WS 3371 Fall 2007

I really liked this movie about the Alaskan Pipeline. It showed many things about the building of the pipeline that I had never considered before. The one thing that really stuck out in my head about the building of the pipeline was the hoops the companies had to jump through to get the job done. The regulations and the requirements that where in place really set a new standard for the pipeline, and I believe that these regulations where to the pipeline’s relatively successful life. It was interesting how the special interest groups had so much control over the building process. This project was probably one of the most scrutinized mass building project ever, being on government land, being controlled by environmental groups, and by the general public.

Another thing I found very fascinating was the scale of the building process and the time it took to build it. I had no idea it took so many workers and so many resources. 800 miles of pipeline in two years was a huge feet to accomplish.

The stark contrast between the reading and the video was interesting. The video showed us the side of the oil companies that was willing to abide by the regulations (when vigorously pushed) that were set by the government through the environmentally aware people. The literature seems to then pick up the story after some time, showing how after regulations were not constantly monitored the companies were cutting costs left and right in the form of eliminating the same precautionary steps that were "force-set" in place by the government/people in the first place (but then again isn't the main goal of the corporate system to make more and more money?). The volumes of safety manuals were sitting and collecting dust on the shelves while the actual means of handling a spill were lost in storage or awaiting repairs on land. It was like a fire escape ladder that had long been damaged, but nobody ever took the time to replace... it was only a matter of time before there was an emergency.
The greed of making money seemed to be what drove the accident to happening. There were only a handful of crew-members, and at least two of them should have been able to navigate the ship properly incase the captain was unable to (as explained). It took 14 hours to get a buoy around the ship, 14 hours is a long time... And the money that the oil company spent on the cleanup with tax-deductible! It's just amazing that the oil company didn't receive a more harsh punishment and was able to just say "opps!" and move along. It's almost like a Bounty (paper towel) commercial; the crew spilled a ton of oil (like a kid knocks cereal on a wood floor) and the parents are able to quickly fix it (the parents being either the company heads or the government).

Eight hundred miles of pipeline in two years is slightly more than a mile of pipe being laid down every day. There are two sides to every story, sometimes more than two. The video showed a side of the amazing technological achievement whereas the reading focused on the cut corners. There is nothing wrong with either side’s perspective; a person of an average intellect will recognize that they are experiencing just one version and will make a decision based on all the evidence. People were injured and lots of corners were cut in order to complete the pipeline, but it does not mean that the accomplishment of such great magnitude should be taken away from those that were out in the bitter cold day in day out. I would like to use Mike Tyson as an example, he is one of the most antisocial, bigot, selfish people one could come across, but he was an amazing boxer and it would not be fair to take away his accomplishments in the ring because of his personal life. People will focus on anything that is convenient for them at the time and thus many sides will be constructed, but it is important to understand and appreciate the whole picture.

I never considered how controversial the Alaskan pipeline was until after watching the film. The story of the pipeline showed technological progress and concern for “the last frontier”. Diane Benson’s quote about the pipeline really conveyed the meaning of film to me. She said, “I remember looking at the line the way it just cut a path through the heart of Alaska. It felt like it cut across my heart looking at what it did to this place. On the other hand, you had to appreciate what a magnificent thing it was to build. We were proud of it.” Covering 800 miles of Alaskan wilderness is truly a remarkable feat. Without the pipeline, our dependency on foreign oil would greatly increase. I also found the all the legal disputes about the pipeline very interesting. Since the building of the pipeline, the government (mainly the EPA) has played a pivotal role in deciding whether meeting American needs through energy (oil, coal etc.) is worth the ecological risk.

Our reading, Nature Devastated, shows just how fragile the balance between technology and our environment is. With the completion of the pipeline, regulations and safeguards were in place to prevent an oil spill. However, our own human greed got in the way as the oil companies were more concerned for profits than for having a safety net in place. The Exxon Valdez crisis could have been prevented if the original regulations that accompanied the pipeline were in place and not forgotten.

The video was very interesting because I knew very little about the Alaskan Pipeline going into the movie. There were so many shocking facts that it was hard to grasp it all. It was interesting to see the development of this project and the obstacles it had to go through. Besides all the legal issues and protestors preventing the project from starting, once started, the project itself had many obstacles. I was a bit concerned when I heard about how certain workers had control over the entire project and were given special treatments such as the welders. Also, the drugs and alcohol that the people were abusing at the time led me to question the quality of the work. With that said, I have not heard any major disaster coming from the pipeline. Another shocking fact that I got from the video was the amount of money they put into this project. I believe the project manager was given extras of millions/day to complete the project on time. It just shows the amount of money that oil can bring. And the value of oil will only continue to rise as we come closer to depleting our supply.

