We had a great evening and thanks to much generous support, we raised over $10,000 with around 250 people in attendance! Thank you to all who supported our work, especially Betsie Bay Furniture, Northway Orthodontics and The Garden Theater and all of our amazing donors.
Observations by some that the State of Michigan has no regulatory authority over hazardous liquid pipelines is correct to the extent that it is understood in the context of safety regulations — standards, inspection and enforcement; safety code enforcement is covered by the federal PHMSA law, regulation and agency. However, it is not true that Michigan does not have authority to demand the information Enbridge keeps under its control, and it is not true that Michigan does not have enforcement authority.
As concluded by the Michigan Petroleum Pipeline Task Force Report, 2015, Michigan has authority under the 1953 Easement, including the continuing obligation of Enbridge to conduct itself with prudence at all times, and it has authority under:
(1) its sovereign ownership of bottomlands and waters of the Great Lakes since statehood in 1837 under “equal footings” doctrine. Michigan took title in trust to protect the basic rights of citizens as beneficiaries of a public trust imposed on the state. This means the state has authority and duty to take actions to protect the public trust as a matter of its “property and public trust power,” whether or not it passes regulations on hazardous liquid pipelines or not. Under public trust authority and principles, the state cannot transfer or shift control over waters and bottomlands held in trust to any private person or corporation; the retention of information by Enbridge that is required to protect the public trust or to determine whether the public trust is threatened with high unacceptable harm or risk violates this public trust principle, and the Attorney General can demand and take all action necessary to compel Enbridge to turn it over, indeed, even the easement recognizes and is subject to this public trust.
(2) The Michigan Public Service Commission has authority over siting and locations of crude oil pipelines like Enbridge’s and others. Anytime Enbridge or some other corporation applies for a change or improvement to the structure it regulates as to siting, including its consideration of risks to property and health or environment and alternatives, the MPSC has authority to demand all relevant information needed to make a decision on the application for such change. Unfortunately, the MPSC has not insisted on the full range of information it could demand, including alternative pipeline routes and capacity to Line 5 in the Straits of Mackinac when it doubled capacity for Enbridge’s new replacement for the failed Line 6B that ruptured into the Kalamazoo River in 2010.
(3) Finally, the Michigan Environmental Protection Act, Part 17, NREPA, imposes a duty to prevent and minimize harm to air, water, and natural resources, and this includes the right to take action where necessary when a corporation’s actions are contrary to this duty to prevent and minimize harm; the MEPA, as it’s often called, is derived from Art 4, Sec. 52 of the Michigan Constitution.
So while Michigan ponders the aging or new pipeline infrastructure for hazardous liquids and crude oil, the state, including the Attorney General, have the authority to take immediate action to prevent the high risk of Line 5 or other pipelines. And, where that risk involves the devastating harm that undoubtedly may occur in the Straits, action should be taken immediately pending the coming one to two years of pondering. In short, there is no legal excuse or justification for Governor Snyder, Attorney General Bill Schuette, or the Department of Environmental Quality to put up with Enbridge’s self-serving stonewalling on disclosure of all information related to its Line 5 hazardous crude oil pipeline. And, there is no excuse or justification for our state leaders to delay action to eliminate the unacceptable harm from the Straits or other Michigan waters from Line 5.
FLOW founder and president Jim Olson made the case against Enbridge recently for the need to eliminate crude oil in Line 5 in the Straits of Mackinac. Read the full debate in Riparian Magazine here.
In the last two years, Enbridge has cut nearly in half its estimate of the likely size of an oil spill from a pair of aging pipelines that move nearly 23 million gallons of oil a day through the Mackinac Straits, while independent studies suggest the risk is much greater and growing. Read the full findings by engineer and FLOW technical expert Gary Street.
