Notes From Underground: Season’s Greetings! Pipelines Leak! We Need Accountable Energy!
By Adam Arnold, Environmental Counsel
In 2022, we learned that humanity’s need for safe, reliable, accountable energy is still paramount. Or we should have – just like we should have in any of the forty or fifty years since the threat of anthropogenic climate change became public knowledge. Or even before that – at any time since we became aware of pollution and its health impacts. Regardless, 2022 offered many opportunities to learn.
Despite some bright moments, there has been more cause for disappointment than for celebration this year where energy production, transportation, and consumption are concerned. But to start on a high note, one cause for celebration came in Pennsylvania, where the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) penalized Shell Pipeline for various spills and discharges – and failure to report them – during construction of the Falcon Pipeline. In so doing, the DEP corroborated whistleblowers’ disclosures about the shoddy work being done (which would seem to contradict Shell’s website’s claim that the corporation “operate[s its] assets responsibly and [is] dedicated to protecting the health, safety and environment of the communities in which [it] operate[s].”).
The year ultimately offered several acute examples of the problems posed by energy sources that are neither safe nor accountable to the public, culminating in a huge, completely predictable leak...
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