We act not because it’s easy, but because it’s right.
Thousands of people are gathering in Washington DC today to send a message to President Obama that clean air, clean water, and a stable climate are not negotiable – the Keystone XL Pipeline must not be approved.
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13 protestors were arrested during a day-long protest in White Rock, B.C. today that blocked coal trains from reaching port. Among the protestors was leading environmental economist and Simon Fraser University Professor Mark Jaccard, who issued this statement earlier this week:
This Saturday, May 5, at dawn I’m joining other British Columbians in White Rock at the pier to stop Burlington Northern Santa Fe coal trains from reaching our ports. Like others, I’m willing to engage in civil disobedience and risk arrest on Saturday to emphasize how important it is that we take urgent action to stop the actions that cause climate change.
The window of opportunity for avoiding a high risk of runaway, irreversible climate change is closing quickly. Within this decade we will either have steered away from disaster, or have locked ourselves onto a dangerous course. Our governments continue to ignore the warnings of scientists and push forward with policies that will accelerate the burning of fossil fuels. Private interests — coal, rail, oil, pipeline companies and the rest — continue to push their profit driven agenda, heedless of the impact on the rest of us.
This has to stop. We can’t comfort ourselves by thinking “if it were really that bad, government would do something about it.” It is that bad, and what government is doing in response is entirely inadequate.
Putting myself in a situation where I may be accused of civil disobedience is not something I have ever done before. It is not something I ever expected to be doing or wanted to do. But the current willingness of especially our federal government to brazenly take actions that ensure we cannot meet scientifically and economically sound greenhouse gas reduction targets for Canada and the planet leaves me with no alternative. I now ask myself how our children, when they look back decades from now, will have expected us to have acted today. When I think about that, I conclude that every sensible and sincere person, who cares about this planet and can see through lies and delusion motivated by money, should be doing what I and others are now prepared to do.
I pledge, along with everyone else taking part on Saturday, that my actions will be peaceful, non-violent and respectful of others. There will be no property damage. We will conduct ourselves in a safe, open and transparent manner. We are putting ourselves on the line Saturday because our future is at risk and we have to stand up for it.
Here is a 2007 interview with Dr. Jaccard and Jeffrey Simpson after the publication of their book, Hot Air, which they co-authored with Nic Rivers:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnhnAGPBWa0]
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More links:
Coal Protestors Arrested In White Rock
Jaccard: Pipeline Not The Only Problem
B.C. Economist Blocks Coal Trains In White Rock
It was fifty five years ago today the Supreme Court of the United States of America upheld the decision of the Federal District Court for the Middle District of Alabama “that Alabama’s racial segregation laws for buses were unconstitutional.” It was only just the beginning of the civil rights movement. Only the beginning. So “keep on keeping on” Occupy, we have only just begun!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=jJ1OO5iBWCQ]
Bill McKibbon addressed the crowd gathered in Washington Square this past Saturday as part of “Occupy Washington”. Here is the text of his speech, thanks to the crew over at It’s Getting Hot in Here:
Today in the New York Times there was a story that made it completely clear why we have to be here. They uncovered the fact that the company building that tar sands pipeline was allowed to choose another company to conduct the environmental impact statement, and the company that they chose was a company was a company that did lots and lots of work for them. So, in other words, the whole thing was rigged top to bottom and that’s why the environmental impact statement said that this pipeline would cause no trouble, unlike the scientists who said if we build this pipeline it’s “game over” for the climate. We can’t let this pipeline get built.
On November 6, one year before the election, we’re going to be in DC with a huge circle of people around the White House and they’re going to be carrying signs with quotations from Barack Obama from the 2008 campaign. He said, “It’s time to end the tyranny of oil.” He said, “I will have the most transparent government in history.” We have to go to DC to find out where they have locked that guy up. We have to free Obama, because there is some sort of stunt double there now. So on November 6, I hope we can move, just for a day, Occupy Wall Street down to the White House and get them in the fight against corporate power.
The reason that it’s so great that we’re occupying Wall Street is because Wall Street has been occupying the atmosphere. That’s why we can never do anything about global warming. Exxon gets in the way. Goldman Sachs gets in the way. The whole fossil fuel industry gets in the way. The sky does not belong to Exxon. They cannot keep using it as a sewer into which to dump their carbon. If they do, we’ve got no future and nobody else on this planet has a future.
I spend a lot of time in countries around the world organizing demonstrations and rallies in solidarity. In the last three years at 350.org, we’ve had 15,000 rallies in every country except North Korea. Everywhere around the world, poor people and black people and brown people and Asian people and young people are standing up. Most of those places, don’t produce that much carbon. They need us to act with them and for them, because the problem is 20 blocks south of here. That’s where the Empire lives and we’ve got to figure out how to tame it and make it work for this planet or not work at all.
Thank you guys very much.
The video is below. The reason the crowd keeps repeating what McKibben is saying is that the police have prohibited all forms of sound amplification, so the demonstrators have taken to using what they call the “human microphone”—speakers address the crowd in short phrases which are then repeated across the crowd as many times as is necessary for all in attendance to hear what’s being said. The pipeline he refers to, right at the beginning, is the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, currently in the final review phase by the State Department.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13S5uqPLJUk&feature=player_embedded#!]
More links:
Three weeks in, the anti-corporate, pro-democracy “Occupy Wall Street” protests show no signs of losing momentum. Quite the opposite, in fact.The Occupy Wall Street website states:
We will be in a thousand cities in this country by the end of the month – hundreds of cities in other countries. We will see General Assemblies on six continents.
