Michael Loccisano/Getty Images for The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
JAY-Z was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by comedian Dave Chappelle Saturday night in Cleveland, Ohio.
Chappelle, who’s been under fire for his controversial Netflix special The Closer, began his speech by joking, “I would like to apologize to…,” and then quickly added, “Nah, I’m just f****** with you.”
He praised JAY-Z for his musical contributions and effortless cool, saying, “I need everybody around the world to know: Even though you are honoring him, he is ours. He is hip-hop, forever and ever and a day.”
In his acceptance speech, Jay joked that the warm reception from the crowd was “trying to make me cry in front of all these white people.”
He went on to thank his influences, including LL Cool J, who’d been honored earlier in the evening with the Musical Excellence Award.
“Growing up, we didn’t think we could be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame,” Hova said. “We were told hip-hop was a fad, and much like punk rock, it gave us this anti-culture, this sub-genre, and there were heroes in it.”
JAY-Z didn’t perform, but a video address from President Obama was screened, as well as a tribute video featuring, among others, LeBron James, Diddy, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Jamie Foxx, Chris Rock, John Legend and Jay‘s wife and daughter Beyoncé and Blue Ivy.
LL Cool J, meanwhile, was given his award by Dr. Dre after being rejected for official induction six previous times — but he wasn’t bitter about it.
“A lot people, when I told them when I told them I got inducted, they’d say to me, ‘Isn’t it is about time?,” LL said during his speech. “What people don’t realize is, I wasn’t thinking about the people who voted against me. I was thinking about the people who voted for me. It was love.”
He went on to deliver a performance featuring surprise guests Eminem and Jennifer Lopez. The set list started with “Go Cut Creator Go” and included “Rock the Bells,” “All I Have” and “Mama Said Knock You Out.”
The Rock Hall also welcomed iconic singer Tina Turner, and honored pioneering record executive Clarence Avant, legendary jazz and spoken-word performer Gil Scott-Heron and bluesman Charley Patton, among others. The ceremony will air on HBO on November 20.
(NEW YORK) — For the next two weeks, governments around the world will convene for a highly anticipated summit on climate change that has been billed as the “last best chance” to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement and prevent the worsening effects of climate change.
Here’s how to make sense of all the news around the COP26 summit.
What is the climate summit?
The climate summit in Glasgow is called COP26, which stands for the 26th “Conference of the Parties” and represents a gathering of all the countries signed on to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Climate Agreement.
The group meets every year to discuss progress on the fight against climate change and negotiate how to fulfill the terms of climate agreements.
Last year’s in-person meeting was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic so COP26 will be the first time countries have met since the U.N.’s latest climate science report issued a dire warning that the impacts of climate change are getting more severe and that time is running out to meet the Paris Agreement goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
COP26 President Alok Sharma said the pressure is on world leaders to ramp up their ambition to tackle the climate crisis at the summit.
“We still have some of the most difficult questions to answer. And we’re effectively in the last half hour of the exam,” he told reporters at a press conference organized by Covering Climate Now, an organization that collaborates with journalists and newsrooms on climate coverage.
Who will be there?
President Joe Biden and more than 100 world leaders will speak in the first two days of the summit to lay out their countries’ plans to reduce emissions and possibly announce new goals or commitments on climate issues.
But some important leaders from countries that contribute the most global greenhouse gas emissions like President Xi Jinping of China and Russian President Vladimir Putin are not expected to attend, citing concerns about COVID-19.
Influential figures like former President Barack Obama and the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are also expected to attend to discuss the importance of taking action to limit the impacts of climate change. Climate activists like Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg are expected to lead large protests outside the official venue, pressuring world leaders to do more.
After the high-profile remarks to start the summit, other officials and negotiators from each country will hammer out technical documents detailing their agreements on climate policy and higher-ranking officials like Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry will meet with their counterparts to try to negotiate any sticking points.
What’s on the agenda?
Negotiators for this year’s climate summit will face questions about how to limit the impact of climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, as well as how to help countries adapt to climate change in parts of the world where the effects are getting more severe.
The most critical item on the agenda for the climate summit is increasing nearly every country’s commitments to decreasing climate-warming emissions as quickly as possible. Even with current promises to reduce emissions in line with the Paris Agreement, the U.N. says the world is set to miss that goal to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
The latest U.N. analysis says current commitments put the world on track for 2.1 to 2.7 degrees Celsius of warming, which would trigger more dangerous impacts of climate change like worsening severe weather and drought conditions that could start to hamper food production in parts of the world or make it more difficult for communities to survive.
