1842. Conley’s decision parallels the Canadian federal government’s initial approach to the 1953 dispute over LaSalle street; both assumed authority over Indigenous land even when territorial boundaries are (or seem) clearly defined.
And here’s what that makes clear: decisions made by legal systems and federal governments with regard to pipeline operators, like Enbridge, seem to supersede the authority of Indigenous groups over their own territories. If the territory in question is found to be outside of an Indigenous reserve, then this fact can be used to allow pipeline operators to continue their construction and/or operation of a pipeline. If a pipeline is found to trespass Indigenous territory, then the pipeline operator will merely have to negotiate terms with the impacted tribe; terms which ultimately allow, in the given moment, the ongoing operation of Line 5.
how will the U.S. and Canada ever begin to repair their long histories of dispossession and injustice?
I don’t mean to ignore the difficult position that Conley has been placed in, notably given the Canadian federal government’s invocation of the 1977 Pipeline Transit Treaty with the United States. But if a clear, distinct trespass of the pipeline on Indigenous territory is not enough precedent to force the immediate shutdown of Line 5, then how will the U.S. and Canadian governments and their legal systems ever come to adequately consider the human and ecological consequences of constructing and operating many of these pipelines in the first place? Moreover, how will the U.S. and Canada ever begin to repair their long histories of dispossession and injustice?
What has, for instance, become of Sarnia’s Chemical Valley, that was so heavily boasted of by some in the mid-twentieth century? For the Aamjiwnaang First Nation, Chemical Valley dangerously exposes their 900 community members to toxic pollutants. Average benzene levels near the reserve reached 32 micrograms per cubic meter in March of 2023, while Ontario’s Ambient Air Quality Criteria (AAQC) sets its maximum at 2.3 micrograms per cubic meter over a 24-hour period of exposure and 0.45 annually. In the same month, sulphur dioxide reached an average of 147 parts per billion within one hour near their reserve, while Ontario’s AAQC sets its maximum at 40 parts per billion within one hour of exposure. This criteria is set by the Ontario Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks; and while it’s not used to regulate chemical emissions in Canada, it provides guidelines for the maximum rates of various contaminants that humans can be exposed to before the contaminants have an impact on human health. Moreover, these measurements do not consider the impact of exposure to several of these contaminants at the same time. The Aamjiwnaang First Nation cites a large number of health complications among their members, including increased rates of asthma, skin rashes, headaches, and cancer. In the early 2000’s, the First Nation also had their fears confirmed regarding a continual decline in their community’s overall rate of male births, which had dwindled down to a one to two ratio of male to female births.
While it’s crucial to recognize the demarcations of Indigenous territories when considering the shutdown of Line 5, pollution is not contained outside of their boundaries — and this is perhaps most evidently seen in the Aamjiwnaang reserve near Sarnia. The Red River Métis/Michif scholar Dr. Max Liboiron goes as far as to say that pollution itself is colonialism because colonialism is first and foremost about accessing Indigenous land, not just its settlement: “[Colonialism] can mean using Land as a Resource, a practice that may generate pollution through pipelines, landfills, and recycling plants, or as a sink to store or process waste” (10). Even assimilative capacity — the scientific theory adopted by state and federal environmental regulations to establish thresholds for pollution — assumes an entitlement to Indigenous land by enabling pollution that their bodies and territories have to absorb. Pollution entails land transformation and dispossession. It often produces the end results of settler colonialism, albeit through a different colonial form.
While covering the 1953 dispute between the Aamjiwnaang First Nation and Interprovincial, The Star’s Sarnia Bureau’s Charlie Whipp chillingly captures the relationship between Sarnia’s expanding petrochemical industry and colonialism: “It may well be that the 4,000 acres nestling right in Sarnia is under the same ownership it had when Christopher Columbus landed . . . So right here in this city we may have the last remaining unconquered Indians. At that time, their reserve comprised some 10,280 acres. Today there are about 4,000 left.” In the twenty-first century, Aamjiwnaang’s reserve measures at roughly 3,100 acres; and its 3,100 acres are surrounded and polluted by Sarnia’s Chemical Valley. The Aamjiwnaang First Nation continues to resist toxic pollution to their land, air, water, and on-reserve members today.
