Dakota Access LLC has proposed building a pipeline through Iowa to transfer crude oil from the Bakken oil reserves in North Dakota to Illinois, so that it can then be refined and exported. It wants to do this to reduce the costs of the transportation, which is currently done by train.

We Iowans should not allow this. The pipeline would be going through all major watersheds in Iowa and, obviously, a lot of farmland. The risk of a leak is too great. If the oil leaks into a watershed, people won’t be able to drink that water without going through the significant effort required to clean it. When oil leaks into soil, it destroys beneficial microbial populations, drastically reduces fertility and takes years to clean out. This is obviously bad for farming. Food and water are the two most important things humans need. Seeing as developing alternative ways to fulfill basic human needs is clearly out of the question, the risks this pipeline poses far exceed the benefits.

The thing with oil is it’s not the oil we want, it’s the energy and the tools it produces that we want. And there are other methods of obtaining these things that are not at as much of a conflict with our environment.

We as a global society need to be moving away from fossil fuels as an energy source to limit our rate of greenhouse gas output, and we need to start using petroleum products in a non-wasteful way. Building this pipeline will only encourage the continued consumption of oil, while benefiting only Dakota Access LLC and its affiliates, and threatening our quality of life. We do not need this pipeline. We need another way forward — a sustainable way.