When a Fire Starts to Burn

[babylonsister]

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a53050/trump-environmental-policy/

When a Fire Starts to Burn

President* Trump's environmental policies will doom us all.
By Charles P. Pierce
Feb 10, 2017



WASHINGTON—Meanwhile, out in the world, we are going full speed ahead on pipelines, and pipelines break, when they don't explode, that is. You will be amazed, I am sure, at finding out that the company that owns the first pipeline, the one that ruptured in Texas, is an old friend of ours. From KETR:

The pipeline, which transports crude oil between Cushing, Okla., and the Texas Gulf Coast, is jointly owned by Houston-based Enterprise Products Partners and Canada-based Enbridge. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, Enterprise Products operates more than 21,000 miles of "hazardous liquid" (i.e., petroleum product) pipelines in the U.S. In the 10 years leading up to Monday's spill, the DOT recorded 210 incidents in the company's hazardous liquid pipeline systems, totaling almost $50 million. Last year the company reported 27 incidents with no fatalities or injuries. Incidents in 2016 resulted in 7,744 barrels of lost liquid and a little more than $2 million in property damage. Enbridge, which operates less than 300 miles of hazardous liquid pipeline in Texas, has reported one oil pipeline incident over the past 10 years.

Meanwhile, in Louisiana, the fire is still burning. From NOLA.com:

The reason for the explosion and subsequent fire are under investigation, said Louisiana State Police Troop B spokeswoman Melissa Matey. "We're not sure if a valve or a gasket failed," Champagne said, describing the fire as a "large blowtorch" rising 30 to 40 feet high. "It's a scary fire, but it's burning off."

At this point, with the new administration all about putting stalled pipelines back on track again, and Rick Perry about to take over a Department of Energy that he couldn't even call to mind once when he was talking about how he wanted to eliminate it, the people running these death funnels should feel free to tell us all the truth. Pipelines break. That's what they do. The Dakota Access pipeline is going to break. The Keystone XL pipeline is going to break. There is going to be untold damage to land and water and that damage is just a cost of doing business to the corporations who continue to profit from the fossil fuels to which the country remains addicted. Sorry, Louisiana. You're just going to have to accept the fact that, occasionally, the ground beneath your feet blows up. Sorry, Nebraska. We're going to need that prairie there for a storage pond.

In related news this week, 34 officials of the EPA were supposed to attend an environmental conference in Alaska. As NPR reports, the administration cut the size of the delegation in half, because it doesn't know anything about the issues and cares less.

More than a thousand people attend the multiday event in downtown Anchorage each year, and the EPA is normally a major partner. This year, agency officials were scheduled to take part in about 30 sessions on everything from drinking water and sanitation in rural Alaska to climate change adaptation. In an emailed statement, EPA transition official Doug Ericksen says the decision to cut back is an effort to limit excessive travel costs. He says a review last week found that EPA spent $44 million sending employees to 25 outside conferences in 2016. When officials learned that 34 employees were slated to attend the Alaska event, they slashed the number to 17. "This is one small example of how EPA will be working cooperatively with our staff and our outside partners to be better stewards of the American people's money," Ericksen said.

And who is brother Ericksen, you ask. He's a state senator out of Washington who's currently double-dipping as a member of the transition team. (This has caused some of his constituents some justifiable agita, and they've filed papers against him.) He is a staunch climate denialist and he also has filed legislation to stifle demonstrations in his state. And his opposition to any program designed to address the existential crisis of the time is well-funded, as the Bellingham Herald explains. Naturally, he's just the guy to determine what is the proper use of public money to study the environment. Anyway, it's obvious that we have entered an entirely new era of environmental neglect and we've done it with our eyes open.

[Tanuki]

1. The hypocrisy of claiming their refusal to send EPA staff to an important

meeting is based on "being better stewards of the American people's money" the same week that Dolt45 squandered millions of dollars dragging Shinzo Abe down to Mar-a-lago for no apparent reason beyond vanity and a need to impress, is sickening.