The Pipe is your classic David vs Goliath story, except that it’s not. It follows a small Rossport community fighting against an invasion by Shell Oil and the Irish State. Gas found off the remote coastal village prompted a clash between farmers, fisherman and huge numbers of private security and police.
Behind the scenes, you experience the tragic division of community, neighbors and friends when things turn dire. 5 locals decide to spend 94 days in jail when faced with an ‘eminent domain’ situation, protesting the pipeline’s path across their farming fields and land.
All seems lost for this town of age-old way community residents, with trades and a way of life passed down for generations. Beat in the courts, on their land and with seemingly no recourse for the destruction of their livelihood, desperation is apparent and a true theme of the film. › Continue reading
So by now everyone who doesn’t live in a cave has heard about the oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Since the April 20th explosion of the offshore oil rig, Deepwater Horizon, an estimated 210,000 gallons of crude oil per day has been released into the waters off the coast of Louisiana. So far the slick has traveled mostly north and west, hitting Freemason Island, a Louisiana bird sanctuary, on Thursday. According to NOAA projections, oil could hit hundreds of miles of coastline from Louisiana to Florida, even traveling out into the Atlantic. There was recently an attempt to cap and funnel the leak. The attempt was not a success. Plan B includes drilling a “relief well” that could literally take months to complete.
So I’ve been trying to figure out Obama’s decision to allow the end of the longstanding ban on oil exploration off the coasts of the US. In particular along the East Coast, from norther Delaware to central Florida, as well as the Gulf of Mexico and the northern coast of Alaska. Frankly it seemed to be a plain and blatant attempt to please oil companies and domestic drilling advocates (“drill baby drill” is disturbingly catchy as catchphrases go). I only hoped there was more to it than first met the eye.
But maybe we in the environmental community shouldn’t really be so surprised. In this New York Times article, it’s reiterated that ‘Mr. Obama said several times during his presidential campaign that he supported expanded offshore drilling. He noted in his state of the union address in January that weaning the country from imported oil would require “tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development.’” › Continue reading
The Pipe is your classic David vs Goliath story, except that it’s not. It follows a small Rossport community fighting against an invasion by Shell Oil and the Irish State. Gas found off the remote coastal village prompted a clash between farmers, fisherman and huge numbers of private security and police.
