Buck Leonards
Here in this soon-to-be-great nation, we Americans take a lot for granted. From our freedom and safety, to our low cost food and fuel, we just tend to forget, especially the younger generations. There is also something that goes on twenty four hours a day, 365 days a year that we totally take for granted and that’s moving the products from point A to point B.
My first memory of a telephone is a clumsy black phone with a rotary dial, connected to a party line. My grandchildren’s first memory is that of an IPhone 7, talking on face time. In a short time we went from connecting with people from phone lines to cell towers.
Before 1937 rural folks didn’t have electricity in their homes and farms. Now it’s just an afterthought. Does anyone think for a minute that when they flip their light switch on that it is connected to thousands of miles of transmission lines, goes through dozens of sub-stations, and hundreds of transformers? Or the fact that behind everything there is actually a plant converting coal or natural gas into electricity? I don’t think so, in fact, people will actually call in to complain when their electricity blinks and they have to re-set a few clocks. That’s how spoiled Americans have become.
More and more people are buying their food from local farmers, and that’s a trend I would like to see continue. But still 95 percent of us shop at our local super market. It’s a fact that we already take for granted that in America we have the safest and the most economic food in the world. But where does it come from, and how do we get it? Chances are that when a family sits down for dinner tonight that the food they eat will have traveled more miles, crossed more state lines, and more countries than the family will ever travel in their lifetime
We also take for granted that gas stations will always have gas. Swipe your card, choose a grade, just squeeze the nozzle and whalla! No one really stops and thinks that a month ago; the gas was crude oil thousands of feet below the earth’s surface, formed millions of years ago. Just as the food you eat, crude oil and its thousands of byproducts travels many, many miles before it is ultimately used. But unlike food, its transportation can get controversial. Seventy percent of all crude oil in the US is shipped by pipeline, 23 percent by barge and tankers, 4 percent by trucks, and 3 percent by rail. It’s a proven fact that pipelines are the most economical and safest way to transport crude, but lately the most controversial.
I get many requests for me to take a stance “for this” or “against that” for many reasons, mainly because how it affects that particular person. Case in point: A good friend of mine who lives in a nearby town wanted me to visit so he could give me facts of why I should protest an upcoming pipeline. He lives on a 40 acre piece of heaven and has ice cold beer, so I couldn’t refuse. He riddled me with stats and data but long story short is that the pipeline was running through his hunting lease. I had an equal amount of data on why it should be approved, but as most protesters; he didn’t want to hear, so I used a common sense approach.
I asked him how he got his electricity to his place, I didn’t see any poles. He said he didn’t want any poles because they were sight for sore eyes, and could put his family in harm’s way if a storm blew them down, so he paid $10,000 to run the line underground. He also paid dearly for the gas company run a line underground from more than a mile away. Propane would have been a lot cheaper but he didn’t want a tank or more importantly, a truck coming and going to keep the tank full. He was also proud that he was connected to the city sewer system, and he failed to realize that miles of pipeline carry the waste sight unseen and free of smell many miles away. Moral of the story is that people tend to be for pipelines when it benefits them and against them when it’s an inconvenience to them, plain and simple.
One man alone has delayed the Keystone pipeline from being built, but it hasn’t stopped the crude from travelling from point A to point B, it has only added to the cost, which is passed on to the consumer. As far as the environment goes, trucks, railcars, barges, and ships all pass through the same environment, with far more exposure to human life, animals, and the environment. The Keystone will carry 35 million gallons of crude per day which converted to 18 wheelers means over 4,000 trucks per day or 1.5 million trucks per year will be off the already overcrowded roads. Over the centuries, cities have been built around railroads and highways. So before you protest Just ask yourself, what is safer for the environment, or more importantly, what is safer for yourself, your children, and grandchildren; crude and its byproducts passing through your town by rail or truck, or through sensitive waterways by barge or tanker, or by underground pipelines?
Buck Leonards is a farmer in Acadia Parish and publisher of Louisiana Farm and Ranch Magazine.