—
At the 2023 Michigan Climate Summit held earlier this month at Oakland University, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed argued that the face of the climate crisis should not be the threat it poses to polar bears or other charismatic megafauna, but the threat polluting industries pose to human lives. He pointed to the fact that children in Detroit breathe toxic air daily because of the lack of industry regulations and ongoing environmental racism. We might think about Detroit’s Marathon Oil refinery and the Detroit communities forced to deal with its pollution. We should also think about Sarnia’s Chemical Valley and the Aamjiwnaang First Nation.
When Governor Gretchen Whitmer revoked Enbridge’s Line 5 easement in 2020, the Michigan government acknowledged Indigenous treaty rights for the first time in Line 5’s history. If we look at the Line 5 battle as a microcosm of the climate crisis, then the Straits of Mackinac and the broader span of the Great Lakes are — and have been for a long time — the movement’s “polar bears.”
by Sydney Wendling | Jun 19, 2023 |
[Note: this essay is part of a series of six essays on How to Know about Line 5. You can read the series introduction and find links to the other essays as they are posted here.]
Since 2021, articles and discussions of Line 5 have begun to reference an obscure treaty between the United States and Canada from 1977, which the Canadian government formally invoked to prevent a shutdown of the pipeline. Yet despite the frequent mentions of this treaty—especially recently, as the United States and Canada enter their third round of negotiations for it—news reports have had little to say about its background beyond: 1) that it was formed in 1977; 2) that it was designed to keep hydrocarbons moving through pipelines like Line 5; and 3) that it supposedly supersedes the state lawsuits facing Enbridge. In other words, detailed information in public forums about this treaty is sparse. Because of its apparent importance in the Shut Down Line 5 battle, knowing the history of the treaty and why it is being invoked—wrongly, I’d argue—will be helpful in understanding the future legal and political moves the US and Canada make as they address Line 5.
The goal of this post is to address the following questions: What is the 1977 Transit Pipelines Treaty and why was it formed? Why is it relevant to Line 5? What does it say and what are its implications? And perhaps most importantly, what does it mean to invoke a fifty year old treaty that was created to facilitate the flow of hydrocarbons when we are now in the midst of a climate emergency that calls for rapid decarbonization? Or put more simply, what is at stake?
The History of the 1977 Transit Pipelines Treaty
The not-so-well-documented history of the treaty begins with the 1973 Arab oil embargo, in which “Arab members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) imposed an embargo against the United States in retaliation for the U.S. decision to re-supply the Israeli military.” Naturally, given the United States’s dependence on foreign oil, the embargo caused a period of energy instability in the US, sending oil prices skyrocketing per barrel and shrinking the United States’s domestic reserves. This ironically caused the US to double down on their dependence on imported oil, scrambling to negotiate with OPEC leaders to end the embargo as soon as possible. During this time, the Nixon administration also organized “Project Independence,” an initiative that aimed for the US to become self-sufficient in terms of energy while also “engag[ing] in intensive diplomatic efforts among its allies, promoting a consumers’ union that would provide strategic depth and a consumers’ cartel to control oil pricing.”
Such energy-based diplomatic efforts would come to fruition with a change in administration. On March 30th, 1977, President Jimmy Carter sent a message to the Senate detailing an agreement made between the US and Canadian governments, led then by Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, that would pave the way for a natural gas pipeline to cross between the US and Canadian borders: “The Agreement negotiated … provides reciprocal protection against interruption in the flow of hydrocarbons in transit, and against discriminatory taxation,” President Carter wrote, “The Agreement is applicable both to existing and future pipelines transiting the United States and to future pipelines transiting Canada.” As President Carter’s message indicates, the big picture of the Transit Pipelines Treaty is that no public official from either country “shall institute any measures … which are intended to, or which would have the effect of, impeding, diverting, redirecting or interfering with” the flow of hydrocarbons between the countries, with such behavior resulting in arbitration.
