Annette Olson events

The Runaway Train of Deregulation in the U.S. and Canada

January 7 @ 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Institute for Policy Studies, 1301 Connecticut Avenue, NW, 6th Floor, Washington, DC 20036 United States+ Google Map

Over five years ago, in the early hours of July 6, 2013, a train carrying highly flammable and volatile Bakken crude oil from North Dakota derailed in the small town of Lac-Mégantic, Quebec. The explosion killed 47 people and destroyed the historic downtown, spilling over 1.5 million gallons of oil.

Subsequent investigations showed that the disaster was entirely avoidable. To start with, the company was running a 72-car, mile-long oil train with a single engineer as the only crewmember. A lax safety culture at the railroad company, a cost-cutting mindset in the entire railroad industry, and the growth of deregulatory ideology in the Canadian and U.S. governments were all contributing factors.

Five years later all these factors are still present. The number of runaway trains has increased. Railroad management is still cutting corners, and government regulators are still looking the other way. Volatile crude oil shipments by rail are now two to three times what they were in 2013, increasing the likelihood of disasters such as Lac-Mégantic. But the alternatives to rail shipments, pipelines, are also dangerous. Continued reliance on oil production is known to pose an existential threat to the Earth’s climate.

The next Lac-Mégantic tragedy could be somewhere in the mid Atlantic region, with oil and fracked gas production increasing in a region so heavily reliant on rail to move both passengers and freight.

Join the Institute for Policy Studies’ Climate Policy Program to learn more about these critical issues and discuss ways to respond.

Presenters:

  • Bruce Campbell, former Executive Director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, author of the new book The Lac-Mégantic Rail Disaster: Public Betrayal, Justice Denied.
  • Fritz Edler, veteran railroader, Special Representative of Railroad Workers United, and chair of the Harding/Labrie Defense Committee, a coalition to assist the legal defense of railroad workers who were scapegoated for the Lac Megantic disaster.

Please RSVP!