Betting The Farm On Hazardous Pipelines With Poor Track Records

graphic: fractracker.org
graphic: fractracker.org

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Ready or not, painful or not, we are in the middle of a huge shift from an oil dependent economy to one that is run on renewables, the Great Transition. Our governments and the corporations that control them – the people and structures that have become out-of-this-world wealthy from the way we do things now and are heavily invested in maintaining the status quo – are willing to bet the farm, and clean water, clean air, and a stable climate, on new pipelines that will carry more dirty fuel across agricultural land and aquaducts across the Turtle Island (the First Peoples’ name for North America). It’s up to citizens to stop the insanity. Fractracker.org has compiled the available data on U.S. pipeline incidents – publicly available from Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) – and it’s startling. There were 1,887 incidents in the gathering and transmission, distribution, and hazardous liquids pipelines between January 1, 2010 and March 29, 2013, or an average of 1.6 incidents per day. Only addicts who have lost the perspective of the big picture along with a sense of responsibility for the future would be willing to “roll the dice” on this bad bet.

2 thoughts on “Betting The Farm On Hazardous Pipelines With Poor Track Records”

  1. Christine, we (Living on the Edge film project) have also read Paul Gilding’s The Great Disruption and we agree with you that the transition to a low-carbon economy is not only inevitable, it has already begun. One of us (Joan Sullivan) has dedicated the rest of her life to documenting the rapid rise of renewables in Canada. Please visit our website: http://www.edgequebec.net Keep up your great work — we love your blog!

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