( CNN ) -- The tragedy of the train derailment in Lac-Megantic , Quebec , has brought home just how small our world has become . Oil that was drilled in North Dakota 's Bakken oil fields is loaded onto rail cars and passes through a small Canadian community and shatters their world in an instant . All my thoughts and best wishes go out to the families and emergency responders in the midst of this human and environmental catastrophe . Everyone is touched by this man-made disaster -- 20 killed , 30 missing -- because so many communities have a rail line running right through the middle of town . Here in North Dakota , like all over the U.S. and Canada , towns grew up around the railroad lines . They brought people in to help settle the state and shipped the farm and manufacturing products to other parts of the world . But the increase in the amount of volatile crude oil being transported by rail from North Dakota 's Bakken fields has brought a new and troubling set of problems to the debate about our continued dependency on fossil fuels , and particularly oil , as an energy source . Railroad engineers did not have transporting oil in mind when they laid out the routes . They did not avoid population centers , rivers , or environmentally sensitive areas . They were only concerned with getting from Point A to Point B in the most efficient manner possible . In fact , trains carrying oil tanker cars run just two blocks from my office , right through the heart of Bismarck , North Dakota . Rail is the most efficient way to move freight , and Sierra Club is a big fan of rail for transporting people and conventional freight . But moving extreme fossil fuels , like Bakken shale or Alberta tar sands , is a different story entirely . These fuels are `` extreme '' because they are more toxic and more carbon intensive than conventional oil . They are also more dangerous to transport than conventional sources of oil . Production in the Bakken fields has increased nearly 10 times since 2011 . To move all this crude , oil rail companies are running longer , heavier trains . And they are running them farther than ever before , bringing crude to refineries on the East , West and Gulf coasts . The regulatory framework for train safety was n't designed for crude oil trains , and the rail and safety infrastructure is out of date and not up to the task . A state transportation safety spokesman in Maine this week said that the Lac-Magantic disaster is `` on the same parallel as a tractor-trailer accident . It 's private commerce and we do n't get involved . '' This catastrophe proves beyond any shadow of a doubt that the transportation of Bakken shale requires much more vigilant oversight . It 's too early to draw conclusions from the ongoing catastrophe in Lac-Megantic , but there 's one simple lesson that we should not ignore . Bakken shale , tar sands , and other extreme fossil fuels threaten our towns and our communities . We ca n't afford the additional cost , in safety or pollution that these fuels bring . And with growing efficiency and with renewable sources of energy , we do n't need them . The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Wayde Schafer .
Wayde Schafer : Many towns have rail lines running right through them . Schafer : North Dakota crude oil loaded onto trains caused a boom in Canada . N.D. oil production rose by 10 times since then , more and and heavier trains needed . It 's too dangerous , he says . Trains run through towns and were n't designed for this .