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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">Enbridge, Columbus, and the
last tar sands pipeline</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">By Winona
LaDuke October 9, 2021</div>
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<font size="4"><b>The pipeline is colonialism at work in the
21st century, but water protectors are making waves.
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<p id="gmail-48P04Q">It's somehow fitting irony as
Indigenous Day approaches on Oct. 11 — once known by
another name — that a new Columbus is about to pump
oil through Line 3, the last tar sands pipeline. That
is the colonial-like corporation Enbridge.</p>
<p id="gmail-NO9CR1">Maybe President Joe Biden will
think about this one and stop the dirty oil from
burning our rivers and air. The Indian wars could be
over. After all, no one needs this pipeline, plus it's
the dirtiest and most expensive oil in the world to
extract and produce.</p>
<p id="gmail-ftfBTh">In one narrative, the Canadian
corporation won. Columbus conquered anew, proof that
might and money remain the rulers.</p>
<p id="gmail-uOFetU">Then, there's another. That's the
Ballad of the Water Protectors — a movement born in
the battles in northern Minnesota and North Dakota, a
movement that will grow and transform the economy of
the future.</p>
<p id="gmail-L3RYT7">How do we know this?Well, no one
wants to finance more tar sands. Other telling signs,
and some new red flags, include:</p>
<p id="gmail-QUM2Ao">The Canadian oil industry estimated
that a lack of pipeline capacity reduced the
industry's income by tens of billions of dollars
before the pandemic started. The tar sands industry
couldn't afford to approve and build new extraction
facilities during the curtailment, and now, in part
due to the pandemic, it still can't.</p>
<p id="gmail-UOdSgb">Uncertainty about Line 3 caused by
Indigenous people and water protectors encouraged
massive divestment from the tar sands by non-Canadian
investors. Everybody from Shell Oil to the Koch
brothers bailed out. Last month, my alma mater,
Harvard University, began divestment of fossil fuels.
Harvard wouldn't even divest from South Africa, those
stubborn old dudes. This is, well, monumental.</p>
<p id="gmail-1VUanJ">A recent joint report by the
Indigenous Environmental Network and Oil Change
International, found that Indigenous resistance alone
has stopped or delayed greenhouse gas pollution
equivalent to at least 25% of annual U.S. and Canadian
emissions.</p>
<p id="gmail-nN6vQU">As a result of low oil prices,
reduced income and divestment, tar sands industry
capital expenditures crashed. Almost all its capital
spending over the past five years was used for
maintenance of existing extraction facilities, not
development of new facilities.</p>
<p id="gmail-p9xI4Y">Put another way, the pipeline
opposition campaign stopped the tar sands industry
dead in its tracks.</p>
<p id="gmail-WPniI9">We all just recently learned two
more blatant things about Enbridge that should give
everyone pause — especially our government leaders
like Gov. Tim Walz and U.S. Sens. Amy Klobuchar and
Tina Smith, whose cowardly silence makes them
complicit in this egregious crime.</p>
<p id="gmail-UjssmM">First, after piercing an aquifer in
January — an aquifer that is still bleeding 100,000
gallons of water a day — Enbridge covered it up for as
long as it could until it was caught and fined $3.3
million by the Department of Natural Resources. This
is the kind of people we are dealing with.</p>
<p id="gmail-aSAXhd">We also learned the pipeline isn't
even adequately insured. The Minnesota Public
Utilities Commission required Enbridge to obtain $200
million of "environmental impairment liability"
insurance, in addition to general corporate liability
coverage of $900 million, and to include the state of
Minnesota and several American Indian tribes as
additional insureds on its policies. But Enbridge
recently submitted a report to the Public Utilities
Commission saying it will likely not be able to obtain
this insurance "in the near future."</p>
<p id="gmail-ZVU8H7">That's baffling and problematic at
best. I'm wondering what Harvard Business School is
thinking about that one. No insurance is not only
dangerous but illustrates again that the tar sands
party is over. The most expensive tar sands pipeline
will be the last one to the U.S.</p>
<p id="gmail-sWcHxj">In 2018, due to a lack of pipeline
capacity, the government of Alberta ordered tar sands
and other crude oil extraction facilities to curtail
production, initially by 325,000 barrels per day. This
order meant that each month about 10 million barrels
of oil (and the carbon within it) stayed in the
ground. Although Alberta gradually ramped down the
curtailment, it lasted almost two years. Thank a water
protector for that.</p>
<p id="gmail-DKvJBh">We also delayed the Line 3 project
by four years (Enbridge's initial in-service date was
2017), such that any new tar sands development efforts
are now facing the near-term prospect of reduced oil
demand resulting from the escalating adoption of
electric vehicles and climate change policy
developments, such as the Canadian carbon tax.</p>
<p id="gmail-hPi1Ki">Delaying Line 3 by four years means
that the tar sands industry now faces a global crude
oil market environment that is much less favorable
than in 2017.</p>
<p id="gmail-t3p2Ob">Meanwhile, a Code Red has just been
issued for the planet in the latest U.N.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. With
this warning, Minnesota's approval of the line, from
the Public Utilities Committee to the courts, makes us
look like archaic climate crisis co-conspirators.</p>
<p id="eon0dk">We also look increasingly like a police
state, especially in northern Minnesota. The
repressive police brutalization of Line 3 opponents
using rubber bullets, chemical sprays and "pain
compliance" have come to the attention of the United
Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial
Discrimination (CERD) for "Violations of Anishinaabe
Human Rights from Enbridge's Line 3."</p>
<p id="gmail-2GU0vU">This new investigation is likely to
expose again into the future what a truly rotten idea
the escrow account established by Enbridge and the PUC
to militarize the north in the name of defending Line
3 really was. Did we learn something from our
whippings?</p>
<p id="gmail-Ia8o5f">Approaching this day for uplifting
Indigenous peoples, here's a suggestion. It's time to
end conquest and begin survival. Code Red for the
environment means that we need to move away from
fossil fuels and to organic agriculture, and to local
and efficient energy. Fortunately, tribal nations are
leading the way in the north. It's time to quit acting
like Columbus.</p>
<p id="gmail-rXqKLj"><em>Winona LaDuke is the co-founder
and executive director of the Indigenous-led
environmental justice nonprofit, Honor the Earth.</em></p>
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