“The time has passed for diplomatic niceties,” U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres said at a U.N. meeting on climate action this week.
“If governments — especially G-20 governments — do not stand up and lead this effort, we are headed for terrible human suffering,” he added.
In addition to ramping up efforts to prevent climate change from getting worse, negotiators will also confront questions about how to deal with impacts of climate change that are already being felt and how to support vulnerable countries struggling with changes like worsening storms and sea-level rise.
The Paris Agreement promised $100 billion a year in financial support for developing countries to combat climate change, but wealthier countries expected to contribute the most to that goal have not followed through, so negotiators will need to come up with a plan to meet that goal as well as discuss how much to increase it going forward as the impacts of climate change continue to worsen. That funding is meant to both help poorer countries build renewable energy infrastructure to avoid expanding fossil fuel use and make changes to adapt.
But representatives of those countries say even that isn’t enough.
Pelenise Alofa, national coordinator for the Climate Action Network in Kiribati, said COP26 will be important for the future of her island nation and the conversation about climate finance should include compensating countries experiencing effects of climate change for helping residents relocate or recover from worsening or more frequent severe storms.
Alofa said Kiribati and other island nations face an existential threat from climate change as sea-level rise and worsening tropical storms threaten their ability to live and produce food.
“As someone living in the islands in Kiribati, loss and damage from climate change is now a permanent feature of our lives. It is not about a one-time event or disaster. It is about rising sea levels that threaten to totally swallow our homes,” she told reporters in a briefing.
What does success look like?
The U.N. secretary general has said there is a “high risk of failure” from COP26, but there is not a single outcome that will solve all the challenges that come with the global climate crisis.
Experts say they’ll be watching to see if the Glasgow negotiations make tangible progress toward the goals of the Paris Agreement, including watching whether countries like China increase their commitments to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and burning fossil fuels, and if parties are able to agree on steps that can lead to real, measurable results.
But ultimately, even a successful COP26 will still be more of a step in the right direction than a final solution to the climate crisis.
“We have to have significantly turned the corner by next year or the year after or else we have no shot of keeping 1.5 [degrees Celsius] alive,” Jake Schmidt, senior director of the international climate program from the Natural Resources Defense Council, told ABC News.
(NEW YORK) — Negotiations on the infrastructure and social program bills have consumed Capitol Hill for months. Still, a new ABC News/Ipsos poll out Sunday finds Democrats are failing to sell the legislation to the public, who are broadly unaware of what is in the spending packages or skeptical they would help people like themselves, or the economy, if signed into law.
President Joe Biden was unable to secure a legislative win before departing on his second foreign trip since taking office, even after he laid out a framework for the package focused on social programs and climate change around which he believes Democrats can rally. He pitched that package, which no longer includes paid family and medical leave or free community college, as a “historic economic” opportunity on Thursday, but this poll reflects the continued confusion and intraparty mistrust over these bills.
Although a majority (55%) of the public is following news about the negotiations at least somewhat closely, about 7 in 10 (69%) Americans said they know just some or little to nothing about what’s in both bills. Fewer than half (31%) said they know a great deal or good amount. Despite Republicans having sat on the sidelines while the White House works exclusively with congressional Democrats to get both bills to the president’s desk, the lack of knowledge extends across all parties.
Americans also do not feel like these bills would help them or the U.S. economy if they become law.
The ABC News/Ipsos poll, which was conducted using Ipsos’ KnowledgePanel, found that a plurality (32%) of Americans think the bills would hurt people like them if they became law, while fewer (25%) think it would help them. Nearly 2 in 10 (18%) think the bills would make no difference, and 24% said they didn’t know.
Even among Democrats alone, fewer than half (47%) think the two bills would help people like them. A quarter of Democrats think the bills would make no difference for people like them and about 2 in 10 (22%) don’t know how they would impact their lives. Nearly two-thirds (64%) of Republicans think the bills would hurt people like them, and so do about 3 in 10 (29%) independents.
