Life as We Live it Now is the Problem
[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 This meant that because of outdated pipelines and a lack of concern from Enbridge, an entire community was damaged.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?