I was not too surprised to learn that the tanker captain lost his job as a result of this accident. What really shocked me was how he was chosen to take the blame for the entire catastrophe when the real fault lay in the decision making process that allowed such an event to get so out of control. It seemed similar to the falling branch which was given as the official cause of the massive power outages seen in an earlier film. How could the strict regulations put in place during the building of the pipeline be allowed to atrophy so quickly? I could not believe how many Alaskans had talked about how they had trusted the oil companies to operate in a responsible manner.

This article also made me question the idea that man is a shortsighted creature who only is able to value that which leads to instant gratification. It was interesting to see how people who usually are the least able to see things from a long term view, at least when it comes to exploiting resources, suddenly turned into seers after the oil spill. The usual roles were oddly reversed as they began telling the environmentalists to look at things from the broader context. The burning carcasses of thousands of helpless creatures was nothing to be alarmed about, if those greens could just think in the long term.

Comparing both the film and the article it was interesting to see the differences in legal power the oil companies had. That was a poor way to put it, I'll try to explain it better. In the film it seemed that the oil companies had to work with a lot of restrictions and oversight brought upon them by numerous advocates, notably the environmental advocates. There ended up being so many restrictions and guidelines that I found it interesting that eventually the oil companies had to stop all the legal challenges just so they could start work on the pipeline. On the flip side after reading the article, I wondered where were all the environmental advocates when it came to regulations on shipping oil? The article specifically mentions that the Exxon Valdez didn’t have a double hull. Why? Because the oil companies lobbied against it to avoid an increase in construction costs. You would think that since the oil companies were up against such a struggle in building the pipeline, the same watchdogs would want strict regulations over shipping oil too.
On a final note, one point the article mentions that I thought was a good one was that consumers today have become so careless, especially when it comes to environmental impacts, because what we want has become so detached from ourselves. I’m just going to see the gas that I put into my car, I’m never going to see it being drilled out as crude oil, shipped and processed and all the pollution it causes. So when something like the oil spill in Prince William Sound happens, it’s become so easy to think that what happened was bad, but it wasn’t me that did it.

I thought the movie about the Alaska Pipeline was very interesting. To accomplish such a large task in such a relatively small amount of time is amazing. The video really showed how difficult it was going to be for the pipeline to be completed. The terrain, harsh weather, and other elements posed enormous threats to the workers and limited the amount of time they had to complete the project. If the weather got too severe the workers had to stop production which would cause delays in their deadline. Also, if they ran into an area of permafrost that they weren’t aware of it would cause delays as well. I also found it interesting how different the article was from the film. The film showed some of the problems with the construction, such as the x-rays of the welding sections that had been duplicated, but it did not discuss as many issues as in the reading. The reading talked about the numerous shortcuts that were taken and the corners that were cut during construction, as well as the injuries that were sustained by the construction crew. The film did not discuss any of this. It talked about the group of welders who thought they were beyond the other workers and how they misbehaved, but that was mostly it. I also thought it was interesting to watch about the townspeople that were so opposed to the construction of the pipeline. Many were angered that it would be built through their town and through the vast Alaskan wilderness, so they did not want it to be built. I think this dilemma is similar to any big construction project that is in the works. There will always be a group of people who thoroughly oppose the project, while others support it. In the end it is up to the quality of the project once it has been completed to sway people one way or the other.

The Alaska Pipeline:
I didn't know much about the pipeline prior to the documentary but I'm glad I watched the documentary. It's simply amazing how they constructed it all in what was it, 2 years-ish? During the documentary they interviewed workers that traveled from the continental United States to work on the pipeline that now live in Alaska. This is similar to what we read a few weeks ago when reading about the railroad. The construction of the pipeline brought more people to less habited areas of Alaska.

As for the reading, it is really disappointing when corporations do something like spill hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil into the environment and act like nothing devastating happened. The whole article kind of just disgusted me how they slowly took action and didn't have emergency actions for cases like this.

I really enjoyed the film on the construction of the alaskan pipeline. I was unaware of the extent of involvement of so many environmental agencies. The pipeline is a very well designed system. The economic boom did many things for Alaska. The ability to make so much money so quickly caused a “rockstar” type mentality among some of the worker. Drugs, violence, organized crime and prostitution where either introduced or significantly increased in Alaska by the pipeline boom. More positively, the Native Alaskans’ land claims where final settled.

