Culture and Coexistence into the Great Unknown
High School student Malia Street writes about her classmates from the Port of LA High School who traveled 200 miles to speak out at the hearing and rally against a plan by Phillips 66 to ship volatile and toxic tar sands crude via rail into California.
We must find cleaner, safer alternatives to these ecosystem-fouling, climate-disrupting extreme fossil fuels like tar sands and fracked oil shale, and their exploding oil trains, bursting pipelines, and accident-prone refineries.
A documentary investigates the threat from volatile and toxic crude oil bomb trains now rolling through neighborhoods across North America. After five fiery accidents in the first five months of 2015, one can only ask: “Whose community will explode next?”
The time for action against oil trains is now! On Saturday, July 11, SoCal 350 Climate Action and its regional partners rallied at L.A.’s Union Station and held a teach-in in front of Olvera Street, calling for an end to bringing exploding bomb trains loaded with tar sands and other volatile crude oils into our communities.
The most recent oil spill on the Santa Barbara coast that has decimated wildlife and soiled California beaches with tar over a 350-mile area has been an unmitigated disaster. It illustrates weaknesses in basic safety measures for pipelines and crude by rail, as well as risks associated with industry plans to expand tar sands and other extreme drilling infrastructure on the West Coast.
A short documentary warns about the dangers posed by trains that transport explosive crude oil across North America. These 100-plus car trains carry highly flammable Bakken shale and Alberta tar sands crude oil and have been an increasingly common—and lethal—sight across communities in the United States.
California communities are fighting back against the prospect of a 25-fold increase in the amount of crude-by-rail coming into the state soon. Ed Ruszel didn’t set out to be an environmental activist. Then Valero Energy announced a plan to bring 3 million gallons of tar sands crude—every day—within feet of his family business.