Different interests and points of view can still find common ground — territory that can be more effective than separate efforts.

In Illinois and throughout the Midwest, unlikely allies with different perspectives and concerns are joining forces against carbon-dioxide pipelines proposed by huge agribusiness and fossil-fuel companies.

Two of them, Navigator and Wolf Carbon, hope to get consent to transport carbon dioxide from sites that burn fossil fuels to bury the gas underground in Illinois, part of a proposed expansion of CO2 pipelines from about 5,300 miles now to more than 65,000 miles. Besides approval by the Illinois Commerce Commission and U.S. Army Corps of Army Engineers, counties are weighing in, trying to balance job potential, public safety and private profits.

And, increasingly, property rights.

Landowners have been asked to agree to give corporations permission to use parts of their property for the pipeline, but reportedly less than 14% have agreed, and companies could resort to eminent domain to seize some private acreage without owners’ permission.

Companies can try to seize private property under the guise of a “public good,” but people can see hypocrisy when the companies are for-profit ventures. Elsewhere, environmentalists see CO2 pipelines as dangerous to residents, aquifers and more. Together, farmers and environmentalists regard such pipelines as destructive to the land, unnecessary and dangerous.

Public protest

My hometown newspaper reported on public meetings about county officials deciding whether to continue spending tens of thousands of public dollars to join with other counties to oppose Navigator’s proposed route through Adams, Brown, Christian, Fulton, Hancock, Henry, Knox, McDonough, Morgan, Pike, Sangamon, Schuler and Scott counties.

One farmer endorsed spending public funds to reject the pipeline because it’s an investment that for individual taxpayers “is going to be pennies.” A rural homeowner whose residence is about 200 yards from the proposed route offered to make a donation toward legal fees, and another man said if Navigator succeeds with its 1,300-mile-long pipeline, he’ll “be farming over that pipeline. This issue for me is my kids and my grandkids.”

Uncharted waters

A local environmentalist added, “I commend and support what you are doing” in the litigation, adding that Navigator has never installed a CO2 pipeline.

“They are making this up as they go along,” he said. “There are no real solid rules involving CO2 pipelines.”

Indeed, there are about five ruptures a week, according to Pipeline, Hazardous Materials and Safety Administration estimates, and a 2020 rupture of a Denbury pipeline in Mississippi forced the hospitalization of dozens and the evacuation of hundreds, emergency officials said.

Rallying cry

Alliances for convenience need not be unusual when civility and community trump anger and isolation.

(That said, other “odd couples” also include pro-pipeline efforts by some labor unions and Big Business, which see possible work for union members and lucrative profits for corporations.)

“We might not agree on a lot of things, but this is something we will all oppose, these pipelines,” Iowa farmer Kim Juncker said in the Chicago Sun-Times. “We will lock arms on this one.”

Standing against Navigator, the self-proclaimed constitutional conservative added, “We like our property rights and we like our freedom.”

For their part, active environmental groups have organizing abilities and experience analyzing data.

Looking at Iowa, Sierra Club Executive Director Ben Jealous said, “More than 150 landowners now join weekly Zoom calls with environmentalists to share information and strategy. More than 460 landowners have filed to intervene when the Iowa Utilities Board holds its hearing over the Summit pipeline’s request to take land through eminent domain.

“Our system allows for the power of enough people to thwart the power of money, which the pipeline developers certainly have,” Jealous continued. “That’s how opponents have managed to claim some big wins.”

But pipelines’ power — and money — is substantial.

Governmental goals

The U.S. government through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act plans to spend about $10 billion from taxpayers (another potential pipeline-skeptic interest group), and in May the Biden administration announced $251 million for a dozen climate projects focusing on CO2 transport and storage.

But besides counties, some state and federal lawmakers have doubts. In Springfield, legislators have been conferring with industry, unions and environmentlists on new regulations.

And in Washington, Congressman Jared Hoffman (D-Calif.), who’s on the House subcommittee on pipeline safety, questions whether these pipelines address climate change anyway.

“We should be concerned about this from a safety standard,” he said. “We really have to be concerned about this from a climate perspective as well.

“This entire strategy is being represented as a climate solution, when most of the time it’s really not,” he added. “Most of the time it’s really part of the climate problem.”