Ross Biederman, owner of Midwest Broadcasting, issued a broadcast and print editorial today urging our political leaders and those running for office to help shut down the flow of crude oil through Line 5 in the Straits. Biederman warns it is too dangerous, the harm too devastating, and the risk too high to continue operating Line 5 in the Straits of Mackinac. In a no nonsense, strong voice, he concludes oil in the Straits pipeline should be eliminated, there are alternatives for the crude synthetic lighter oil to get there and to satisfy the smaller needs of a refinery in Michigan, and most of the oil goes to Canada anyway, and that citizens should take action by demanding that their leaders take charge and act on this issue. Read print copy of Ross’s broadcast below and listen to the radio spot here.
If you think the Flint water crises was Catastrophe that could have been avoided by the state of Michigan imagine an oil spill in the Straits of Mackinac. Lurking beneath the water at the straits lies a 4 ½ mile long pipeline carrying about 500,000 barrels or 23 million gallons of liquid petroleum…crude…each day. The pipeline is owned by a Canadian company, Enbridge. It’s referred to as Line 5 and it carries crude from Superior, Wisconsin to Sarnia, Ontario. Line 5 is 63 years old and has never been thoroughly inspected by The State of Michigan. Here are just two potential problem areas. The welding techniques used in 1953 are out-dated. Also, the pipeline is covered in zebra mussels making comprehensive visual inspection difficult if not impossible.
Michigan’s Attorney General has the authority to order Line 5 shut down, but has not done so. He has ordered more studies which could take up to a year and a half. You have the power to do something! Bills have been introduced in both Michigan’s House and Senate that would accomplish this. They haven’t gone to committee yet and probably will not before the Legislatures’ Summer Recess. What can you do? Tell your State Representative and Senator to get off the dime and move this legislation. An oil spill at the Straits could foul both Lake Michigan and Huron because of the currents. Imagine it happening during the winter under the ice. The University of Michigan said the Mackinac Straits would be the worst possible place for an oil spill. I should mention that is was an Enbridge pipeline failure that dumped 840,000 gallons of crude into the Kalamazoo River in 2010…the largest inland spill in US history.
So make your voice be heard to end this potential danger to our ecology and economy. This is an election year. Every state representative is up for re-election as is half the Senate.
And by the way, it isn’t like we’d be cutting off our supply of oil. Enbridge has built a new pipeline…Line 6…that’s has twice the capacity. Line 6 runs through Wisconsin, around Chicago, and across Southern Michigan to Sarnia.
Michigan only gets 10-12% of the crude anyway….the rest goes to Canada.
With election nearing, now is the time to demand that candidates pledge to take action closing Line 5!
The launch of FLOW’s new website comes at the same time FLOW’s work (beginning back in 2009 when Terry Swier, President of Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation, my brother Eric Olson, Ted Curran, and a few others, saw the need to educate leaders and the public on the overarching principle known as the public trust doctrine) has been recognized by the most highly regarded body in the Great Lakes Basin—the International Joint Commission. As part of a 15-year review of its efforts to protect the waters of the Great Lakes Basin, in January of this year, the IJC issued a landmark recommendation that the states, provinces, and countries implement the public trust framework as a “backdrop principle” to safeguard the integrity of the Great Lakes in the 21st century. The launch also comes at the end of the second year of teaching the new water and sustainability course at Northwestern Michigan College’s Water Studies Institute. This past week, the students heard a wrap-up lecture on the unifying principle of the course and water policy in the future—the framework for problem solving under the commons and public trust doctrine in water.[1]
What does this mean? It means that FLOW’s vision, work, and our supporters are at the forefront of efforts to educate and help leaders, citizens, businesses, and our communities address the systemic threats that face the Great Lakes region – and beyond—including climate change and water levels, invasive species, algal blooms, diversions and excessive and wasteful losses of water, exports, intensive aquaculture farming on the surface of public trust waters, and crude oil transport in, over, or near the Great Lakes. As highlighted by the IJC in a recent public opinion poll, fully eighty-five percent of citizens in the Basin put their concern for the Great Lakes at the top of their list – that’s 34 million out of the 40 million people who live in the Basin. But the problem is we need to understand what we can do about the systemic threats to the Basin, and what principles will lead us there. At FLOW we think the most fundamental principle is the public trust doctrine.
