ExxonMobil pipeline bursts in Montana, spilling crude oil into Yellowstone River

As if we need­ed anoth­er reminder that the oil indus­try is a dirty industry…

An Exxon­Mo­bil pipeline run­ning under the Yel­low­stone Riv­er in south cen­tral Mon­tana rup­tured late Fri­day, spilling crude oil into the riv­er and forc­ing evacuations.

The pipeline burst about 10 miles west of Billings, coat­ing parts of the Yel­low­stone Riv­er that run past Lau­rel — a town of about 6,500 peo­ple down­stream from the rup­ture — with shiny patch­es of oil. Pre­cise­ly how much oil leaked into the riv­er was still unclear. But through­out the day Sat­ur­day, cleanup crews in Lau­rel worked to lessen the impact of the spill, lay­ing down absorbent sheets along the banks of the riv­er to mop up some of the escaped oil, and mea­sur­ing fumes to deter­mine the health threat.

Of course, Exxon­Mo­bil is very, very, very sor­ry about all of this.

EMP­Co deeply regrets this release and is work­ing hard with local emer­gency author­i­ties to mit­i­gate the impacts of this release on the sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties and to the environment.

The release orig­i­nat­ed from a 12″ crude pipeline oper­at­ed by EMP­Co that runs from Sil­ver Tip to Billings. The pipeline has been shut down and the seg­ment where the release occurred has been iso­lat­ed. All appro­pri­ate state and fed­er­al author­i­ties have been alerted.

When a drilling rig blows up, when a pipeline bursts, or when a super­tanker runs aground due to a care­less crew, the ram­i­fi­ca­tions are incred­i­bly destruc­tive. We know because we’ve seen this hap­pen before. Some com­mu­ni­ties have trag­i­cal­ly expe­ri­enced the con­se­quences firsthand.

Each time a dis­as­ter hap­pens, the com­pa­ny respon­si­ble apol­o­gizes and promis­es to clean up its mess and com­pen­sate those affected.

Politi­cians vow to hold the com­pa­ny respon­si­ble account­able and press for tougher safe­ty reg­u­la­tions. But inevitably, none of this talk leads to a safer or clean­er indus­try. Because pre­ventable acci­dents keep happening.

Since humans make mis­takes, drilling (or min­ing) for fos­sil fuels is an inher­ent­ly unsafe busi­ness… a busi­ness that needs to be made illegal.

It is uncon­scionable that we as a coun­try are con­tin­u­ing to enter­tain pro­pos­als by greedy cor­po­ra­tions to blow up more moun­tains, despoil more Arc­tic wilder­ness with rigs, or con­t­a­m­i­nate more aquifers to get dirty fos­sil fuels out of the ground.

We’ve known for decades that oil is a finite resource, one that one last for­ev­er. We’ve known for decades that burn­ing it, along with coal and nat­ur­al gas, releas­es tox­ins into the air. We’ve known for decades that our depen­dence on for­eign oil is harm­ful to the secu­ri­ty and well-being of our country.

And yet, we have done next to noth­ing to tran­si­tion to a clean ener­gy future. There’s been plen­ty of talk, but it has­n’t been backed up with action.

Con­gress has made no seri­ous effort to use our mighty com­mon wealth to fur­ther the devel­op­ment of renew­able energy.

It has not even been able to redi­rect the mon­ey we cur­rent­ly just give away to oil com­pa­nies like Exxon­Mo­bil to renew­able ener­gy research.

What is stand­ing in the way of action? In their 2008 book Apol­lo’s Fire, Jay Inslee and Brack­en Hen­dricks offered the fol­low­ing answer.

The prob­lem is not inad­e­quate infor­ma­tion or insuf­fi­cient sci­en­tif­ic tal­ent. It is not even the relent­less obstruc­tion­ism of vest­ed inter­ests, though we can’t under­es­ti­mate the tenac­i­ty and clev­er­ness of the oil and auto­mo­tive indus­tries and the politi­cians indebt­ed to them. Rather, the prob­lem is an over­abun­dance of fear. Fear that we can­not solve the prob­lem. Fear that we can­not change the course we are on.

Peo­ple have a fine­ly devel­oped inabil­i­ty to ignore prob­lems — like the inevitabil­i­ty of our own death — that we believe we can do noth­ing about. Yet today, we do not have the lux­u­ry of igno­rance. Our shift to a deep and abid­ing hope must be ground­ed in our abil­i­ty to guide the forces of change for human bet­ter­ment, informed by the dan­gers we face but guid­ed by a belief in our own inno­v­a­tive potential.

When Barack Oba­ma won elec­tion to the pres­i­den­cy in 2008, many envi­ron­men­tal activists had high hopes that our back­wards ener­gy pol­i­cy would be reversed, and that con­ser­va­tion would be made a pri­or­i­ty. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion has endorsed plans for more drilling, rather than call­ing for an end to the fos­sil fuel indus­try’s end­less appetite for more projects, whether they be new off­shore rigs, pipelines, or refineries.

Pres­i­dent Oba­ma and his team had an oppor­tu­ni­ty to reeval­u­ate their posi­tion in the after­math of the Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon dis­as­ter, the worst human-caused envi­ron­men­tal calami­ty in the his­to­ry of the Unit­ed States. But the admin­is­tra­tion has still not reversed its posi­tion, even after its own oil spill com­mis­sion found that the dis­as­ter was caused by corner-cutting.

“The imme­di­ate caus­es of the Macon­do well blowout can be traced to a series of  iden­ti­fi­able mis­takes made by BP , Hal­libur­ton, and Transocean that reveal such sys­tem­at­ic fail­ures in risk man­age­ment that they place in doubt the safe­ty cul­ture of the entire indus­try,” wrote the com­mis­sion mem­bers in their final report.

What we want to know is, how can an inher­ent­ly risky, dirty indus­try com­prised of unac­count­able, mon­ey­mak­ing pri­vate gov­ern­ments have a safe­ty cul­ture to begin with? Com­pa­nies like Exxon­Mo­bil do not exist for any noble pur­pose (like improv­ing the human con­di­tion). They exist to make money.

So their pri­or­i­ty can’t be safe­ty. Legal­ly, their pri­or­i­ty has to be mak­ing as much mon­ey for their investors as they can.

As long as the fos­sil fuel indus­try con­tin­ues to oper­ate in this coun­try, we are going to be sub­ject­ed to more envi­ron­men­tal dis­as­ters. The time has come for us to rec­og­nize that our ways are not sus­tain­able, and chan­nel our resources into the devel­op­ment of clean, safe, dis­trib­uted renew­able ener­gy. Only then will inci­dents like this begin to dis­ap­pear from our headlines.