There was a massive trainwreck a few weeks ago, and no, I’m not referring to the Selena Gomez and Hailey Bieber drama. On February 3rd, in East Palestine, Ohio, we saw the derailment of a freight train carrying tons of hazardous chemicals. Now, I know we’re not supposed to cry over spilled milk, but I think it’s okay to shed a manly tear over spilled carcinogens. After the derailment, though, I was a bit surprised to see how quickly people turned to finger pointing, so that’s what I want to talk about today. What’s the difference between blame and accountability, and why is it so important? Happy Friday, I’m Ethan Brown, and this is Tip of the Iceberg, where I will break down some environmental news and then answer a question from our listeners on the air. Submit questions via Patreon, email, or social media. Patron questions go to the front of the line, so sign up at patreon.com/thesweatypenguin.

The Sweaty Penguin is presented by Peril and Promise: a public media initiative from The WNET Group in New York, reporting on the issues and solutions around climate change. You can learn more at pbs.org/perilandpromise.

So we all remember that one childhood Christmas or birthday where someone gave us the game Mouse Trap. That was a universal experience, right? You played the game once, it was awesome, and then you played a second time and one of the pieces broke. And you blamed your brother, your brother blamed you, your parents blamed whichever one of you they like least, but not a single one of you bothered to get to the root of the issue and ask: why is Hasbro creating such flimsy game pieces? What could be done to prevent this game from breaking in the future? And why didn’t they just lean into the game’s flaws and name it Choking Hazard? Blame may be easy, but it doesn’t lead you to ask a single constructive question about how best to move forward.

On February 3, a Norfolk Southern freight train carrying hazardous materials derailed in East Palestine, Ohio. In my book, it was the second worst trainwreck of the century, behind, of course, the 2015 Romcom Trainwreck. Of the train’s 51 derailed cars, 11 were tank cars which dumped 100,000 gallons of hazardous chemicals, including benzene residue, butyl acrylate, and most prominently vinyl chloride which is used in a variety of plastic products, and no, we’re not talking about Regina George. For context, 100,000 gallons is over a million solo cups, or over 40,000 games of Rage Cage. In that game, you really don’t want to get the bitch cup. Vinyl chloride might sound like cleaning fluid for hipsters, but it’s actually a Group A carcinogen. It got into residents’ drinking water, contaminated soil and storm drains, and potentially killed more than 43,000 fish, crustaceans, amphibians and other marine animals. You hear that, BP, you got some competition now! Nearby residents were evacuated for a few days, but many have reported returning home to dirty air and unsafe drinking water. In order to prevent an explosion of the flammable gas, emergency crews conducted a controlled burn of the railcars at the request of state officials. While that was probably the safest option in the end, it’s worth noting on a climate podcast that burning vinyl chloride releases volatile organic compounds and particulate matter into the environment, which can have an indirect impact on the local and global climate. Worst of all, it was really a missed opportunity for a “walking away from an explosion in sunglasses” shot.

*dramatic movie trailer voice and music*

This Summer, expereince the disaster that critics are calling – a grade A Carcinogen. Starring “a complete lack of oversight” and Amy Shumer. Dont just watch enviornmental disaster – LIVE IT. *Fog Horn* Directed by Michael Bay. 

Now make no mistake, this trainwreck was one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history. And in the aftermath of that, my first thoughts as the recently self-proclaimed Optimist of the Year at the SAG Awards were (1) where can I get Aubrey Plaza’s dress and (2) that it was a bit disappointing to see how quickly people wanted to find someone to blame, to paint as the bad guy. Many blamed the rail company, Norfolk Southern. Some blamed Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg for not showing up fast enough or not caring enough because East Palestine voted Republican the last few elections. NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers went so far as to say the U.S. government was shooting down UFOs to try to distract the public from the train derailment, which to be fair, is a classic PR move. It’s like in 1969 when the government tried to distract the public from the breakup of The Beatles by having Stanley Kubrick direct a “moon landing.” Some blamed Donald Trump and his administration for repealing safety regulations. The FAST

Act was a bipartisan law from 2015 that required trains carrying hazardous materials to use a special type of brakes, but after an impact assessment conducted by the Federal Railroad Administration and reviewed by the National Academy of Sciences found the cost of those brakes exceeded the benefit, the regulation was rolled back. The FAST Act actually required that it be rolled back if the costs exceeded the benefits. And The View’s Joy Behar went so far as to blame the residents of East Palestine, saying they brought this onto themselves by voting overwhelmingly Republican. Which was surprising because I didn’t know East Palestine could vote on which scientists perform cost-benefit analyses on our railroads! Who do we think they should vote for? Sheldon Cooper? Ross Geller? Dexter from Dexter’s Laboratory?

And thus the blame game begins. This time, it’s sturdier and less of a choking hazard than Mouse Trap. But in all seriousness, blame takes the weight of a situation fully off of ourselves. It creates a “bad guy,” and allows us to feel morally superior. But where does that leave us? Angry. Divided. Unsure why a problem happened. And no closer to ensuring the problem doesn’t happen in the future.