For almost fifty years since the treaty’s creation, it has not entered the limelight—except for a brief stint in 2009—until the legal battles between Michigan and Enbridge started to become more intense. Seeing a serious possibility of Michigan gaining ground in their suit, the current Trudeau administration submitted an amicus curiae brief into the The State of Michigan v, Enbridge Energy case, mentioning the treaty’s purpose and their intention to invoke it if need be. In October of 2021, Trudeau formally invoked the treaty, allowing Canada to deal directly with the federal government, thus bypassing Governor Gretchen Whitmer and Attorney General Dana Nessel’s lawsuits against Enbridge. Specifically, Canada referenced Article IX of the treaty, which states that “Any dispute between the Parties regarding the interpretation, application, or operation of the Agreement shall, so far as possible, be settled by negotiation between them,” or by arbitration if negotiations do not settle the dispute.
Notable Articles in the Treaty and the Role in the Line 5 Debate
Though Article IX was referenced by Canada for taking the dispute to the federal level, other parts of the treaty are worth looking at as well. For example, I quoted from Article II above when discussing the main point of the treaty: “No public authority in the territory of either Party shall institute any measures, other than those provided for in Article V, which are intended to, or which would have the effect of, impeding, diverting, redirecting or interfering with in any way the transmission of hydrocarbons in transit.” Notable here is the fact that “no public authority” may interfere with the flow of hydrocarbons. In their amicus brief, Canada explicitly cites Governor Whitmer and the court involved in the Michigan v. Enbridge suit who would enforce her shutdown of Line 5 as those public authorities. However, the exception to Article II lies in Article V of the treaty, which stipulates that “in the event of an actual or threatened natural disaster, an operating emergency, or other demonstrable need temporarily to reduce or stop for safety or technical reasons “the pipeline’s flow of hydrocarbons “may be temporarily reduced or stopped in the interest of sound pipeline management and operational efficiency.”
Whitmer’s revocation of the 1953 easement is based on Enbridge violating its terms, for example by ignoring structural issues in the pipeline. Those terms are also relevant to Article V, which states that the flow of hydrocarbons may be halted “in the interest of sound pipeline management” by regulatory authorities in the territory that a “disaster, emergency, or other demonstrable need occurs.” On the other hand, provision 3 of Article V says that the party halting the flow of hydrocarbons “shall not unnecessarily delay or cause delay in the expeditious restoration of normal pipeline operations,” which Canada argues Michigan is doing.
Opponents of Line 5 have also pointed to Article IV of the treaty, which says “the transmission of hydrocarbons… shall be subject to regulations by the appropriate governmental authorities.” This provision clearly acknowledges that the treaty does not exempt cross-border pipelines from complying with local, state, and federal regulations and explicitly recognizes the authority of states (like Michigan).
while the best time to act on Line 5 may have been ten years ago, the second best time is now
The final article of the treaty notably details that it “shall remain in force for an initial period of thirty-five years,” but that after those thirty-five years, either nation can dissolve the treaty as long as they give ten years notice to the other party. If this doesn’t happen, the treaty will remain until a side does provide notice. This built-in expiration date indicates that those who organized the treaty recognized even then that the conditions surrounding the agreement might eventually change—it was plainly not meant to be fixed and permanent in its original form. And in fact, conditions have changed. At this point in time the Line 5 movement is over ten years old. Perhaps if the federal government had taken the threat of Line 5 seriously—especially after Enbridge’s disastrous Line 6B spill into the Kalamazoo River—the US could have given ten years notice to opt out of the treaty, and we could have avoided the geopolitical and legal battles we are in now. But while the best time to act on Line 5 may have been ten years ago, the second best time is now. The United States has the power to move against this treaty. It’s tempting to say the US could even just violate it; it wouldn’t be the first time they’ve done so.
Areas of Contention Related to the Treaty
As we’ve begun to see, there are many debates involving the Transit Pipelines Treaty. The first is the aforementioned issues with Articles IV and V of the treaty—Michigan believes they are within their right in terms of ending Enbridge’s easement and Article V’s stoppage clause, but Canada argues that Michigan is unnecessarily delaying the flow of hydrocarbons, and that Enbridge has solved Michigan’s complaints about the damages to the pipeline. Governor Whitmer and protestors have argued that since Michigan is acting in line with the treaty, the invocation of it is a “delaying tactic.”