The American public is evenly divided — 34% to 34% — over whether they believe these bills would help or hurt the U.S. economy if they become law. Very few (6%) think the bills would have no effect on the economy, and a quarter don’t know. Democrats are much more likely to think the legislation would help the economy if enacted than Republicans and independents, 68% compared with 7% and 29%, respectively.
Biden’s inability to get these bills over the finish line has not helped the president’s mediocre approval ratings on an array of issues, which have solidified since the Sept. 24-28 ABC News/Ipsos poll.
His handling of the coronavirus pandemic and rebuilding the United States’ infrastructure are the only issues where a majority of the public approves of Biden — 56% and 52%, respectively — and neither is an improvement compared with the last ABC News/Ipsos poll. On both issues, he’s bolstered by near-universal support from members of his own party, as well as about half of independents.
Just under a majority of Americans approve of the president’s handling of climate change (48%) and the economic recovery (47%). Again, relatively high support among Democrats — 78% and 86%, respectively — keeps his approval from sinking too far.
Republicans are generally unified against the president on all issues, but overall approval for Biden takes the biggest hit on issues where Democrats’ and independents’ confidence drops.
While about half (49%) of independents approve of Biden’s handling of climate change, on other issues — economic recovery, gun violence, crime and taxes — independents’ approval hovers around 4 in 10.
The president’s overall approval dips below 40% on three issues: gun violence (39%), Afghanistan (34%) and immigration and the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border (31%).
Fewer than two-thirds (64%) of Democrats approve of Biden’s handling of gun violence. A similar share (62%) of Democrats approve of the president’s handling of Afghanistan. On immigration, Biden is barely holding onto majority support among his own party, with just 54% approving of him on this issue.
Only around 3 in 10 independents approve of Biden’s handling of immigration and Afghanistan, 29% and 31%, respectively.
METHODOLOGY: This ABC News/Ipsos poll was conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs’ KnowledgePanel® Oct. 29-30, 2021, in English and Spanish, among a random national sample of 514 adults. Results have a margin of sampling error of 4.7 points, including the design effect. Partisan divisions were 31%-24%-36%, Democrats-Republicans-independents. See the poll’s top-line results and details on the methodology here.
ABC News’ Ken Goldstein and Dan Merkle contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Stargazers in parts of the United States may be lucky enough to see the northern lights Saturday, thanks to a strong geomagnetic storm.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center issued a geomagnetic storm watch for Saturday and Sunday, following a “significant” solar flare on the sun two days ago that released a coronal mass ejection.
The coronal mass ejection — a large expulsion of plasma and magnetic field from the sun’s corona — is expected to reach Earth Saturday evening, with effects continuing into Sunday, NOAA said.
What that means for people on Earth is the chance to see the spectacular light display across the northern United States, in states as far south as Illinois — if clouds and light pollution don’t get in the way.
The strength of the storm “has the potential to drive the aurora further away from its normal polar residence and if other factors come together, the aurora might be seen over the far Northeast, to the upper Midwest, and over the state of Washington,” the Space Weather Prediction Center said.
The aurora may be visible late Saturday afternoon and into early Sunday, according to the National Weather Service.
The peak is predicted around 5 p.m. ET, according to planetary space scientist James O’Donoghue.
“You’ll want to look north, near to the horizon,” O’Donoghue tweeted Saturday. “Also, befriend your local weather reporter and ask for clear skies.”
“Good luck aurora hunters!” he added.
The storm is rated G3, on NOAA’s five-level geomagnetic storm scale. “Impacts to our technology from a G3 storm are generally nominal,” the Space Weather Prediction Center said.
(NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C.) — Three people are dead and a fourth was hospitalized after an Amtrak train collided with a car at a railroad crossing in South Carolina early Saturday.
A North Charleston police officer reported the accident shortly before 2:30 a.m. local time, according to the North Charleston Fire Department.
Responding officers and firefighters found a “vehicle off the roadway with heavy damage” and four people “in the area of the damaged vehicle,” the fire department said in a statement.
Three people were pronounced dead at the scene and a fourth was treated by firefighters before being transported to a local hospital, authorities said. The fire department did not have an update on the person’s condition Saturday afternoon.
All four are believed to have been in the car on the railroad crossing when the collision occurred, and the train was able to make a controlled emergency stop after the crash, authorities said.
There were no injuries reported aboard the train, which was carrying 500 passengers, the fire department said.
The North Charleston Police Department and railroad operator CSX are investigating the cause of the accident.