We are growing. Block by block – city by city. We will see change in this country, in this world. It will happen sooner than you can imagine.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0JmJ7-bhrY&feature=player_embedded#!]
If we are going to salvage our ecosystem for our children and grandchildren, the corporations that currently make the decisions have got to be challenged and disempowered. These folks are showing us how to do just that. As Arundhati Roy said, “Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”
Go to Occupy Wall Street for more videos, info, and images.
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Those who wish to play a meaningful role in influencing public policy or changing its institutional base must begin with honest inquiry, in community with others if it is to be effective. Whether one sees oneself as dedicated to reform or revolution, the first steps are education of oneself and others. There will be little hope for further progress unless the means to carry out these first steps are preserved and enhanced: networks of local organizations, media and publishers who do not bend to state and private power, and so on. These first steps interact: the organizations will not function without access to information and analysis, independent media and publishing will not survive without the participation and intellectual and financial contributions of popular organizations that grow and develop on the basis of shared concerns, optimally based in the community, workplace, or other points of social interaction. To the extent that such a basis exists, a range of possible actions become available: political pressure within the system, community organizing, civil disobedience, constructive efforts to create wholly new institutions such as worker-managed industry, and much else. As activity undertaken in such domains, including conventional political action, extends in scale, effectiveness, and popular engagement, it may well evoke state violence, one sign that it is becoming truly significant.
There are no magic answers, no miraculous methods to overcome the problems we face, just the familiar ones: honest search for understanding, education, organization, action that raises the cost of state violence for its perpetrators or that lays the basis for institutional change – and the kind of commitment that will persist despite the temptations of disillusionment, despite many failures and only limited successes, inspired by the hope of a brighter future.
– Noam Chomsky
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkNsEH1GD7Q]
Monday, September 26, 2001: Ottawa Tar Sands Action
There comes a time when you need to take a stand. When sending letters and signing petitions isn’t enough. When together we must say, “enough is enough — not on our watch”.
That time is now. We must act together for the health of our planet, our air, our water, our climate, and our children.
From TPM.com, Why Far-Off Canadian Tar Sands Have Become Make-or-Break Issue For Obama With Enviros:
For six days and counting now, hundreds of protesters have gathered outside the White House to demand President Obama intervene and stop the construction of an oil pipeline that will span the breadth of the United States — from Montana to the Gulf of Mexico. Over 300 of them have been arrested — and not just wild-eyed idealistic college students, but high-profile advocates including environmental leader Bill McKibben. Despite all this, the administration says this is a question for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
What the heck is this all about?
At issue isn’t just NIMBYism or standard concerns about oil spills, but the question of whether the United States should accelerate an extraction process that some environmental experts say will lose the fight against global warming forever. Click here to read full article.
Meanwhile, here in Canada, there is an Ottawa day of action against the tar sands being organized for September 26th. The Indigenous Environmental Network, The Council of Canadians, and Greenpeace Canada, are calling for a day of sit-ins on Parliament Hill to show Canadians support a transition to a clean energy future:
There comes a time when you need to take a stand. When sending letters and signing petitions isn’t enough. When together we must say, “enough is enough — not on our watch”.
That time is now. We must act together for the health of our planet, our air, our water, our climate, and our children.
On September 26th we need you to come to Ottawa to join a historic action to oppose the tar sands. In a large peaceful protest, many will be risking arrest to tell the Harper government that we don’t support his reckless agenda; that we want to turn away from the toxic tar sands industry; and that we oppose the direction he’s taking this country.
For more information, go to Ottawa Action.ca.
More links:
Energy Protests Are In Martin Luther King’s Footsteps: Obama Should Heed Tar Sand Civil Disobedience
Saturday August 20th marked the start of the largest act of civil disobedience for the climate in U.S. history. Over 2,000 people from across the U.S. and Canada are arriving in Washington, D.C. to send a message to President Obama that our children’s future is more important than oil profits. Obama will be deciding the fate of the massive new Keystone XL Pipeline that would bring Alberta tar sands oil across the U.S. to be refined in Texas. NASA scientist James Hansen has described the Canadian tar sands as a “carbon bomb” and warned that if they are fully developed it will be “game over” for the climate.
The police moved in within a few minutes of the 50 or so participants lining up at the White House fence. Several participants held two large banners that read “Climate Change is Not in Our National Interest: Stop the Keystone XL Tar Sands Pipeline” and “We Sit In Against the Keystone XL Pipeline. Obama Will You Stand Up to Big Oil?” while the rest of the group sat-in on the sidewalk in front of the fence. More than 50 people were arrested on Saturday, and they remained in jail on Sunday as 45 more people were arrested as they stood peacefully in front of the White House. Today, 50 more people are planning to stand there to remind Obama of what is at stake in his upcoming decision (it is his, and his alone to make – Congress doesn’t have a vote in the pipeline decision).
Not all of us concerned about climate change can be in Washington this August. I considered it, but prior commitments to family and friends won out; I also will admit to being nervous about being arrested in a foreign country. As well, I don’t think this will be the last time that those of us deeply concerned about our children’s future will be asked to participate in civil disobedience, so I will have other opportunities to act.
There are some things that those of us watching those courageous souls in Washington can do to support them:
[slideshow]
More links:
NYTimes: Protest Makes Canada-To-U.S Pipeline Project Newest Front In Climate Clash
70 People Arrested In Opening Day of Tar Sands Action
Send Your Messages of Support to 2,000 Brave Souls Sitting In At White House