CO2 PIPELINES: GREENWASHING SUBSIDIZED DANGER
The American Midwest has become the epicenter in the battle against the green globalist crusade, with concerned residents fighting for their private property rights, health, and safety against three companies seeking to collectively build more than 3,600 miles of new pipeline to transport captured carbon dioxide (CO2).
Currently, approximately 5,000 miles of CO2 pipeline exists in the United States. Most of these pipelines are used for a process known as enhanced oil recovery, in which CO2 is injected into oil wells to increase pressure and extract more oil. The additional proposed CO2 pipelines would be used differently, moving CO2 created by various types of manufacturing facilities including ethanol and fertilizer plants. The CO2 would be transported to underground geologic formations that would serve as storage sites. Theoretically, this carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technique prevents the CO2 created by manufacturing from being emitted into the atmosphere. The intent is to help slow climate warming patterns attributed to greenhouse gas (GHG).
However, CO2 pipelines come with potential danger from breaks or leaks. Additionally, the alleged environmental benefits and efficacy of CO2 transport and storage are questionable at best. Regarding their opposition to the proposed pipelines, concerned citizens and anti-pipeline groups find themselves on the same side of this debate as environmental extremist organizations such as the Sierra Club.
The three companies attempting to construct CO2 pipelines in the Midwest are Summit Carbon Solutions, Navigator CO2, and Wolf Carbon Solutions. Combined, the projects would transport 39 million tons of captured carbon annually to be stored underground in North Dakota and Illinois. Other states that would be affected by the currently proposed pipelines corridors include Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Minnesota.
North and South Dakota have already denied permits to the companies, effectively granting a reprieve for concerned landowners in all states involved. Nevertheless, the overall threat remains as the companies look for alternatives, and green energy investors seek to build more CO2 pipelines in the future, ignoring citizens’ property rights and safety concerns.
Taxpayer-Funded “Pump and Dump” Scheme
Some projections estimate more than 60,000 additional pipeline miles need to be constructed to meet climate-related United Nations (UN) goals embraced by the Biden administration. In 2021, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported that merely reducing CO2 emissions was insufficient, and nations must also capture and store CO2.
Hence, the mad dash to build CO2 pipelines has been fostered by federal government incentives to construct so-called green infrastructure, with billions of dollars up for grabs in the form of subsidies and tax credits. The availability of taxpayer dollars for pipelines started in 2008 with the 45Q tax credits, which was followed by the Utilizing Significant Emissions with Innovative Technologies (USE IT) Act of 2020 which pays $ 50-per-ton. Ironically, the recent so-called “Inflation Reduction Act” signed by Joe Biden upped the incentive to $ 85-per-ton.
In early May 2023, the Department of Energy announced $251 million to support the development of CCS infrastructure, and the second opening of a five-year, $2.25-billion, funding opportunity. In total, the Inflation Reduction Act has created up $369 billion in “climate and energy” funding.
Jim Walsh, policy director of Food and Water Watch, stated:
“These tax credits are shrouded in secrecy and ripe for corruption, with no ability for oversight by the public.”
In the case of Summit Carbon Solutions, its pipeline would gather CO2 from 34 ethanol plants across Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, South Dakota, and North Dakota, sending it to a massive underground storage space in North Dakota. The project was touted for its ability to permanently store 18 million tons of carbon dioxide annually. The newly created $85-per-ton sequestration tax credit would provide Summit Carbon Solutions with $1.5 billion annually in taxpayer dollars.
It has been noted that the current CCS hustle is reminiscent of the Obama administration’s Solyndra solar panel debacle, and more recently the bankruptcy of Proterra, an electric bus company championed by the Biden administration. Some pundits have referred to CCS overall as just another “pump and dump” scheme masquerading as an effort to save the planet.
It should anger all American taxpayers to know that numerous high-profile CCS projects have been complete and utter failures, despite promises from those promoting them – the ones who receive those exorbitant incentives.