What is the public trust doctrine?
The public trust doctrine (as recounted by Traverse Magazine’s editor Jeff Smith in an article on FLOW’s pioneering work when he created the by-line name for this BLOG – H2Olson) is a background principle connected to the Great Lakes and other bodies of water. It holds that these waters are held by the state as trustee and must be managed and protected for the benefit of the legal beneficiaries of this public trust – the 40 million citizens in the Great Lakes Basin. It imposes a legally enforceable duty on government and leaders to affirmatively and perpetually take action to prevent harm or impairment to these waters, their ecosystem and public uses that depend on them – navigation, fishing, boating, swimming, drinking water, and sustenance. It prohibits any person or entity – public or private – to enclose or transfer these waters for a primarily private purpose – these waters are held for the public. It means no public or private person can measurably impair the integrity of the quality and quantity of these waters from one generation to the next. It means all of us share, collectively and individually, a right to water as beneficiaries of this trust.
Why public trust principles?
Before the victorious court decision curtailing Nestlé’s bottled water exports from Michigan, the common law prohibited diversions or exports that diminished the flow or level of a lake or stream.—this means the very heart or integrity of a stream or lake cannot be impaired. After the decision, this “non-diminishment” standard was weakened in favor of a “substantial harm” test that arguably would allow water exports, diversions and losses from the waters of the Great Lakes. In effect, the court left the door open for foreign and domestic interests outside the Basin to claim the right to divert or use large quantities of water, and if challenged, potentially seek damages or other relief in private tribunals under the auspices of NAFTA or other trade agreements – possibly even the recent TPP. Moreover, the Great Lakes Compact diversion ban left the door open for water prospectors to package raw water in any sized container (not just bottles) and ship water out of the Basin as a “product.” The Compact also exempted diversions for public water supplies in communities that straddle the Basin, like the ongoing controversy over Waukesha, Wisconsin’s request for water that looks more like a plan to grow communities outside the basin that meet current public need for water. These and other events have sounded the horn for caution and action.
FLOW’s public trust vision converges with the human shift toward saving and promoting the “common good.”
In 2011, FLOW convened a conference to address systemic threats to the Great Lakes that fall outside water laws from the 20th century. In 2012, FLOW with the Council of Canadians presented an in-depth study to the International Joint Commission, a binational body charged under a 1909 treaty to protect the Great Lakes. The study urged the IJC to adopt a new overarching principle based on the ancient pubic trust doctrine: This doctrine charges government, as trustee for citizen-beneficiaries, with a perpetual duty to prevent impairment or private control of water, as a commons, from one generation to the next.
From 2013 through 2015, FLOW submitted additional reports with the IJC and other governments to demonstrate how this this game-changing principle would address threats to water as a commons and human right. FLOW launched public presentations, a new water policy course with Northwestern Michigan College, and recommended solutions to address algal blooms, extreme water levels, climate change, invasive species, and recent scientific and policy reports that called for removal of oil in a pipeline in the Straits of Mackinac.
Since 2011, we’ve witnessed massive algal blooms shut down Toledo and Monroe’s water supplies and destroy fishing in Lake Huron. We’ve seen law and high swings in water levels exacerbated by climate change effects. We’ve seen the shut-offs of water that services thousands of Detroit residents and families, the Flint water crisis and exposure of thousands of innocent children and people to lead poisoning. We see continuing in action on the time-bomb of shipping crude oil in or near the Straits or other waters of the Basin. We see efforts to legalize private occupancy of acres of public waters and bottomlands of the Great Lakes to operate concentrated fish farms, when farming belongs on land and the surface of the Great Lakes belongs to the public.
