Don C. Brunell

While protesters were trying to block a Shell oil rig from docking in Elliott Bay, a team of surgeons and nurses at Vancouver’s Legacy Salmon Creek Hospital was replacing my left hip. Interestingly, the tools used in both places primarily came from raw materials made from coal, oil and natural gas. Some of the Seattle protestors were in a flotilla of kayaks — boats made, ironically, from petroleum-based products.

Their attempted blockade is the latest chapter in a larger campaign across the nation to eliminate fossil fuels. But fossil fuels continue to be the feedstocks for thousands of produc...