Stop Line 3 Postcard Campaign
Urging the White House to stop development of a devastating oil pipeline.
Background
Line 3 is an oil pipeline by Canadian company Enbridge that runs through many critical Minnesota watersheds. While Enbridge contends that this pipeline is a replacement for an older decommissioned line, which they have neglected to clean up and continues to sit on the land, the new Line 3 pipeline actually has an increased oil carrying capacity and would carry 915,000 barrels of the world’s dirtiest fossil fuel — crude tar sands oil.
This not only blatantly violates the treaty and indigenous sovereignty rights of the Anishinaabeg, but would endanger the vital ecosystems and habitats of many already threatened species, including the culturally important wild rice of the Anishinaabeg. Furthermore, it’s an incredibly myopic investment in a time where emissions must be drastically reduced in order to avoid the worst impacts of the ongoing climate crisis. By building this pipeline, both permitters and the developers are setting us back on an already incredibly challenging timeline. Just the cost of construction alone is equivalent to building 50 new coal-fired power plants. According to the State of Minnesota, the social carbon cost of the pipeline is estimated to be $287 billion over the next 30 years of operation.
Enbridge also has a proven history of creating giant, harmful spills. In just the past 15 years alone, they’ve had over 800 spills, including the largest freshwater oil spill in US history. In 2010, Enbridge spilled over 840,000 gallons of crude oil into the Kalamazoo River. Federal investigators concluded that despite Enbridge knowing that their 41-year-old pipeline was heavily corroded and cracked, they continued to pump hundreds of thousands of gallons of dangerous oil.
To learn more about the Stop Line 3 effort and the important people spearheading the charge, visit StopLine3.org. Today, Line 3 is effectively operational and Enbridge continues to ruthlessly sabotage climate action and deride indigenous rights with its building of Line 5.
The Campaign
Every year throughout the month of October, I participate in the Inktober challenge in which artists strive to draw something every day for the entire month. Typically, I sell these drawings in exchange for donations to reputable conservation / environmental organizations. In 2021, sickened by the lack of action from the Biden administration, I drew and sent a postcard to the White House urging President Biden to stop the construction of Line 3. Each postcard focused on one of the many reasons the pipeline should not be built, from the perspective of indigenous rights, to endangered species, to police abuse. I received many encouraging responses from social media from folks learning about this issue from the first time and those who were inspired to act on their own.