Other debates arise from whom the treaty does and does not include. Several Tribes and First Nations have spoken out against Line 5, including the Bay Mills Indian Community, who permanently banished Enbridge and Line 5 from their lands; the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians; the Bad River Band, who are in ongoing legal proceedings with Enbridge; the Anishinabek Nation; and ten other federally recognized Nations in Michigan; among others. Members of these Tribal and First Nations have argued that both Line 5 and the Transit Pipelines Treaty explicitly violates their treaty rights: the US is violating the 1836 Treaty of Washington and Canada is violating An Act Respecting the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Justin (left) and Pierre Trudeau
As sovereign nations, these Tribes and First Nations argue that they are excluded from the 1977 Treaty and should be included in diplomatic negotiations, since Line 5 trespasses on their lands and threatens their waterways; they have taken their appeal to the United Nations Human Rights Council. Of course, despite lip-service both the US and Canada to acknowledge their histories of settler-colonialism, indigenous groups are still being disadvantaged by settler-colonial epistemologies favoring the economy over sovereignty when it comes to Line 5. In Canada’s case in particular, on one hand Prime Minister Trudeau funds Indigenous-led conservation initiatives, but on the other hand he continues to uphold the legislative decisions his father’s administration made almost fifty years ago—a treaty that specifically violates indigenous treaty rights and has very publicly been rebuked by Tribal and First Nations of the Great Lakes region. As we have seen time and time again, North American settlers just cannot shake their habit of committing settler-colonial violence in pursuit of capital gain and maintaining their “status quo.”
If the Treaty is Upheld—What’s at Risk
As this point about ongoing settler-colonial dispossession suggests, if the 1977 Transit Pipelines Treaty is upheld, it can have horrible implications not only for indigenous sovereignty, but also for the possibility of shuttering transnational pipelines. As cultural critic Imre Szeman explains, pipelines do not function as a form of “statecraft”—that is, energy transport is not something that the US government operates only within the US with its own resources. Instead, pipelines are a form of “extrastatecraft,” with the US supporting private companies and other countries to fuel its energy needs—in this case, using Enbridge pipelines to get their oil. Szeman discusses how the “power of extrastatecraft” lies in its normalcy in our culture. According to this view, the fact that we’re putting all of our trust in Enbridge doesn’t matter, because Enrbidge is just solving our problem of energy transport. Thus, this form of extrastatecraft is “seen as [a] neutral, rational, and technical [solution] to modern problems, and so are seen, too, as devoid of political interest or impact.”
However, time and time again Enbridge and Line 5 have proven they need supervision and to be held accountable. Over its lifespan, the pipeline has leaked over 33 times, accumulating more and more damage over time, with little to no action from Enbridge. We can no longer let Enbridge and pipelines projects in general operate as extrastatecraft, allowing them to lay low despite disaster after disaster and ongoing threats to indigenous lands and waterways. If the 1977 Transit Pipelines Treaty is honored by the Biden administration, we will have no choice but to maintain the status quo of leaks and ruin, and Line 5—among other transnational pipelines—will not be stopped until a rupture occurs.
Why are we holding onto the pipelines and politics of nearly 50 years ago?
Is it worth it? Why are we holding onto the pipelines and politics of nearly 50 years ago when our social, cultural, technological, and obviously environmental climates have progressed past the need for these measures? While Enbridge and oil barons might be trying to convince us that we’re in the same age of energy insecurity as the ‘70s, we should know better by now that we need to move away from oil dependence and move towards cleaner and greener energy and different ways of being.
It’s hard to say what the next steps are at this point, but now that the treaty has been invoked, the most important steps seem to lie with the federal government. The Biden administration has yet to step in on the Line 5 controversy, though recently they faced off with the oil industry in a similar case in Colorado. Supporters of shutting down Line 5 hope that due to the similarities between the cases, President Biden may move in favor of revoking the presidential permit for Line 5, but this is still up in the air. Either way, our best point of leverage is at the federal government level. If we can urge the Biden administration to act on Line 5, we might see serious progress in the dismantling of petroculture, the preservation of the Great Lakes and other areas impacted by Line 5, and the acknowledgement of indigenous sovereignty and treaty rights. The United States has the power to start this shift away from oil dependence by putting their policy where their mouth is and starting the process of moving against—and giving notice to pull out of—this outdated treaty.
by Lourd Razooq | Jun 14, 2023 |
[Note: this essay is part of a series of six essays on How to Know about Line 5. You can read the series introduction and find links to the other essays as they are posted here.]
