When Safety Isn’t Safe

Guest Opinion

By Cathye Williams | Aug. 8, 2026

For several years, I’ve had the gift of this space to write about environmental issues. I’ve tried to use it to inform, and sometimes persuade, on topics that I care about. In all this time, however, I’ve never tackled the subject of Line 5. Not that I don’t care—I do, deeply—but any account I could make about the tumultuous, years-long fight to shut down an aging oil pipeline would surely fall short. I remain in the audience on this one and barely keep up with the complexities.

The Straits of Mackinac, and the surrounding states and Tribal lands, have become the epicenter of a struggle between competing legal doctrines, tribal rights, and moral principles of truth and environmental justice which could have impacts and implications reaching far beyond our inland shores. It is truly a David and Goliath story.

Meet the Davids: the dedicated souls that have joined together to lead on the frontline. They include numerous Tribal bands and communities from around the Great Lakes, state and local groups such as Flow Water Advocates, Michigan Climate Action Network (MCAN), and national/international concerns/powerhouses like Earth Justice and National Wildlife Federation.

In addition to using extensive legal strategies, these are the folks who keep the rest of us well informed about the threat that Line 5 and the proposed tunnel to “protect” it pose—and more importantly, about what we can all do to stop it.

Opposing them are the oil industry Goliaths: particularly Enbridge, a Canadian company that is on track for over $20 billion in profits in 2026, while every day pumping 22 million gallons of oil under Lake Michigan and the world’s greatest supply of clean fresh water. This great wealth has given these Goliaths unjust and outsized influence over the leaders we elect to protect our safety and our shared public resources.

The fight between Enbridge and environmentalists has always been intense, but recent developments have been particularly fraught. First a win for Goliath, when the governor seemingly lost her mind and allowed her Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy (EGLE) to move forward with a permit for the Enbridge’s Great Lakes Tunnel project. This was confounding to many, because Governor Whitmer has spoken against the pipeline going back to her campaign to lead Michigan in 2018.

This permit will keep the pipeline running for years. (It’s already been eight years since the project was proposed.) And completing the project, with all its risks, could take as long as Enbridge wants it to, while they earn nearly $2 million per day on the oil flowing through the Great Lakes bottomlands.

A reprieve for the Davids came just a few days later, when the Michigan Supreme Court handed down a 6-1 decision vacating the Michigan Public Service Commission’s earlier approval of the project. The Court called on the Commission to conduct a full and thorough review, with the diligence required of them by the Public Trust Doctrine to protect the Great Lakes. This was a landmark case, and the history leading to it, including the establishment of the Public Trust Doctrine and the Michigan Environmental Protection Act, is definitely worth learning about.

Behind all of this struggle flows another disturbing truth, however. I think Jeffrey Insko summed it up best, leading into his Substack article in The Current, “One More Thing About That EGLE Permit.” He points out that considering the tunnel to be safe “only makes sense if you ignore one giant thing.” Can anyone guess the one giant thing?

Insko leads you to information so you can arrive at your own conclusions. His article consists of a nine-word mantra on repeat: “Oil transported safely is bad for the Great Lakes.” With each repeat he cites numerous articles on climate change and all the other ways the continued extraction, refinement, and use of fossil fuels products threatens life in and around the Great Lakes, from wildfires, to fishery collapse, to invasive species, erosion, and all manner of pollution.

We have known this for decades, and research continues to teach us more about the problem. But the evidence isn’t just in research and writings. It’s all around us, happening right before our eyes. Just think of what this year has brought here in Michigan and around the world. Floods, fires, drought, extreme heat, disease, conflict and forced migration, species loss, and habitat loss.

We know that climate change drives much of this, and we know what drives climate change, despite the best efforts to hide the truth by those who profit and pay nothing for the damage. Our task is to witness, learn, and especially to take action, so the Davids can continue to prevail.

Cathye Williams is a local climate activist. She writes from the northern corner of Manistee County.