Amtrak did not immediately respond to a request for comment from ABC News.
(LOS ANGELES) — There was a “troubling delay” in acting on multiple reports of possible drugging and sexual assault at a University of Southern California fraternity, the school’s president acknowledged in a letter to students amid an investigation into growing allegations against fraternities on the Los Angeles campus.
Last week, USC informed students that it suspended the Sigma Nu fraternity after an alleged sexual assault and “possible drug-facilitated sexual assaults” at its house. The move came nearly a month after several students confidentially reported to the university’s counseling service that they “may have experienced drugging and possible sexual assault in connection with a fraternity party,” President Carol Folt detailed in a letter posted Friday.
The students disclosed the information to the school’s Relationship and Sexual Assault Violence Prevention Services (RSVP) program between Sept. 25 and Sept. 30, Folt said. On Sept. 30, RSVP decided to elevate the information to several university departments, including public safety.
A separate incident of an alleged sexual assault by a member of the fraternity was also reported to the school’s Department of Public Safety on Oct. 16.
The school’s Clery Office, which tracks and discloses campus crime, received information on both sets of events on Oct. 20, at which point the Sigma Nu fraternity was suspended and students notified.
“We now know that there was a troubling delay in acting on this information, and specifically in evaluating it for notification to the community,” Folt wrote in her letter.
“We are still investigating what occurred next, but there was clearly uncertainty regarding how to assess and process the information, and it was not immediately escalated to the Clery Office or others,” she added.
Since first alerting the school community to the alleged incidents at Sigma Nu, USC has received additional reports of sexual assault and possible drugging at other fraternity houses this fall and in previous years, Folt said.
All incidents disclosed to the school since Sept. 25 have been reported to the Los Angeles Police Department, which said last week it was investigating possible drug-facilitated sexual assaults.
Activities at all USC fraternities have been suspended indefinitely, and USC will permanently ban or delist fraternities “if warranted,” Folt said.
In the wake of multiple campus alerts about alleged assaults at Sigma Nu, USC students have held protests demanding action from the university. Angry notes now also plaster the Sigma Nu fraternity house with messages like “do better” and “enough is enough.”
Folt became president of USC in 2019, after the previous president stepped down amid reports the school ignored allegations of widespread sexual misconduct by former campus gynecologist George Tyndall.
“As president, I came to USC with the promise to confront what is wrong and lead the effort to fix what is broken,” she wrote in her letter. “As we learn more, there will be some things we can do quickly and others that will take more time. This is too important to not get right.”
(DENVER) — While some areas of the country are cautiously celebrating falling COVID-19 cases, hoping the declines might signal the return to a long-awaited sense of normalcy, some states continue to struggle as Americans prepare for winter.
Health officials in Colorado are growing increasingly concerned as the rate of COVID-19 infections grows to levels not seen in more than 10 months.
There is “a clear increase in cases statewide,” state epidemiologist Dr. Rachel Herlihy said in a COVID-19 briefing on Thursday.
In the last month alone, the state’s daily case average has nearly doubled — increasing by 91.5% since late September, according to federal data, and state data shows that Colorado’s average positivity rate has risen from just under 7% last week, to nearly 8.5% this week.
“Colorado moving in the wrong direction is a clear signal that we are not yet out of this pandemic, especially in under-vaccinated states. Colorado has yet to reach 70% with a first dose and if you layer in colder temperatures and relaxed masking, history is likely to repeat itself,” said John Brownstein, an epidemiologist at Boston Children’s Hospital and an ABC News contributor.
While southern states in particular are seeing significant declines in their rates of infection, several states with colder weather, like Colorado, are beginning to experience an uptick in cases, as people begin to increasingly head indoors.
“Coronaviruses tend to thrive in winter months and colder weather,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky said in a White House COVID-19 briefing last week. “Right now is not the time, as cases are coming down, to become complacent because we do know colder weather is ahead of us.”
Five states — Alaska, Colorado, Maine, New Hampshire and New Mexico — have all seen a percent increase in hospital admissions of about 15% or more in the last two weeks.
“We are continuing to move very much in the wrong direction,” Scott Bookman, Colorado’s COVID-19 chief, said at a briefing on Wednesday.
According to state officials, the highest coronavirus case rate is among the 5- to 17-year-old age group.