In summer 2015, FLOW submitted a report on the IJC’s 15-year review of protecting the Great Lakes. FLOW demonstrated how public trust principles would act as a backstop against known and unknown threats to the Great Lakes. In January, 2016, FLOW’s work took a giant step forward. As noted at the outset, the IJC issued a landmark recommendation that the states, provinces, and countries implement the public trust framework as a “backdrop principle” to safeguard the integrity of the Great Lakes!
Recently, in his encyclical letter on climate and our earth’s predicament, Pope Francis captured the awareness and reality of a world faced with massive loss of water, soil, and social and economic injustice. He pointed out two ethical principles: Protect the common good and do so from one generation to the next. All other endeavor, including economic, must honor and respect these principles.
What we are excited about at FLOW is, we find ourselves lockstep with the solutions to crises and threats to water here and elsewhere because the public trust doctrine in water brings legal principle to ethical principles to promote the common good.
[1] For those readers who want to gain a general understanding of FLOW’s work and the commons and public trust framework, watch the wrap-up lecture and discussion at the NMC’s WSI 230 water and sustainability class. https://ensemble.nmc.edu/Watch/Xa45Sfy9
Citing new research and documentation revealing cracks, dents, corrosion, and structural defects in the twin oil pipelines in the Mackinac Straits, 22 environmental and tribal groups today formally requested that Gov. Snyder and Attorney General Schuette shut down “Line 5” oil in the Straits based on Enbridge’s multiple easement violations. The violations mean Enbridge is operating illegally and has broken its legal agreement with the state and people of Michigan.
Enbridge’s ongoing violations related to pipeline design threaten the very safety and health of the Great Lakes, and thus trigger the state’s duty to enforce its agreement with Enbridge. Under the 1953 easement, the state must provide Canadian-based energy transporter Enbridge 90 days to resolve any known easement violations. The state now has substantial legal and factual cause to terminate the agreement with Enbridge to stop the oil flow and protect the Great Lakes, public water supplies, and the Pure Michigan economy, according to an April 13 letter to Snyder and Schuette, signed by partner groups in the Oil & Water Don’t Mix campaign.
“The law and this easement agreement are clear: state leaders cannot wait another year or more while Enbridge continues to violate safety conditions it agreed to and withholds safety inspection and other data from the public and the state,” said environmental attorney Liz Kirkwood, Executive Director of FLOW (For Love of Water) in Traverse City. “Gov. Snyder and Attorney General Schuette must start the clock to terminate the state’s easement agreement that allows Enbridge to operate the Line 5 pipelines on state-owned bottomlands and waters.”
In their letter, the groups identified eight specific violations of the easement and state law, including:
The twin Enbridge Line 5 oil pipelines lying exposed in the Mackinac Straits, where Lake Michigan and Lake Huron meet, are a high-risk shortcut moving up to 23 million gallons of oil and propane a day primarily from western Canadian oil fields to eastern Canadian refineries, as well as on to Montreal and export markets. FLOW’s research shows there are alternatives to Line 5 that do not threaten the Great Lakes, which hold 20 percent of the world’s fresh surface water, and do not disrupt Michigan’s oil and gas supply.
“Enbridge has consistently failed to provide appropriate documentation to the state and the public that supports its position that Line 5 is fit for service”, said Ed Timm, PhD, PE, a retired chemical engineer and former senior scientist and consultant to Dow Chemical’s Environmental Operations Business, who advises the Oil & Water Don’t Mix campaign. “The historical record and the documentation that Enbridge has provided raise many questions that suggest this unique pipeline no longer conforms to its original design specifications and easement requirements.”
Dozens of local communities and organizations, hundreds of businesses, and thousands of individuals and families support efforts by the Oil & Water Don’t Mix campaign to prevent a catastrophic oil spill by stopping the oil flowing through Line 5 in the Mackinac Straits, which University of Michigan experts have called the “worst possible place for an oil spill in the Great Lakes.” Enbridge has a long history of oil spills from Line 5, which runs from Superior, Wisc., to Sarnia, Ont., and is responsible for 2010’s million-gallon oil spill disaster into the Kalamazoo River that cost $1.2 billion to clean up to the extent possible.
