Oil use hurts Earth

The Dakota Access Pipeline is intended to carry more than 570,000 barrels of oil a day across the United States. There are powerful reasons to demand President Obama cancel the project.

Oil’s days are numbered. Investing billions of dollars in pipelines for a fuel from which we should wean ourselves makes no sense economically. We need instead, to invest that money in generating electricity from the sun.

The pipeline was originally slated to cross the Missouri River near the town of Bismarck, North Dakota. Knowing that pipelines leak with frightening regularity, and that a leak would endanger their drinking water, the people insisted the pipeline be moved.

Now it is to cross the river about a half mile upstream of the drinking-water supply of the Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation.

Seeing Earth simply as a resource to exploit impoverishes us and makes our lives sadder and weaker.

This story was originally published October 11, 2016 at 7:12 PM with the headline "Oil use hurts Earth."