Lying beneath the surface of our wondrous Great Lakes is a pipeline that extends for 645 miles across Wisconsin and Michigan, transporting thousands of barrels of oil and gas every day. The pipeline threatens to cause tremendous damage to our Great Lakes. This danger exists, and can cease to exist, because of our choices. Us. But the question that we have to confront is this:
Why are we only interested in the things that benefit us and overlooking the negative consequences that come with them?
How is it that we find pleasure in the things that blind us from reality? The comfortable parts of our lives that remove us from our immediate environment, like driving to another state, pumping gas after an exhausting day at work, or buying that expensive makeup palette one has been fervently awaiting to purchase, only glorifying the beautiful exterior and aestheticizing our experiences? These are the kind of questions that we rarely ask ourselves because well, let’s face it…why even burden ourselves with such inconvenient thoughts? But, that is the problem. In order to understand the matters that sustain our existence, we must also pore over those concealed issues that play a part in the downfall of our planet, and eventually our same existence.
The problem in our vicinity, in our wake, is what scholars call petroculture. It is a term that describes the global culture that has emerged from the dependence on and consumption of fossil fuels, specifically oil. It is through the extraction and circulation of petroleum that humans gain access to daily essentials that include modern transportation, feminine cosmetics, cleaning products, medicine, clothing— in a word: everything. Yet, we are so entangled in all these materials, we cannot even comprehend their destruction on the world around us. We are too caught up in their aesthetic, their appeasements.
We are bound to the aesthetics of petroculture—an aesthetic that tugs on human fantasy and desire. Aesthetics in this sense is not a representation, but an experience that produces the surrounding conditions of our everyday lives, like our sense of speed and progress. Aesthetics is about how our mind and body become conditioned to what it means to be modern. We become more in tune with sensorial experiences–how clean a road looks, how fast an ordered package arrives in the mail, and how soft and cozy a sweater feels when touching it. These experiences become a language of understanding for us.
We are bound to the aesthetics of petroculture
The infrastructure of fossil fuels promotes petrocultural aesthetics. Infrastructure not only enables the movement of goods and people but also bridges the gap between time and space and reshapes the meaning of autonomy and freedom. As a result, citizens become not only materially dependent on fossil fuels but also find them infused into their norms and values to the point where they becomes their only source of emotional response and ways of understanding. So how can we break away from the one thing that has come to define our ideologies and conduct? What is at issue as a result of those attachments? Well, literally everything that we know.
Enbridge has continually defended the operation of Line 5 by calling it a piece of “critical infrastructure.” But critical for whom? For Indigenous people whose land has been invaded by an existential threat and their natural resources of sustainability jeopardized? Or for the rest of us? Those of us who have been conditioned to believe that our needs supersede everyone else’s? That oil has to exist if we want to maintain a life of comfort and convenience? Whether it is us or Indigenous peoples, we are all expendable in the eyes of Enbridge, mere targets they can toy with as long as their pockets are filled and their intentions fulfilled.
As the expansion of oil and gas networks continues to dominate our everyday lives, they also operate as forms of settler colonialism, facilitating colonial principles of settler domination over Native lands. As the Tlingit scholar Anne Spice has argued, the railroads that enabled westward expansion onto Indigenous lands in the nineteenth-century were colonial projects that not only transported capital and settlers to the West, they also replaced pre-existing Indigenous infrastructures and further concealed the historical and cultural presence of Indigenous peoples. Spice shows how the concept of modernity and “modern” infrastructure has not only come to refer to the “brand-new” and the contemporary but also to the removal of the “non modern,” or more appropriately, the removal and negating of Indigenous “critical infrastructure” in their own historical spaces. By referring to Line 5 as “critical infrastructure,”—that is, critical for settlers– Enbridge is erasing Indigenous narratives of critical infrastructure; theirs is the clean drinking water while Enbridge’s is the pipeline that is infecting their waters.