“I think pipelines are the safest way to transport oil, but because of the conditions of the Straits and the age of the pipelines, it is past time for an independent analysis to ensure the safety of this line for the citizens of Michigan,” said James Tamlyn, Chair of the Emmet County Board of Commissioners, which passed a resolution in December calling on the Snyder administration to shut down Line 5 in the Straits of Mackinac. “There’s one thing we all agree on and that’s the importance of protecting our clean water. It defines us and without it, our communities and businesses would be wiped out.”
To date, more than 30 cities, villages, townships, and counties across Michigan have voted to call on the governor and attorney general to stop the oil flowing through the Straits, including Mackinac Island, Mackinaw City, and the cities of Cheboygan, Petoskey, Charlevoix, and Traverse City. Dramatic new research from the University of Michigan released in late March shows an Enbridge oil pipeline rupture in the Mackinac Straits could impact more than 700 miles of Lake Michigan and Lake Huron coastlines, as well as more than 15% of Lake Michigan’s open water and nearly 60% of Lake Huron’s open water.
“The effects of an oil spill in the Mackinac Straits would have catastrophic consequences for our area and for all Michiganders for years to come,” said Bobie Crongeyer, a community leader with Straits Area Concerned Citizens for Peace, Justice & the Environment, which has advanced resolutions to shut down Line 5 in many communities. “Tourists will find other places to vacation, while we will be left with the devastation that Enbridge leaves behind, including a poisoned fishery and drinking water supplies and a shattered economy.”
Read the full letter issued to Governor Snyder and Attorney General Schuette.
Great Lakes Group: State Advisory Board Must Recognize Urgency, Consider Line 5 Oil Pipeline’s Impact to Inland Waterways and Climate Change
TRAVERSE CITY – Great Lakes law and policy center FLOW submitted additional comments today to the Michigan Pipeline Safety Advisory Board in response to its requests for information and proposals to conduct alternatives and risk analyses for the Line 5 oil pipelines in the Mackinac Straits. The group expressed deep concern about the Advisory Board’s lack of urgency addressing the potential for a catastrophic oil spill in the Straits, failure to consider Line 5’s climate change impacts, and the pipeline’s additional threat to inland waterways that feed the Great Lakes. In response to criticism from concerned groups and citizens about the narrow 5-day comment period, the Advisory Board extended its public comment period to February 16, 2016.
One of the group’s key concerns is the unclear process by which the Advisory Board plans to integrate the two separate risk and alternatives analyses reports. “This is a critically important step because the level of acceptable risk that is determined in the risk analysis will inform which alternative will ultimately be selected by the state,” said FLOW Executive Director Liz Kirkwood. “This correlation is essential to this process and must be understood by the contractors and the public.” Another key issue is the lack of a sense of urgency by the Advisory Board and the entire process as a whole, as evidenced by the lack of any timeline for the review and reporting stage. “At this time, it appears the current process will run into 2017 and there are no expectations for interim or conclusive measures in the meantime,” Kirkwood said. A third recommendation is to create one central website accessible to the public that includes all of the Advisory Board’s findings, reports, and opinions as well as all public comments, testimony, and reports related to Line 5. The group also is calling for more transparency and public comment opportunities on the risk and alternatives analyses reports.
The group’s most substantive remark is the need to recognize climate change and how it impacts our understanding of both the risk and alternatives analyses, given national and global commitments to keep average temperatures below 1.5 degrees Celsius. Accordingly, FLOW contends that contractors must assess each alternative’s role in contributing to carbon emissions by examining its fossil fuel emissions, economic viability in a rapidly changing global energy market, and externalized social and environmental costs. Line 5 is a part of a larger Enbridge network that makes up the world’s largest pipeline system carrying the planet’s dirtiest and most energy-intensive oil – light crude derived Canadian tar sands. In addition, vulnerable inland sections of Line 5 must be examined as part of the overall analysis.