According to the Coalition to Stop CO2 Pipelines:
Despite extensive public subsidies, 80% of the projects that have attempted to commercialize carbon capture and sequestration technology, have ended in failure. Between 2005 and 2012, the Department of Energy spent $6.9 billion attempting to demonstrate the feasibility of CCS for coal, but less than 4% of the planned CCS capacity was ever deployed.
One group fighting the pipelines, the Free Soil Coalition, has a slogan that aptly sums up the situation: “Your money, your land, your risk. THEIR profit.”
Blatant Abuse of Eminent Domain
Eminent domain is the process through which private property can be confiscated for public use or the “public good.” Originally reserved for use by the government for the development of infrastructure and utilities, the ability for private companies to invoke eminent domain was established in 2005 by the U.S. Supreme Court case, Kelo v. City of New London. In a devastating blow to private property rights, the court ruled lands could be seized for commercial development based on the possibility of increased tax revenue or jobs.
Prior to the pipeline permits being denied in South Dakota, more than 80 landowners in the state had been served with eminent domain actions to seize their lands. Additionally, the landowners have been dealing with an onslaught of harassment, blatant trespassing, and crop damage by surveyors who prematurely sought to mark pipeline easements long before the permitting process was completed.
Such contemptuous disregard for due process and private property rights is arrogant and appalling. More worrisome is the possibility that such disregard for property rights may foreshadow behavior endorsed by the “Great Reset” agenda of the UN and World Economic Forum (WEF). States handle eminent domain differently, so it is vital for landowners to be familiar with their state and local laws, develop relationships with lawmakers, and understand their private property rights.
At a July rally against the pipelines in Pierre, South Dakota, Rep. Oren Lesmeister stated:
“This is going to set precedents. And if we don’t stop this now, what’s that going to mean for eminent domain for private gain in the future?”
Physical Safety of People, Livestock, and Wildlife At Risk
CO2 pipelines can be extremely dangerous. CO2 can exist as a gas, a liquid, or as dry ice. For CO2 to be moved via a pipeline, it must be liquefied under pressure that’s three times the rate of natural gas shipped in pipelines.
Made of carbon steel, CO2 pipes measure from 4 to 24 inches in diameter with operating pressures of as much as 2,200 pounds per square inch. The immense pressure itself can be deadly at close range in the event of a leak or rupture, but more concerning is that the contents of the pipelines can be fatal to humans, livestock, and wildlife, depending on their proximity to a leak and the length of exposure. A CO2 pipeline rupture can create a toxic plume that can rapidly spread a mile or more. In high enough concentrations, CO2 could cause death within minutes.
In February 2020, a CO2 pipeline used for enhanced oil extraction near Sartartia, Mississippi, ruptured. Three hundred people were evacuated, and 45 required emergency medical care. Because internal combustion engines require oxygen to operate, the leaking CO2 caused cars to stop working, greatly hindering emergency response. A May 2023 NPR article stated:
People lay on the ground, shaking and unable to breathe. First responders didn’t know what was going on. “It looked like you were going through the zombie apocalypse,’’ says Jack Willingham, emergency director for Yazoo County.
CO2 poisoning can cause lingering health effects lasting months or years. Some Sartartia residents are still dealing with health issues stemming from the pipeline rupture.
With similar contempt for what Hillary Clinton once famously referred to as “flyover country,” pipeline executives refused to release their companies’ plume studies that outline risks, claiming such information could be utilized for nefarious purposes. Navigator CO2 vice-president of government and public affairs, Elizabeth Burns-Thompson, publicly stated that the complexity of the data and work was simply beyond the general public’s ability to understand.
However, an independent carbon dioxide study (link below) showed that, depending on pipe diameter, pressure, and distance between shut-off valves, a pipeline rupture would cause immediate death within a certain radius, with engine failure and “human function decline” within respectively increasing radiuses.
In fact, insurance companies have mailed policy holders letters stating that they would not offer liability coverage to landowners with a pipeline running beneath their property. Navigator CO2 is nevertheless pressing ahead in its effort to build its pipeline. If the pipeline is completed, approximately $1.3 billion in federal tax credits would be given to the company.