Coronavirus-related hospitalizations have also been increasing in the state, a trend that is particularly worrying health officials.
Approximately 90% of the state’s surgical and intensive care unit beds are currently in use, according to state officials. There are currently nearly 1,300 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 — the highest number of patients receiving care since December, and on average, federal data shows that nearly 200 residents are being admitted to the hospital with COVID-19 each day.
“With the increase in percent of positivity and the concern of increase in cases in the coming weeks, we are all very concerned at this point about what we are seeing in our hospitals,” said Bookman.
And as more patients stream into emergency rooms in need of care, the average number of available beds is rapidly declining.
Thirty percent of hospitals anticipate an ICU bed shortage in the next week. State health officials have told ABC News that hospitals in El Paso County have had days when they’ve had to turn away transfer requests.
The majority of those COVID-19 positive patients — 77% — are unvaccinated individuals.
To date, 61% of the total population in Colorado has been fully vaccinated, leaving a significant number of residents still unvaccinated. People who have not been fully vaccinated are 6.1 times more likely to test positive with the virus and 11.3 times more likely to die from it, compared with people who are vaccinated, according to the CDC.
The notable divide between vaccinated and unvaccinated is evident in counties across the state.
In Crowley County, home to just over 6,000 residents, less than 49% of the eligible population has been vaccinated with at least one shot, according to state data. High transmission across the county remains rampant. In El Paso County, which currently has one of the state’s highest number of hospital admissions rate, approximately 65% of the county’s population over 12 have been fully vaccinated.
In total, 15 Colorado counties are significantly lagging, partially vaccinating 50% or less of their eligible population.
Comparatively, 11 counties have vaccinated at least 80% of their total population with at least one shot. San Miguel County, with a population of over 8,100, has 74% of its population fully vaccinated, and its infection rate has remained steadily low, despite increasing figures across the rest of the state.
If the situation in Colorado does not improve in the coming days, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis said Thursday he is prepared to take certain steps to address the uptick, including bringing in federal medical surge teams to help local hospitals in need of extra support, halting elective surgeries, expanding the use of monoclonal antibody treatment and possibly reactivating crisis standards of care, which determine how to most efficiently use medical resources, such as ventilators or ICU beds.
“A new surge once again places a challenging burden on our already tired health care professionals while also deferring important hospital procedures. This should really send a message to those still on the fence to do their part,” said Brownstein. “Remaining unvaccinated populations still represent opportunities for this virus to spread. This surge in Colorado should serve as an important warning to other states as we head into the winter months.”
(NEW YORK) — Here are the scores from Friday’s sports events.
MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL PLAYOFFS
Atlanta 2 Houston 0
NATIONAL BASKETBALL ASSOCIATION
Toronto 110 Orlando 109
Miami 114 Charlotte 99
Brooklyn 105 Indiana 98
Sacramento 113 New Orleans 109
Portland 111 L.A. Clippers 92
Denver 106 Dallas 75
L.A. Lakers 113 Cleveland 101
NATIONAL HOCKEY LEAGUE
Washington 2 Arizona 0
N-Y Rangers 4 Columbus 0
OT Florida 3 Detroit 2
Carolina 6 Chicago 3
SO Vegas 5 Anaheim 4
Ottawa 4 Dallas 1
(ARLINGTON, Va.) — Numerous police departments in Northern Virginia say the public can expect to see expanded police presence at shopping malls, public centers and gatherings over the Halloween weekend in response to a potential threat.
The potential threat to shopping malls emanated from intelligence possibly linked to ISIS, according to multiple law enforcement and intelligence sources. The credibility of the information is still being assessed, sources said.
An FBI spokesperson said in a statement, “We have no comment. However, we would remind you the FBI takes all potential threats to public safety seriously and we take all appropriate steps to determine the credibility of any information we receive.”
The Arlington County Police Department issued a statement calling it a “potential public safety threat.”
“The Arlington County Police Department (ACPD) is aware of information circulating regarding a non-specific, unconfirmed threat to shopping centers,” it said in the statement. “There is no specific or identified threat to our region. As always, the public is encouraged to remain attentive as you go about your normal routine, particularly in areas where large crowds of people typically gather such as shopping centers, restaurant districts, religious services, and public transportation hubs to name a few.”
Chief Kevin Davis of the Fairfax County Police Department said at a press conference Friday the the intelligence concerns “potential public safety impacts to malls and shopping centers across the region.”