The pipeline has operated without significant incident, for the lifetime of it operation. Also, reasonably no ecological detriment was inflicted by the operation of the pipeline. The soundness of the pipeline was the direct effect of the high levels of scrutiny and regulation during construction. I feel that the active role of environmental protection could significantly benefit many other projects, both public and private. But, disaster still struck when the exxon Valdez tanker spilt an estimated 10.8 million gallons of crude oil into prince william sound.

It is amazing what people will do to save a little money. In the reading Exxon cut cornors just to save money and the effects were devistating. It was astonishing to me to read that the head officer or executive of Exxon didn't even go and witness the devistation first-hand until days after the spill.
However, the video sheds a brighter light on the issue because while the pipeline was constructed, many necessary precautions were taken into consideration. The welds were inspected and fixed if they did not meet the standards. Pipeline that could not be placed underground was placed above ground and insulated. Work was even delayed for days on end while the crew waited for a certain part to arrive, showing that the contruction of the pipeline was not something to be rushed. Although I do feel comfortable with the reliability of the pipeline due to the strict regulations that were put in place during the construction, I still do not feel a 100% confident in the safety. Couldn't a disaster of the same magnitude still occur with the pipeline? It streches across vast wilderness areas in Alaska and if a spill did occur would we be able to minimize the devistaion?

This documentary did a great job of bringing in all the different aspects of the Alaska pipeline. The movie illustrated the economical, social, and political impacts of the pipeline on the American society. What impressed me the most about the pipeline was the determination and aggression of the oil companies to finish the job. This can only mean that the estimated profit gained through the pipeline was greater than the large volume of capital invested in the project. Also, the management of the Alaska pipeline was absolutely fantastic. This has to be one of most hectic engineering projects in the history of our nation. Overall the documentary did an amazing job of demonstrating all the different events that occured in the process of the Alaska pipeline

I thought that the reading was very interesting; the part that I found extremely shocking was how the oil companies where so eager to earn an extra profit that the actually lobbied to get the double hull requirement for ships sailing out of Prince William Sound down to a single hull. Changing this requirement only would save up to 5% of the construction of the ship. It seems like that small of a savings which ultimately cost Exxon a billion dollars, is just an example of what corporations will do to increase their profits. A double hull versus a single hull could have saved a significant amount of oil from being spilt, and as a result could have saved thousands of animals lives.

Having two different points of view on a particular issue is nice because it helps one to obtain a better balance in the stories being told. Regardless of whether one concentrates on the incredible speed and funds used to construct the pipeline, or the regulations that were compromised, the Alaskan pipeline was definitely a story worth telling. What I found so shocking was the amount of money being spent on workers alone. Fifteen hundred dollars per week is still a lot of money in this day and age. I would take that kind of money in a heartbeat. Although I do not know the converted figures, fifteen hundred dollars per week in that day and age had to have been worth so much more than in today’s standards. I think it’s incredible that something as finite as oil can generate so much spending and so much haste. While I was watching the documentary, I would have thought that people were rushing to the area to help lend aid to a natural disaster like the hurricane of a couple years ago. I understand that the context of the situation was different then, but if the same thing were to be tried now, I have to think that it would never even get started due to all of the legislative resistance.

It seems to me that people are starting to care more about the environment now than they ever have before. Granted, I am only 22 years old and I do not have a great point of reference, but even advertisements seem to be taking on a “greener” image. Hybrid cars, electric (as opposed to gas) garden tools, and aerosol sprays are all taking the environment into consideration when they market their products. I didn’t like seeing the land being ravaged just o put an oil pipeline in, but as long as oil is still available, those who have the rights to it hold the upper hand in many facets of life, i.e. transportation, heating, cooling, electricity, etc.

I think the author of the article presented his points very well and used the very powerful technique of evoking emotional responses in his readers to an excellent profit. What i mean is, yes, he has good points, but he lost some respect from me when he spent sentence after sentence talking about the dewy-eyed otters and going into gory detail of the destruction of their organs by noxious fumes. Emotions are a powerful thing, as the media and almost every person or group with a cause have found out.

Anyway, this comment isn't about opinion-swaying techniques. The author completely ignores his ability to be understanding by neglecting the nature of business - if something works, see if you can make it cost less and still work. Obviously the oil spill in Alaska was a huge disaster and the failed attempts to clean it up quickly were a horrendous tragedy. But people are optimistic - after so many years of little to no incident, Exxon obviously thought they had the plan down. People don't ever expect disaster to happen to them (unless they have general anxiety disorder, which has a lifetime prevalence of only 5%) so they become somewhat careless in their optimism. Yes, it's safer to have a crew of 100 highly experienced sailors aboard a ship... but all those people need food, rooms, salaries. Businesses see that and see a waste. I think that if the author even addressed these concepts and acknowledged this nature of human beings even a little, i would have agreed more with the article.