FLOW submitted separate comments to the Advisory Board last week, before the public comment period was extended. These recommendations included the call for a public peer review of both reports, the importance of defining a broad range system that identifies and reviews the economic impacts to the Great Lakes, and the inclusion of credible worst-case scenarios instead of the antiquated regulations defined by the Dept. of Transportation. Additional recommendations were to include alternative release and worst-case scenarios in the risk analysis and to address public health impacts on drinking water and air emissions.
View Full Comments: 2/4/16 and 2/12/16 at flowforwater.org.
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By Jim Olson
President, FLOW For Love of Water, Traverse City
Attorney, Olson, Bzdok & Howard, P.C., Traverse City
When I look back over the past year, I can’t help but feel hope in the common goodness of people and communities.
I say this not without heart felt and serious concern about events in the world that point in the opposite direction – despair: increasing violence from guns, war, and sweeping droughts and floods, causing death and dislocation of millions of people and children, global warming and the push-back from unprecedented storms and extreme weather that compound drought, floods, landslides, which in turn destabilize countries like Syria fomenting conflict and conditions for ISIS. To paraphrase Circle of Blue senior journalist Keith Schneider, “The earth is angry and she’s fighting back.”
Closer to home, Detroit water shut-offs continue despite the devastating impact on the poor who can’t afford to pay a normal water bill, let alone the $100 a month or more claimed by the Detroit Water Board. State leaders finally stop denying the Flint water-crisis more than a year after residents demanded help, that its children and residents were exposed to high levels of lead from the city’s public water system. The problem is more endemic than Detroit or Flint, since both crises grew out of the unbridled power of Governor Snyder’s emergency manager law to usurp the power of city assets and revenues to pay debts regardless of the impacts to citizens. Flint’s emergency manager thought only of economic expediency in turning off water supplied from Detroit, and tapping into the filthy, polluted Flint River. Then there is the continual threat from the flow of oil in the aging, nearly 63-year old Line 5 pipeline under the Straits; the harm from a release or leak would be so catastrophic, the risk is unacceptable to everyone; yet the flow of oil continues without immediate temporary measures while state officials continue to study it as if it was an “issue,” and not the clear and imminent endangerment of the Great Lakes and the Straits of Mackinac – the fact is there is enough capacity within the pipeline system in the Great Lakes without Line 5 endangering the Straits.
So why the hope? Other events have happened this past year that point to a new way of understanding and, perhaps, solving many of the threats that we face in the world and our communities.
First, Pope Francis issued his encyclical on climate change and the environment, connecting the reality of our excessive consumptive materialism, global inequality, poverty, ecological and community devastation, and violence that follows. He carefully documented that our way of seeing and doing, our post-modern god of the law of free markets and legally justified greed, our fragmented attempts at dishing out money to help the poor are not working. He says this because we are living a material, market place illusion, and not in harmony with the reality that the earth is our “common home,” and that if we do not share its gifts and respect its inherent natural limits, earth’s water, weather, soil, and the biological diversity on which all life depends will continue to worsen to even greater extremes. He points to a new paradigm, a framework in which we work and live with the understanding that a body of water, whether ocean, Grand Traverse Bay, or Lake Chad, are a commons, part of the gift of earth as commons to all. If we do this, not only with water, but the ridge lines and forests, the beauty and land that are home to our relationships, our cities, the neighborhoods within our towns, the soils beneath our feet, the air we breathe, then we will begin to reshape our life around truth and the given limits of nature, and this will guide our living, our way of life, or economy, full and rich with newly directed creative and sustainable opportunities and entrepreneur ship.