“We’re taking it seriously,” Davis said. “We’re simply being proactive.”
“We’re acting with an abundance of caution in the best interest of those who reside here,” he said.
The chief did not provide details on what the threat was, but urged the public to be vigilant.
Davis called this a “regional matter” with information from collaborative sharing.
“It’s information we’re acting on by establishing a greater presence where people gather,” Davis explained. “We’re taking the appropriate responsible actions to ensure that the community knows that we take all information about their safety seriously.”
Other departments, such as the Alexandria, Virginia, Police Department, Loudon County Sheriff’s Office and Prince William County Sheriff’s Office, offered similar warnings.
(WASHINGTON) — Construction of an oil pipeline deep in America’s heartland has become one of the most contentious environmental battles in the country.
The thousand-mile long Line 3 pipeline transports Canadian tar sands oil — a high-emissions fossil fuel often described as the world’s dirtiest oil — through indigenous lands and waters, including the vulnerable headwaters of the Mississippi River.
The project has been the target of multiple court battles and a years-long massive civil disobedience campaign led by indigenous women in Minnesota, resulting in nearly 900 arrests, including dozens around the U.S. Capitol earlier this month.
“Seeing the expansion of Line 3 tar sands into sensitive wetlands while there is a massive drought is really jarring and it should be for any person who is worried about the climate,” Tara Houska, a tribal attorney who has fought the project for years and co-founded a Line 3 opposition group, told ABC News.
Enbridge, the Canadian corporation responsible for the pipeline, describes Line 3 as a safety-driven replacement of an aging line first put in during the 1960s.
“We made the decision that it would be better for us, better for society, better for the communities that the pipeline runs through to actually look at replacing that pipeline,” Enbridge Chief Communications Officer Mike Fernandez told ABC News.
However, many critics refer to the project as an expansion. More than one third of the new Line 3 follows an entirely new route and the new, wider pipe will roughly double the operating capacity of the old version, according to state documents.
Enbridge argues they are restoring the line’s historic capacity which has not been operational for more than a decade. The move comes after some leading scientists pushed for a moratorium on tar sands growth all together.
“Climate scientists say, ‘Leave the tar sands in the ground.’ Full stop,” said Laura Triplett, an environmental scientist with Gustavus Adolphus College who testified against Line 3 during the permitting process.
Oil began flowing through the controversial pipeline on Oct. 1, marking a long-sought victory for its corporate owner and a devastating defeat for its opponents, who had pleaded with the Biden administration to halt the project.
“I am appalled by the lack of action on something like this,” Houska said. “You can’t be the climate president when you’re allowing through one of the largest tar sands infrastructure projects in North America. That’s his climate legacy,” she said.
The White House declined to provide a representative to be interviewed for this report, and did not respond to a request for comment.
Biden and the tar sands
Canadian tar sands oil requires more emissions to extract and transport than conventional oil. It also results in more carbon emissions when burned, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists.
On the campaign trail, President Joe Biden described the Keystone XL pipeline as “tar sands that we don’t need — that in fact is very, very high pollutant.” He canceled Keystone XL shortly after taking office but has so far declined to intervene against Line 3, and his Department of Justice has defended the project in court.
“When I think about how much carbon is going to be emitted by this, I actually literally feel nauseous,” Triplett told ABC News.
Line 3 could emit between 35 and 193 million tons of CO2 annually, according to the project’s environmental impact statement — the latter being the equivalent of 45 new coal-fired power plants coming online or 38 million cars being added to the road, according to multiple independent scientists.
“If this pipeline is going to run and bring these tar sands oil to market, we have a much more even massive job to do, reducing emissions elsewhere,” Triplett said.
Enbridge argues that if the pipeline weren’t built, oil would have to get to market through even more carbon-intensive means such as truck or rail lines.
Triplett says there are road maps for how the U.S. can transition to a lower carbon emissions economy. “But none of those plans include building a brand new big pipeline to bring tar sands oil to market,” she said. “That’s not part of any transition. That’s terrifying.”
Dividing communities in its path
On the ground, the project has divided local indigenous communities in its path. Three tribes — the Red Lake Nation, the White Earth Nation and the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe — have opposed the project throughout and sued to halt construction. The tribes say the project violates their treaty rights and fear the pipeline will eventually leak, contaminating sacred waters and vital wild rice beds.