Accountability, on the other hand, is a lot more constructive. Sure, there’s some assigning of responsibility, but that comes from scientists conducting studies or journalists asking tough questions to everyone involved or courtrooms evaluating evidence. Maybe this will be the plot of season 2 of Night Court. But that’s a process, and the purpose of that process isn’t to figure out who to complain about on Twitter or talk shows. It’s to figure out why the problem happened and how we can prevent that problem from happening in the future. It doesn’t paint someone as “the bad guy,” but rather, as part of the solution. It’s not to say no problem will ever happen again, people always and will always make mistakes, but with more information in hand, they’ll make better, more informed mistakes next time.

And that accountability process is happening right now, largely behind the scenes. I’ve tried my best to keep up with some of the productive news stories on the issue which are continuing weeks later and getting deeper and deeper, I know residents of East Palestine are working to put together a lawsuit, and I got to attend a virtual press briefing last week with some scientists at the University of Pittsburgh discussing what they and their colleagues are researching moving forward. So that’s happening. And while that happens, what good does all this blame do? Whose water does that clean up? Whose life does that make whole? I can promise you not one person wanted this trainwreck to happen, except maybe Nate Jacobs as he sped those trains, beer in hand while blasting Dead of Night by Orville Peck. I talk to people on both political extremes, and while they may disagree on the right approach, not one person is against clean air, clean water, and a healthy environment. Not one. I have yet to see a tweet or think piece saying “hey, you know, the residents of East Palestine are really living the dream right now. They’ve got it too good.” No, everyone is pointing fingers at who, in their minds, cares less than them.

And that’s disappointing. You can’t run a crisis response like a game of mafia. When everyone cares about the same cause, we have an incredible opportunity for unity, for common ground, for accountability. We all care why the incident happened, right? It wasn’t Boris Badenov and Natasha Tatale from Rocky and Bullwinkle. There was a mechanical problem on one of the railcars, apparently an axle was throwing sparks, and by the time the alarm went off, it was too late for the crew to stop the incident. We all care how we could prevent this type of incident in the future, right? And that’s an ongoing conversation that likely involves better safety precautions, better emergency preparedness in communities with railways, and possibly looking into less hazardous alternatives for some of these chemicals.

But we can’t have that conversation without acknowledging that solutions are imperfect. These chemicals were being transported by train because as compared to trucks, Lime scooters, or carrier pigeons, trains are, by far, the safest transportation system. More than 99.9% of all hazardous material moved by rail reaches its destination without a release caused by a train accident. From 2012 to 2021, through tens of billions of investment into new safety technologies and better tracks and equipment, rail hazmat accident rates dropped by 55 percent. Which is good to hear, because Thomas the Tank Engine is running out of sick days. And according to the Association of American Railroads website, “railroads will never rest until the industry is accident-free.” Which is a little confusing because, does that mean railroads will rest when the industry is accident free? If that’s the case, we should probably keep having accidents because a lot of people depend on rail lines. In all seriousness though, it’s in the railroad industry’s best interest to be safe too. Norfolk Southern has been voluntarily making efforts in the community to help forge a path forward. Hopefully that path they forge gets an extra safety inspection. But even with those voluntary steps, they’ll still face a major financial hit, both from the cost of lawsuits and the cost of many people not wanting to do business with them. And that’s good, that would be under the umbrella of holding Norfolk Southern accountable, but blame is not constructive. If it was, we’d probably have made it to Mars by now, and be blaming NASA for not getting the same level of tan on Mars beaches as we got on Earth. In reality, all blame does is divide us on an incident that, otherwise, everyone should be on the same page about.

This may have been one of the clearest cut cases of it, but for three years of hosting The Sweaty Penguin, I find with nearly every climate issue, people try to put blame over accountability. It’s Big Oil’s fault! It’s Big Ag’s fault! It’s Taylor Swift’s fault! Honestly, you have to be pretty emotionally immature to blame Tay Tay. Leave her alone, she just went through a breakup… probably, I’m guessing. And yes, you can measure everyone’s emissions or do other relevant research or investigative journalism and make that information known and that’s good, that’s accountability, but when we get into blame and we say with little evidence and zero nuance, “they’re the bad guy… she’s the problem, it’s her,” then we divide ourselves and lose any chance of working together on a solution. When we do find common ground though and allow everyone to be part of the solution, we see things like oil companies investing in renewable energy or cattle farmers practicing regenerative agriculture. Yes, they’ll still make mistakes, but they’ll be better, more informed mistakes than before. It’s far from perfect, but it does push things in the right direction. A lot of people may disagree with me on this, I know many people like the idea of taking down evil corporations or politicians or whatever, but I hope at the very least, you can understand my frustration with everyone finger-pointing when obviously not a single person is pro dumping vinyl chloride on East Palestine, Ohio. If we can all listen to each other for two seconds and see how on the same page everybody is, we’ll have a much better shot at building a better— wait… do you see that? Is that a UFO? [some sort of UFO sounds]