Second, amidst a world of conflicts, from Syria to the Ukraine, from our own cities, to Nigeria, Sudan, and Afghanistan, and in the aftermath of the mass murders from extreme terrorists in Parrs, the nations of the world cooperated: leaders of large and small, developed and developing, or undeveloped countries, recognized the responsibility to each other, agreed to something, the world temperature will not rise more 2 degrees, and maybe less. While it is not law yet, if taken implemented, it will help stave off global calamity greater than two world wars last century, by reducing the irreparable damage we face from climate change and global warming. There is hope in the agreement that we stop denying and see the mounting harm and set a goal that through hard-work and common sacrifice offers a way out of an unthinkable alternative for people everywhere.
Third, we witnessed the bridging of differences by our Supreme Court in precedent setting cases that demand human dignity for marriage between two people, human rights to housing and water for the poor without access, as wells as the genuine search for a common goal to address wasteful and harmful water rights in the middle of the historical California droughts.
Fourth, our political debate heating up even before the 2016 presidential election has pointed to something more than the old, increasingly polarized beliefs in market economy, through money at wars and problems, rather than considering the root of the problem might be the way we are looking at them. Regardless of my own or others’ political persuasion, there is a fresh voice in Bernie Sanders, laying out the case for a community based on sharing of wealth, taking care of neighbors, and our neighborhood, what Pope Francis calls our “common home,” and at the same time helping with services to the poor, respecting and honoring diversity, and encouraging new business innovation. We have been trapped in this country in a red and blue, right and left, straight-jacket of false ideology, rather than identifying those things that are essential to every one of us and providing for them as principle of our country—the common good.
Fifth, then Michael Moore comes out with his latest film Where to Invade Next? Good God, here we have the message that we here in the USA had the idea, come up with the ideas, of common good, yet go in the opposite direction of individualized competition based on a law of the jungle called free markets. Everything is about profit and money and bottom line. The world is not a corporation, it is a commons in which corporations organizations are simply a means, not an end.
Do we really have a choice? Our common home and communities are simultaneously local and global. It’s not just act locally, think globally, or act globally, think locally. It’s all of this and more. If we don’t act, for example, on climate change, or understand that climate change is not just an energy issue but about water and food, if we don’t move toward a renewable economy within a few years, small island countries will literally disappear, rainforests and biodiversity will disappear, coastal cities and other areas will increasingly flood and fail from even more extreme storm events or the day-to-day failure to change, adapt and embrace resilient cooperation—the common good. All one has to do is read through “4 Degrees Turn Down the Heat: Climate Extremes, Regional Impacts, and the Case for Resilience,” a report published by renown scientists and even sponsored by the more conservative World Bank. The picture is not pretty, and it would it is ignorant, even immoral, at this time in history not to act, even out of self-interest, for this common good.
So I end this year and start the next with hope. At FLOW, the Great Lakes and Water Policy Center, here in Traverse City, and other organizations throughout the region, we have chosen as a mission and goal to protect the waters of the Great Lakes basin as a commons with principles, known as the public trust doctrine, that require government as trustee and people as beneficiaries, to work together to respect and protect water and community that depend on it from impairment. Private control of public waters and other public commons has always been prohibited; this is because some things essential to all of us are common to all of us. If we don’t protect the commons, we undermine the air, water, community and neighborhoods where we live. To work and live toward the common good is to work for the commons and at the same time work for yourself, family and friends. To not work for the common good, is to continue the long, slow, or perhaps not so slow, disintegration that leads to destruction of the earth, water, air, community, people, and leads to a world violent and unsafe.
It is hopeful and reassuring to see positive events pointing toward this new way of seeing, understanding and doing – living and working for the protection and sustainability of our common home and the common good. They are one and the same. Here’s to another hopeful New Year.
A new animated video by the University of Michigan and the National Wildlife Federation shows how devastating an oil spill beneath the Straits of Mackinac would be for the Great Lakes, wildlife, and communities. The animation shows that if an oil spill occurs, oil could reach popular tourist destinations like Mackinac Island, blanket 50 miles of Lake Huron shoreline, and reach Lake Michigan landmarks such as Beaver Island.
The University of Michigan research scientist says that “one million gallons is conservatively the amount of oil that resides in the pipelines in the Straits at any time.”