Two other local tribes — the Fond du Lac Band and Leech Lake Band — came to agreements with Enbridge to allow Line 3 to pass through their reservations. They also agreed not to oppose the project, in exchange for an undisclosed sum of money and promises of future infrastructure investments, according to local reports. As of May 2021, Enbridge says it has spent $250 million with Tribal nations, communities and contractors.
Enbridge’s agreement with the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe included removing most of the old Line 3 pipeline from the reservation and building the new pipeline on lands to the south. Details of the agreement are not public, but the Bemidji Pioneer reported that Enbridge agreed to a broad commitment with the tribe to work on green energy projects.
The Leech Lake Band did not respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
In the case of the Fond du Lac Band — which originally opposed the project — leaders say the tribe was put in an difficult position after Minnesota authorities forced them to choose between allowing the pipeline to run along its existing route through the reservation or agreeing to a route south of the reservation that would still cut through treaty territory, where tribal citizens hunt, fish and gather.
“There is no perfect outcome here,” tribal council Chair Kevin Dupuis Sr. told MPR News at the time of the deal. “All remaining options threaten the environment for all, and livelihood of the Indigenous people of Minnesota.”
Fond du Lac member Rob Abramowski, who grew up on the reservation and has worked on Enbridge projects for years, including Line 3, welcomed the project.
“Enbridge went out of their way to encourage Native people to work on the pipeline,” said Abramowski, who is one of the 500 Native Americans out the roughly 4,000 temporary workers Enbridge hired to construct Line 3, according to the company.
Abramowski says the jobs are more than just temporary. “Because of the experience that they’re gaining here today, they can carry that as far as they want,” he told ABC News. Abramowski believes the new pipeline will be safer and less likely to spill, but most important to him is that his tribe appears to now have a seat at the table.
“The major part is that my reservation leaders have a say in what happens here, not only today, but in the future,” he said.
Other Fond du Lac members see it differently.
“The Fond du Lac Band cannot speak for all of the other Anishinaabe Nations,” Taysha Martineau, a fellow Fond Du Lac member and prominent Line 3 opponent told ABC News.
“When they approved Line 3, and they started construction, they took away the voice of the wider nation,” Martineau said.
The Fond du Lac Band Tribal Business Council declined ABC News’ request for an interview and did not respond to a request for comment.
Houska, who comes from a small town in Northern Minnesota, co-founded one of the groups most known for conducting direct actions: Camp Namewag. A former intern at the Obama White House and later Native American Affairs Adviser to the Bernie Sanders campaign, Houska says she’s “participated in the process as much as anyone.”
“What I observed over time was a process that was so incremental in its approach, that was incredibly inefficient in addressing existential problems like a habitable planet to live on,” she said.
Spills, past and present
Enbridge pipelines have resulted in two of the largest inland oil spills in American history. In 2010, an Enbridge pipeline dumped nearly 1 million gallons of tar sands oil into a tributary of the Kalamazoo River in Michigan, as Enbridge pipeline controllers ignored repeated leak warnings for 17 hours before shutting down the pipeline, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.
Enbridge CCO Mike Fernandez says the company spent $5 million cleaning up the spill and learned valuable lessons that resulted in hiring and training more staff. “It was a big wake-up call for us as a company,” he said.
However, incidents during the construction of Line 3 have opponents feeling less than optimistic. Minnesota authorities have reported 28 known drilling fluid spills during construction, including a spill at the headwaters of the Mississippi. Enbridge was also fined $3.3 million for illegally piercing an aquifer in January, which resulted in the loss of at least 24 million gallons of water.
“We were drilling, we found the problem. We took the problem to the State Department of Natural Resources,” Fernandez told ABC News. “They assessed a fine and we are going to pay it.”
Despite the project coming online this month, opposition groups have vowed to continue to fight Line 3, saying that their efforts have forced the fossil fuel industry to expect heightened resistance in the years to come.
“They know that we are a threat to their bottom line. And that Indigenous resistance and all of the people who feel inspired by that resistance is very threatening,” Houska said.
“I think we’re that stubborn thorn that just won’t go away. I mean, I think it’s pretty reflective of native people generally,” she said. “We underwent genocide, then cultural genocide, then displacement or removal. We’re still here after all that. And we aren’t going away.”
