The Line 3 Pipeline: A Climate Disaster

Line 3 is a Giant Step Backward

The Line 3 pipeline will add more green house gas emissions to the atmosphere each year than all of Minnesota’s total annual emissions across every sector combined by a factor of 1.25. The additional emissions from the proposed Line 3 expansion is like building 50 new coal plants and operating them for 30 – 50 years. (Minnesota currently has 4 coal-fired power plants.)

Read the full Line 3 climate report here.

This climate impact would outweigh the positive progress Minnesota is making toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Line 3 is a climate threat to our whole globe. Minnesota has the power to stop it.

The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) recently approved a critical series of permits for Line 3. MEP and our partners have briefed the MPCA on why denying this project’s permits is legally appropriate and morally responsible, and we have released a fact sheet on how the agency failed to follow Minnesota law.

You can help by contacting your elected officials and asking them to speak out against Line 3. If you need ideas on what to say, here are some useful talking points.

A Threat to Our Waters

The new Line 3 would cross over a new route of hundreds of miles of vulnerable lands, waters, and wetlands in northern Minnesota. Pipelines leak – and in the event of a spill, oil from the Alberta tar sands would quickly and permanently devastate local ecosystems and freshwater resources.