If Oil Is a Crime, Then We’re All Criminals
MINOT, N.D. — I’ve just finished reading Minnesota author (and North Dakota expatriate) Louise Erdrich’s jeremiad against the Enbridge’s Line 3 project in The New York Times, and I’m feeling a little confused.
It’s not clear that Erdrich knows the Line 3 pipeline already exists. This is not new construction. Enbridge is replacing an existing pipeline that has reached the end of its life cycle. Either Erdrich doesn’t know this, which is disconcerting, seeing as how she’s sharing her opinion on the project in one of America’s most-read publications, or she’s dishonestly skirting that fact because it weakens her argument.
Like many other left-wing voices who agitate against pipelines, Erdrich urges less production and use of oil — she accuses the oil industry of “perpetrating a vast ecological crime” — but tells us nothing about what the world might look like without oil.
How would we get around?
