Pipelines harm long-term jobs

Whether workers support them or not, the protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline are a rallying call not only for environmental justice, but for labor justice as well.

The controversial $3.8 billion dollar pipeline, spearheaded by Energy Transfer Partners LP, will harm the environment and the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s reservation. Protesters have made that clear. But less obvious is the progress toward creating renewable energy jobs the pipeline will delay.

Despite claims that the project will create jobs and economic profits, the lack of permanent jobs make those claims empty promises.

The DAPL is meant to carry 570,000 barrels of crude oil per day from North and South Dakota to Illinois. The pipeline has been under fire by activist groups for damaging the Standing Rock reservation, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia declared a halt to construction while their appeal is being considered.

Last Thursday, Pittsburgh protesters marched across Liberty Avenue in a show of solidarity with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe organized by local environmental group Three Rivers Rising Tide. The event centered around indigenous rights, environmental justice and the Mariner East Phase 2 pipeline, a pipeline in the process of being remodeled in Pennsylvania.

Local environmental groups like PennEnvironment and Clean Water Action object to the environmental consequences of unchecked Big Oil, including lack of regulations, construction disturbances and noise and air pollution.

Yet, their opponents aren’t just those who are pro-business. Working against these protesters are also labor groups like Laborers’ International Union of North America, which turned out to support the Mariner East 2 — a pipeline from Ohio through West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Delaware to transport liquefied petroleum gases — in a Pennsylvania hearing on Aug. 8. The environmental discord isn’t simply left and right, as one would expect during this election season.

Environmental groups and labor unions are both historically left-leaning. So why are labor groups supporting a generally conservative push for pipelines?

Similar to the DAPL, the Mariner East pipeline projects will create 15,000 jobs a year, adding $62 million in taxes over the course of its construction — yet the projects will only sustain around 300 to 400 permanent jobs. Pennsylvania’s Mariner East 2 is a pure example of a larger, national divide.

When Obama rejected the long-debated Keystone XL last November, alluding to climate change in his speech, he set a precedent for keeping Big Oil in check. The DAPL is the next test of the precedent’s lasting power. Last Thursday, when the largest national federation of unions — AFL-CIO — backed the DAPL, their support called attention to the friction brewing between environmental groups and labor unions.

That the pipeline will be built on Native American land is demonstrative of a long American history of shrinking Native territory. In 1877, Congress passed a treaty greatly reducing Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s land despite not gaining approval from three-fourths of the Sioux. The once-vast Standing Rock reservation, which stretched across the entirety of South Dakota, has been reduced to a measly 5 percent of its original square mileage.

The environmental case for the pipeline, if you could call it that, is weak. The pipeline would reduce purchases of foreign oil, which are costly and require even more energy to import. But, given that last year’s Paris Climate Agreements agreed “on the need for global emissions to peak as soon as possible,” is a new untapped source of crude oil really what the world needs right now?

The biggest issue comes down to jobs. The DAPL would produce 8,000 to 12,000 construction jobs according to official fact sheets. Yet the amount of permanent jobs that the DAPL and Mariner East would create is a fraction of that — 40 and 300 to 400, respectively.

And here’s where we need to understand that union members are fighting for their job security and safety. Environmental justice, after all, is first and foremost about protecting our most vulnerable people. Whether we want to trade in thousands of people’s lives and livelihoods for the future of millions shouldn’t be the question. You can’t put a value on either.

Laborers face a catch-22. In the short term, pipelines will result in increased employment and spike union membership. Supporting a conservative cause broadens their membership as well. In the long term, however, jobs in the oil industry simply aren’t sustainable with global trends emphasizing energy divestment. The DAPL and Mariner East are only prolonging the oil industry’s slow but inevitable death and allowing corporations like ETP and Sunoco Logistics to reap profits while they can. Once Big Oil stops being profitable, all that will be left are miles of irreversibly damaged land and thousands left jobless yet again.

What’s emerging is a national controversy that pits environmental and First Nation activists against big oil companies and laborers. The 1,172-mile DAPL could wreak environmental havoc on First Nations land, given a history of shaky and fallible regulations. A formal complaint by Standing Rock Sioux Tribe asserts that the pipeline “threatens the Tribe’s environmental and economic well-being and would damage and destroy sites of great historic, religious and cultural significance to the Tribe.”

First Nations objections alone should be enough to stop the pipeline — specifically on the basis that construction would catalyze more destruction of culturally significant land. Continuing to encroach on First Nations land would be a national disgrace and a thousand steps back on our attempts make history right. The construction of the pipeline also crosses the Missouri River, directly upstream from the Tribe’s reservation. The potential for contaminated drinking water due to willful negligence is disturbingly evocative of Flint, Michigan.

It’s time for us all to demand immediate and increased investments in green energy. It’s time for us to be transparent about pipelines. Pipelines are damaging to the environment and serve no one but large corporate interests. Though the pipelines create temporary construction jobs, the amount of long-term jobs they create are far fewer. The cost of retraining several hundreds of people for renewable energy will be minuscule compared to the sum spent on either pipeline.

If a few decades back, all the money spent on pipelines were spent instead on retraining workers and finding green energy solutions, we would not be in this predicament.

The next-best time is now.

Isabelle primarily writes on social issu for The Pitt News.

Write to her at eks50@pitt.edu.