Thus, like other modern infrastructures, pipelines represent the disruption of Indigenous sovereignty and naturalize the domination of petroculture; pipelines are a link between the dispossession of Native territory and the omnipresence of the oil industry. In the words of anthropologist Kregg Hetherington: “To behold something as infrastructure is to suspend that thing’s present as the future’s necessary past, the tense we call the “Future Perfect” (5). In this kind of linear thinking, Indigenous peoples are removed from the emerging future and, in turn, a way is paved for different kinds of subjects who are more acquiescent to the investments made by their society and who wish to be included in the future promised by infrastructure. With Line 5, we are seeing that scenario play out in real life. Indigenous people are stripped of their resources and homeland and forced to live in constant disturbance by intrusions beyond their control. Last month, for example, an emergency filing was made by the Bad River Band of the Lake Superior Chippewa in Wisconsin in an attempt to shut down Line 5 due to ongoing flooding and erosion near the pipeline.
We learn of all these troubling matters regarding the world of petroculture and its colonial and technological invasion and, yet we struggle to find the willpower to find a solution that unshackles us from the bounds of extractive capitalism. That’s because we are shaped by the very thing that damages our environment. It is difficult to extract ourselves from the evolutionary thinking of modern infrastructure because its promises are what attracts us. Infrastructures harness a kind of power so compelling that it obscures reality and leaves us in a circle of doom: infrastructures create change, and through change, they produce historical and cultural advancements, and through those advancements, we gain autonomy, and repeat. They offer a feeling of hope and a sense of grounding in that one feels control over one’s own movements.
we are shaped by the very thing that damages our environment
We view pipelines in the same way. If pipelines can produce a fruitful economy and allow for the movement of exchange, why should we put a stop to that? Despite being material things, oil and oil pipelines vivify abstractions like freedom, accessibility, autonomy, and pleasure. Commodities and objects are encoded with certain qualities that come to oversee one’s emotional responses and senses of pride, anger, frustration, and pleasure. According to theorist Brian Larkin, such experiences “come to represent the possibility of being modern, of having a future, or the foreclosing of that possibility and a resulting experience of abjection” (333). It is like a game of inculcation that preys on people’s desires and imagination.
But while we have been conditioned to think that our investments and dependence upon oil and oil infrastructure have made our lives easier, the question is, at the expense of whom? At the expense of those whose history has been replaced and removed by petroculture, and, realistically, by us.
As our economy continues to steep itself in the casks of oil culture, it has become harder and harder to imagine a world beyond the nets of capitalism. It seems impossible to extricate ourselves from petroculture and the notion that ‘it is making my life easier, so why should I try to complicate it by involving myself in things that are beyond my control?’ We are victims of a culture that promised to nurture our needs and supposedly gave us “autonomy” in choosing what is best for us. But that autonomy is illusory. We have become so accustomed to the ease of petroculture that we cannot bear to see the blazing inferno below the sheets. It is like we know of the monster that exists in the closet; we just don’t want to open that door and face its rebuke.
This is why Line 5 continues to be an issue. How can we separate ourselves from the monster that has made our life easier?
But ask yourself this: where are the pleasures and fantasies of petroculture leading us? Are we—are all of us– really living as comfortably as we like to believe? Although we cannot dwell on the past or change its results, we can do better for the future. Today’s present regards Line 5. That present now has to be challenged in order to become “the future’s necessary past,” as Hetherington puts it. We can challenge infrastrucure’s “future perfect” tense by reclaiming what was ours and connecting with our past and present to protect our water and our future.
If you think about it, we are an indispensable part of Enbridge’s continued enterprise; they need us to keep buying into their ventures and to perpetuate the capitalist system that underpins petroculture. They like to make us think that we are disposable so they can keep us under their thumb, but we possess much larger power than they would like to think.
Watching the world burn before your eyes because you were simply unaware of the consequences is understandable but choosing to be oblivious is jus self-destructive.
So please do your part because our critical infrastructure depends on you.
by Shannon Waite | Jun 9, 2023 |
[Note: this essay is part of a series of six essays on How to Know about Line 5. You can read the series introduction and find links to the other essays as they are posted here.]
Three feet of water might reach just your knees, but three feet of water can kill you. Flooding, especially more frequent flooding, can do worse. Dying from drowning is one of those things you probably don’t think will ever happen to you, but it happens to someone, and the climate crisis is kind of the same, except it’s happening to everyone. Right now. I’m not trying to scare you or shame you, but I do want to think about this movement with you. Okay?