Environmental Concerns
“Greenwashing” is defined by Investopedia.com as:
“…the process of conveying a false impression or misleading information about how a company’s products are environmentally sound. Greenwashing involves making an unsubstantiated claim to deceive consumers into believing that a company’s products are environmentally friendly or have a greater positive environmental impact than they actually do.
In addition, greenwashing may occur when a company attempts to emphasize sustainable aspects of a product to overshadow the company’s involvement in environmentally damaging practices. Performed through the use of environmental imagery, misleading labels, and hiding tradeoffs, greenwashing is a play on the term “whitewashing,” which means using false information to intentionally hide wrongdoing, error, or an unpleasant situation in an attempt to make it seem less bad than it is.”
Even with the dangers of the pipelines and CO2 aside, CCS is not “environmentally friendly.”
Carbon capture and sequestration is unrealistically being promoted as a climate change solution, yet the truth is almost everything involved in CCS processes requires the use of fossil fuels, from the production of pipe to the fossil fuel-powered equipment used to capture CO2 and liquefy it for transport.
CO2 Is Necessary for Life on Earth
While concentrated carbon dioxide can be dangerous for humans and animals, it is a vital component of our atmosphere and literally makes life on Earth possible. According to NASA, the air we breathe is 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, and 1% other gases, including carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is normally about .04% of the total. Green plants absorb CO2 during photosynthesis, converting it, and water (H2O), into oxygen and food. Without CO2, our carbon-based life form could not exist. Anyone who has traveled through the U.S. knows about the abundance of green trees in America.
The rising level of atmospheric CO2 is not the environmental bogey-man environmental zealots and companies that benefit from a green agenda make it out to be. In fact, a slight increase in CO2 has helped enable the greening of the Earth, with a 5% increase in global green leaf area in the last two decades. This increase comprises an area equivalent to the size of the entire Amazon rainforest.
The environmental extremist crowd, and “green” companies looking to profit from CCS, attribute climate change to increases in atmospheric CO2. Their rhetoric also points to those increases being human-caused. However, some research indicates that CO2 levels rise naturally as a result of warming.
In 2014, Dr. Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace, said:
“There is no definitive scientific proof that carbon dioxide (CO2) is responsible for any of the slight warming of the global climate that has occurred during the last 300 years.”
In fact, Moore noted an Ice Age occurred 450 million years ago when carbon dioxide levels were 10 times higher. Moore stated:
“There is some correlation, but little evidence, to support a direct causal relationship between carbon dioxide and global temperature through the millennia. The fact that we had both higher temperatures and an ice age at a time when CO2 emissions were 10 times higher than they are today fundamentally contradicts the certainty that human-caused CO2 emissions are the main cause of global warming.’”
2022 Nobel Prize winner, Dr. John F. Clauser, recently joined a growing body of experts in signing the Clintel World Climate Declaration, with the central message of “there is no climate crisis.” Clauser stated:
“The popular narrative about climate change reflects a dangerous corruption of science that threatens the world’s economy and the well-being of billions of people. Misguided climate science has metastasized into massive shock-journalistic pseudoscience. In turn, the pseudoscience has become a scapegoat for a wide variety of other unrelated ills. It has been promoted and extended by similarly misguided business marketing agents, politicians, journalists, government agencies, and environmentalists. In my opinion, there is no real climate crisis. There is, however, a very real problem with providing a decent standard of living to the world’s large population and an associated energy crisis. The latter is being unnecessarily exacerbated by what, in my opinion, is incorrect climate science.”
You can Help by Being Informed, Engaged and Involved
It is more important than ever that people educate themselves about private property rights and the realities of the green, globalist agenda. It is also vital for people to become familiar with political candidates and where they stand on environmental issues, and then vote accordingly. The truth can only prevail through the engagement and involvement of a properly informed citizenry. The future of A Free and Fed America depends on we the people doing the right things.
LINKS:
Video of CO2 pipeline rupture HERE.
Carbon Dioxide study HERE.
More about eminent domain HERE.
No climate crisis HERE.
Read more about the vital role CO2 plays HERE.
Some organizations fighting CO2 pipelines:
Free Soil Coalition HERE
SD Property Rights HERE
No Illinois CO2 Pipeline HERE