I don't think I have ever given the Alaskan pipeline much thought before this movie. I have thought about Exxon Valdez oil spill, I found them on a list of the biggest donors at the Raptor Center, on campus,where I volunteer. I remarked to some of my crew members that it was a little ironic that they gave money to organizations that are dedicated to helping the environment when they damaged so much of it. I guess they're just trying to buy a little redemption. As to the double hulled tankers that oil companies are supposed to implement, as of last year not all ships have them.

I was very intrigued by the film about the construction of the Alaskan Pipeline. It made it seem like an adventure into this huge wilderness, which it was of course. I suppose that there is a significant meaning to the fact that there is a giant pipeline cutting through the beauty of Alaska, but I can't quite pin point what it is. Nature has a value, but not one that out values the current demand for oil or the need to get from place to place. How do we value nature when the only time we give it value is when it is about to kill us because of our previous neglect?

The Alaskan Pipeline movie was quite interesting to me. I actually wrote a paper about the oil spill when I was in middle school. I found it a compelling movie because it had many interviews about people that worked on the pipeline. The lady that said she would have even drove truck for only a dollar a day because she enjoyed it so much—really helps explain her feelings and dedication to the project. In reality and mentioned in the video was the fact that it did cut right through the landscape but it was so enormous that you still felt proud to have built it.

I am glad the environmental impact of the pipeline was taken into consideration while building this massive pipeline. If it was not such a part of the project, the landscape would be ruined by now and the Alaska ecosystem in shambles. It is not always the easy way to do things, but the right way that things have to get done—that you feel most proud of.

I had no idea how much time, money, and effort went into building a structure like the pipeline until we watched the film. It is amazing to me that they were spending millions of dollars a day over such a long period of time. It's disgusting to think that all of the money spent on the pipeline could have probably put an end to starvation and poor health care worldwide. Why is it so hard for us to give up some of what we have so that those in need can be helped?

"Some commentators far from the scene argued that, so long as the fishermen were adequately compensated, no great harm would be done. The loss of so many living creatures was itself nothing to fret about." This quote from the reading is an example of the foolishness and selfishness that humans have been responsible for over so many years. It also highlights the importance of money. Money is a key element to survival within our society toady, but maybe it is time that changed in order to preserve the natural environment, and ultimately any hope of human life.

Before watching the Alaska pipeline documentary I already knew a little bit about the different arguments for and against it. However, I would have to say that the documentary was still very enlightening. Just hearing the different interviews from the workers really made me understand what they thought of the pipeline, and how the people of Alaska viewed it. I really liked learning about what the workers were like and how they achieved so much against such rough conditions. Climbing mountains, worker in sub-temperature levels, drugs and alcohol, there are so many things that happened to the workers that I don’t think the rest of America was even aware of.
What I would be really interested in to knowing now is how the pipeline has held up in Alaska, and what kind of affect it has had on the environment. When the pipeline was in construction there were many predictions on how it would affect Elk migration and so forth, I would like to see what the outcome actually is. The article did a very good job of describing the negative affects the oil companies have had to the environment how detrimental it has been to our wild life. But this cannot be a lost cause can it? What is the best way for us to overcome some of the mistakes that have been made? How will we be able to rectify the situation?

Donald Worster's piece on the Hoover Dam was interesting. As with most massive structures that have been built in the past, people flock to them and marvel at there grandeur.

These structures perform amazing tasks. The Hoover Dam is able to hold back massive amounts of water, and that water is used to generate electricity.

Then there's the other part of the story that always rears its head. There is always a negative effect when someone try to control nature. With the attempt to control the Colorado river, new problems arise. I wonder if anyone ever tried to predict the byproducts of erecting these dams and using the water for irrigation? The increased concentration of salt in the river is probably something that people either did not think, or just not worry about.

It seems that people choose to turn a deaf ear to these issues if it does not directly effect there lives. So the Colorado's salinity can increase, dams can obstruct the migration of the Columbia's salmon and so on.

Ideally, I guess that a minimal amount of these structures could be built without destroying the planet. Just make sure that there is a large enough proportion of land and river that remains untouched. This could act as a buffer of sorts. But does that ever seem to be the case?

The documentary on the Alaskan pipeline was good because it showed the many aspects of that event. Besides that fact that it carried oil I didn't really know anymore about the Alaskan pipeline before the movie.

In the article "Nature Devastated" the title says it all. This article has a much more negative look at the Alaskan Pipline than the documentary had. I find it amazing that the oil companies did so little to help clean up the mess. I believe that the oil companies that hired the ship captains should definately be held responsible for such a careless act that hurt the environment and animals so bad.