How do you feel about the climate crisis? About Line 5? I’m wondering if it makes a difference if I tell you that they are intertwined. Line 5 is a 645-mile oil pipeline in the Enbridge Lakehead System, a long, underwater snake transporting up to 540,000 barrels of oil (light crude oil, light synthetic crude, and natural gas liquids which get refined into propane) every day. It does this through a steel pipe running through water, including the Great Lakes. Steel might make it sound safe, but Enbridge has a history of oil spills, including one in Michigan. In 2010, Enbridge’s Line 6B pipe ruptured and pushed over 800,000 gallons of thick, dangerous oil into the Kalamazoo River where it floated and sank for over 17 hours before anyone even knew what was going on. The people working at Enbridge let it sit there for almost a day. This meant that because of outdated pipelines and a lack of concern from Enbridge, an entire community was damaged. People nauseously smelt the oil, unsure of what was happening, finally finding out they were living next to this horrifying mess. Hundreds of homes and businesses had to be evacuated for safety purposes, and hydrocarbons poisoned the air.
Enbridge wants to maintain the status quo.
To try and rectify instances of their pipes splitting open, Enbridge wants to slide a new pipeline through a concrete tunnel, built below the lakebed in the Straits of Mackinac. The fish and other animals that call the freshwater home will pass the construction as it’s going on, pass the tunnel once it’s built, and have to accept this as their new normal in their own lives. Enbridge says this will allow us to maintain our oil use while better protecting our land. It can’t though. Protect anything. With 36% of global energy being devoted to buildings and 8% of global emissions alone going to cement creation, simply building it directly impacts the climate, increasing dangerous greenhouse gas numbers. To do as Enbridge proposes, the construction and operation of the proposed pipeline would lead to an annual increase of about 27 million metric tons CO2e in global greenhouse gas emissions.
Enbridge wants to maintain the status quo though. What I mean by this is that giving up the pipeline isn’t on the table for them. They want to keep an oil pipeline, use construction to create more damage that they claim provides safety and protection, all to secure life as we live it now. They say, “Life takes energy.” They say Line 5 “powers… the cars buses, boats, and trucks that keep Michiganders on the go.” But maybe we don’t have to always be “on the go.” Enbridge does not even consider that creating a new way of living, without this pipeline and oil all together, could be an even better approach.
Life as we live it now is the problem. By producing extensive amounts of greenhouse gas emissions that blanket the Earth, we are trapping heat, raising the global temperature, and messing with other factors that impact Earth’s environment as we know it. One alteration being increased, extreme floods. Fort Lauderdale, Florida recently had a 1-in-1,000-year rainfall event that left it in an emergency, drowning in the rainiest day of its history. Sydney, Australia residents also recently evacuated as they faced their worst round of floods in less than a year and a half. Detroit and other cities (like Fishtown, for example) have too been damaged by increased flooding over the last decade. These floods, and so many others around the world like them, damage crops and public health. They have also triggered the failure of existing structures like damns in Midland, Michigan.
“Drought”, original by arbyreed, licensed under CC BY 2.0
Floods have become more common as sea levels have risen. It’s especially bad in areas that are pumping oil, gas, and drinking water where these extractions collapse the land – the land is shrinking. In 2021, University of Michigan experienced a massive flood, ruining several buildings. Their fieldhouse’s hardwood floor was completely destroyed. The university saw three 100-year storms over eight years so the campus rebuilt their fieldhouse once more with added flood barriers to accommodate expected future flooding.
Other areas of the world are having the opposite problem, facing extreme droughts. When groundwater gets used up and when snow melts too early, water moves too quickly which means the ground dries and becomes thirsty. All of this impacts land that is now nearly uninhabitable.
So what does this mean? It means we’re seeing traumatic environmental changes. These changes are because of carbon released in the atmosphere, trapped and increasing. It means that anything we do to add to that number is a big deal. Line 5, in addition to threatening the Great Lakes with impending spills, will also continue to contribute to the climate crisisour Earth and each of our individual worlds are suffering from in other ways.
It seems like you might have some concern about a world like this, an environment that feels apocalyptic. Images of destruction. Was there a time in your life where you felt differently? Like the world wasn’t burning or drowning around you? I’d love to hear about it. Why didn’t it feel like a problem then?
