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Impressive environmental protests have been organized by a wide range people calling for an end to radical energy and a transformation to a clean energy economy. Radical energy includes fuel derived from extreme extraction methods like tar sands, hydrofracking and off-shore drilling for oil or methane gas and mountain top removal for coal. This is costly energy, not only in dollars but in its impact on the environment; and it is causing an impressive growth in people taking action to protect the planet.

Rather than building the upgraded energy infrastructure we need to reduce wasted energy and to efficiently store and transport energy from the sun and wind, the United States has embarked on building pipelines as well as relying on trains to carry oil and gas. This has resulted in inevitable oil spills, leaks and other damage.

On August 1, a study of Exxon Mobil’s Pegasus pipeline-which flooded a Mayflower, Arkansas neighborhood with over 200,000 gallons of tar sands oil-revealed known “manufacturing defects,” with grave implications for the tens of thousands of similarly built pipelines still in the ground and operating. The old energy industries are grasping every piece of profit they can get, no matter what the cost to the planet (like this oil leak in Thailand).

One reason the movement has grown is because there have been so many leaks, oil spills and eco-disasters recently, that it has been impossible for people to ignore. And, the effects are long lasting.  People in Kalamazoo, Michigan are still dealing with a tar sands spill from the Enbridge Line 6 that occurred three years ago; problems will continue into the foreseeable future.  The TransCanada pipeline that brings tar sands from Alberta to the Midwest experienced 12 leaks in its first year beginning in June 2010.  And, dozens of “anomalies” (which can be seen in the video) were found in the newly laid pipeline in Southern, Texas.