I found the video of the Alaskan Pipeline surprising. I never realized that I didn't know anything about it! I had no idea that it went above ground for such long distances and that people would stop and take photos of it. The video was more positive that I thought it would be. The reading gave a much more negative perspective on the oil transportation. The mentioning of the countless animals that died really pulls at people's emotions. It did a nice job of tying the oil spill in to a representation of technology in general. The quote from the Economist was interesting as well. You can't take a hugely devastating disaster like that oil spill and sum it up as something that will cause little lasting impact. Its attitudes like that that ensure continued worsening of environmental problems. It had a huge cost to our planet, and was an important warning sign of the dangers our energy habit brings.

Although I have heard of natural gas or fuel pipelines, however I have never heard of how it was made and how it works. It was absolutely surprising me what a difficult task it was to connect hundred miles of pipeline all together within the limited amount of time. It was a merely impossible mission to be complished in my opinion. This project was not only challenging force of nature, it also challenges our physical limits. This project made me think of how our natural sources are scarce gift from first creation. How much resources we used to dig out these sources and tranfer it into our society. Although Alaska solved the temporary problem of fuel shortage, however how long will it last until the next journey of pipeline project will start. Although we need these fuels to run our automobiles, however it might take more resources to dig out these fuels. Maybe we'll run our other natural resources before we tried to dig out more fuels.

Nature devastated was interesting for me to read. It expressed a concern that what we are doing to the environment is not good and that people don’t even care. With the oil spill in the Alaskan sound there was little worry by the oil company as to what devastation was going to accrue. The deliberate lack of respect and care for the environment is evident throughout the article. The disaster was left to nature to fix itself even though it was a human caused one. Although Exxon was not expecting a spill they should have been ready for anything to go wrong. In stead they have their emergency equipment disassembled and in shops on dry ground. They weren’t even slightly prepared with the passing of the treatment that was supposed to breakdown the oil spill. That hadn’t even been approved yet. There lack of preparedness only added to the devastation that was caused by the huge oil spill. It could have been contained a lot faster and smaller had there been equipment in place. Although there was a policy it was not functional because the equipment and supplies were not available at the site. In order for these to be sufficient they must be read and understood by every captain and authority. This article really shows how we disregard the environment as something for us to use and eventually destroy if we are not careful. The environment has a delicate natural balance and when that is upset there is a chain reaction that is felt right down the line. A billion dollar corporation should have good policy and ethics when it comes to accidents and the environmental. There is a strong focus on self profit and side effects are an after though of accidents. We only get one earth so we need to be adequately prepared to defend and protect it from ourselves.

The libertarian ideal inherently undermines environmental protection in that there is no rational basis on which to assume, given our nature, that freeing ourselves and the market from any and all kind of regulation designed to ensure such protection will lead to anything less than the commoditizing of natural resources. Our free market, though not entirely free from regulation, is already the root of many of the environmental problems that are not being given proper attention.

Not all natural resources can be privatized. Those that could not would become disposable, and those that could would be subject to “rational self-interest.” Anyone justifying his or her actions based on this flawed re-defining of “greed” is at best gravely misguided.

Moreover, libertarianism bases its ethical system under the assumption that the rational individual is the only thing on planet Earth that has inherent value. This train of thought conflicts with other value systems, especially those involving giving nature inherent value. If nature is not given value, its destruction can be rationalized by the satisfaction of self-interest and, as the author points out, it is unwise if not foolish to assume humanity – from society all the way down to the individual – will always act in its own best interest.

I enjoyed the Alaskan Pipeline film. It really was a challenge to build 800 miles of pipeline with a 3 year deadline (if I remember correctly). They compared it to a gold rush because if you were so lucky to work on the construction, pay would be great. People left their home in order to participate and some said it was the best experience of their life. However, I cant imagine that. Endless work days and in a cold harsh environment on an impossible deadline. Yuck. I was also surprised that so many drugs were passed around accompanied with alcohol. You wonder how the workers even had time to drink and if that was the cause for some bad welding and construction techniques for the pipe. It had to be so embarrassing to find out about unstable welding and have to go back through the entirety of the pipe to make repairs.

The Nature Devestated reading discusses the Exxon Valdez crisis and how it could have actually been prevented if the regulations would have been respected. So much oil was lost. I remembered the movie showed the oil spill in the ocean and a clean up crew was dragging out oil covered animals from the water; animals that could barely breath. Its oil in water, how do you even begin to asses the damages and clean it up?

we need to know the negative effects 0f the pipeline...please

Hi!