“CA-Wildfire-15”, original by Jeff Head, licensed under CC BY 2.0
“Flood damage – Houghton, MI – 2018”, original by Chris857, licensed under CC BY 2.0
For me, I think about a time when I was maybe six. We were a little past winter in Michigan here but not yet summer and the daffodils had just bloomed. Yellow sprouts infused my family’s flower box, morning shade cast across our yard, and I rode my tiny bicycle up and down the street with the wind leaning into me. All promises. I didn’t care about anything. I will say that time has caught up to me: I care about paying my bills on time, calling my grandmother on the way home from work, and taking the trash that’s overflowing with banana peels, some of my husband’s tissues, and the tortilla chip bag out. Things are different from that spring in the 90s. I’m able to recognize the significance of ‘now’ though and the precious role I have in this moment’s history, so even though my responsibilities are different, when I reflect on it all, I think about how caring about nothing might not be as important.
Surprisingly, the time that I don’t feel so hopeless about the world is now. I’m with you; I can see the water spinning along the roads, the leaves and tree branches floating down the stream, the people sweaty and red from worry about their soaking basements. I can see the dusty ground, dry bark, and a heat unbearable. But when I close my eyes, I can see a clear space: unfreckled skies, rinsed waves, and communities of people we’ve chosen to live near, to support one another. To rebuild our lives. Can you see it?
One strategy for tackling climate change is carbon neutrality, which means equalizing greenhouse gas emissions through equal absorption. By taking steps to enforce activities that are carbon neutral, all of this extra fuel that’s creating the climate crisis might be lowered. Some institutions that are taking steps toward carbon neutrality include the American Institute of Architects (AIA) which has called for companies to embody the AIA 2030 Commitment which offers standards and steps to reach net zero emissions in the built environment. The University of Michigan and many other schools at both K-12 and the university level have also laid out carbon neutrality goals that will impact climate action. This includes deadlines to accomplish things like reducing greenhouse gas emissions from their purchased electricity, eliminating campus emissions, and fostering a just, university-wide culture of sustainability. Even further, the state of Michigan has stepped up to reduce greenhouse gas emissions across its economy in spaces like energy, transportation, buildings, and housing, with the plan to make these areas of the state carbon neutral by 2025! These changes look like eliminating coal plants and carbon grids, new housing appliances becoming completely electric, transportation made up of vehicles with low or zero emission, and endorsing electric buses and expanding public transportation.
I’m thinking about how steps like these will create an impact, but are they enough? Let’s push our thinking and imagine further. I want you to picture with me a world where you and I are comfortable in the quiet and slowness. Hear that? A few chirps. Feel the sun-skin. A soft breeze. There isn’t much to do by way of going or using. This might not be something we’d enjoy now, but growth comes with practice, right? I mean, think about yourself before you started playing basketball, or cooking meals, or drawing. Before you understood mathematical equations, gardening techniques, or fixing cars. Before you started communicating with people: the power of language is mind-blowing! And you can do that! Right now is just the time period before you start reconnecting with the Earth.
“Hands of a Man and Woman Reaching Toward Each Other”, original by Tony Frost, licensed under CC BY 2.0
Imagine a world where we don’t need to power all of these machines, but we’re strong and capable of working with our environments to support ourselves and the people around us. It seems wild – a life completely different from the one you might live now, but that’s the point. Years ago, scenes of floods and wildfires and thirsty, dried soil among disappearing land and suffering people also may have seemed completely different from the life you live now, but that’s our reality. Why can’t we change it ourselves, into something better?
Line 5 is the status quo – but the status quo isn’t working for us anymore. It can’t. Line 5 is one of many parts of a problem that hurts us, the nature that surrounds us, and the future. It’s emblematic of our clinging to a way of life that is destructive. This clinging to the way things are now though means hanging onto anxiety, hanging onto harm. We don’t have to continue living with this type of worry.
I asked you earlier how you felt about the climate crisis and about Line 5, and then I asked you to rate these feelings on a scale of 1 to 10, and why that number you assigned to your feelings felt right. I’m going to ask you one more time now:
How do you feel about the world’s climate crisis? About Line 5?
