Above: Along with all of the surrounding Rocky Mountain West, Coloradans are actively fighting the fossil fuel industry on all fronts.” (Photo: @MattOakland/Twitter)
We are in the midst of the largest civil disobedience campaign in environmental movement history: Break Free; and it is occurring at a time when we are at the tipping point for climate as well as many other environmental catastrophes like dying oceans and a great extinction. The growth of protest coincides with public opinion reaching a tipping point, with 64% of people in the United States, a record number, saying they were worried about climate change and 65% blaming it on human actions.
The escalation of the movement is also coming as the impacts of climate change become more evident. Perhaps the most dramatic impact in recent weeks has been the massive fire in Alberta, Canada — the heart of North American tar sands — where 90 thousand people had to be evacuated, leaving their homes and property behind. It is one of many climate-induced fires. While the media tried to avoid connecting the fire to climate, it was impossible to avoid the obvious. The irony of the tar sands center being destroyed by a fire made worse by climate chaos was to stark not to see.
Mass Resistance to Carbon Infrastructure and Extraction Has Been Ongoing
There has been a mass civil resistance movement related to climate and the environment for quite some time. People are blockading pipelines and oil trains, protesting gas export terminals and fracking, urging an end to more carbon infrastructure and pushing government to “keep it in the ground.” This movement is having an impact from convincing institutions to divest from oil and gas, to pushing more investment and development of renewable energy and slowing or stopping carbon infrastructure. As Break Free, a continuation of that escalation in resistance, shows, the climate struggle is vibrant and global and is gaining momentum.
This coming Monday, a week long Rubber Stamp Rebellion will begin in Washington, DC. The protests will be focused on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and their commissioners who have been rubber-stamping carbon infrastructure projects without considering how they are destroying communities (communicide) or their impact on climate change. Beyond Extreme Energy, which is organizing the event, will not only be going to FERC but also to the homes of FERC commissioners to hold them personally accountable. Twenty-one front line communities will be holding their own events and activists will also be targeting corporations involved in oil and gas in DC.
Last week, the Chair of FERC, Norman Bay was interrupted when he was giving a speech in Albany, NY and was forced to flee from the stage. He was speaking to the Independent Power Producers of New York. The reason FERC rubber stamps all carbon infrastructure projects is because this federal agency is completely funded by the industry. Permits and licensing fees pay the salaries of the commissioners and all the costs of the agency. It is a recipe for corruption-based conflict of interests and leads to FERC working with the industry and against the interests of communities and people. FERC is an agency that either needs to undergo a complete transformation so that it works toward a clean energy economy or it needs to be closed down.
What FERC and the industry do not understand is that people are fighting for their communities, really for their lives. People know they suffer from illness because of the pollution from oil and gas. In Philadelphia a Right to Breathe protest opposing a Navy Yard being turned into a import and export terminal for oil was held last week. One protester talked about how she has been having breathing problems for years because of the pollution that already exists. Protesters pointed out that there would be more jobs for the local economy if they built clean sustainable energy instead.
Protests on the frontlines by communities impacted by carbon infrastructure are becoming too big to ignore. They are “growing more consistent in recent years with almost every pipeline, compressor station, export terminal or extreme extraction like fracking or tar sands being protested.” A 2015 survey of pipeline companies found that protests are the most significant barrier to pipeline construction. The movement realizes that all of these projects are connected and that a victory in one part of the country energizes other communities. And, activists realize the the claim that gas was a bridge to a clean energy future is a lie, methane gas is a serious polluter and fracking damages water and air; further gas is a competitor to a clean energy future. Investing in carbon infrastructure means it will be used for a generation and that investment should go to creating energy from sun, wind and water instead.
Pipeline and other gas infrastructure corporations are resorting to new approaches to stop communities from standing up for their rights. In Charlotte, NC this week the Utilities Commission, which like most energy ‘regulators’ is controlled by the industry, demanded a $10 million bond for possible damages from NC WARN, a community and environmental group, if they are going to continue to challenge the permit for a gas infrastructure project. This blocking of their ability to protest and participate in decision making is likely to be challenged in court. Also, this week a professor who bought two parcels at an oil & gas auction was removed from her job at the University of Utah.
In another example, the anti-environmentalist front group America Rising Squared announced plans to target climate activists with trackers and video cameras. This intimidation tactic was announced just before the Break Free campaign of resistance began. Bill McKibben, rather than being intimidated, said he was “flattered” by their attention and how they showed “the lengths they will go to avoid talking about the greatest issue of our time, their ongoing wreckage of the planet’s climate, and in the process so many of its people.”
New Ways To See The Climate Crisis Justify Greater Protest
Lawsuits brought by youth have been arguing that the future they are inheriting includes a destroyed environment. A series of state, federal, and international cases brought against governments and the oil and gas industry have been supported by Our Children’s Trust claiming there is a “public trust” in the future of the planet that is being threatened by climate change and seeking to protect future generations. A public trust is a doctrine that claims the government has an affirmative duty to protect natural resources that are shared by everybody.
An Oregon court denied the motions of the federal government and allowed the case to proceed, framing the issue:
“Plaintiffs are suing the United States … because the government has known for decades that carbon dioxide (C02) pollution has been causing catastrophic climate change and has failed to take necessary action to curtail fossil fuel emissions. Moreover, plaintiffs allege that the government and its agencies have taken action or failed to take action that has resulted in increased carbon pollution through fossil fuel extraction, production, consumption, transportation, and exportation. Plaintiffs allege the current actions and omissions of defendants make it extremely difficult for plaintiffs to protect their vital natural systems and a livable world. Plaintiffs assert the actions and omissions of defendants that increased C02 emissions ‘shock the conscience,’ and are infringing the plaintiffs’ right to life and liberty in violation of their substantive due process rights.”
In May a Washington state superior court ruled that the State of Washington’s Department of Ecology must put in place an emissions reduction rule by the end of 2016 and make recommendations to the state legislature on science-based greenhouse gas reductions in the 2017 legislative session. Judge Hollis Hill said the climate crisis “is an urgent situation…these kids can’t wait.” He concluded the state has a “mandatory duty” to “preserve, protect, and enhance the air quality for the current and future generations,” and found the state’s current standards to fail that standard . . .”
At the same time ExxonMobil is being sued for not taking any action even though they were aware of the threat their product posed to climate change and the future of the planet. ExxonMobil is accused of attempting to subvert the science on climate by funding outside groups that sought to undermine climate science, even as its in-house scientists were outlining the potential consequences. Investigations are ongoing by the federal government, New York, California and other states and are reminiscent of the cases brought against the tobacco companies for trying to undermine science on cigarettes causing cancer. This week ExxonMobil resisted a demand for records from the attorney general of Virgin Islands for 40 years of records on climate in a case where they are investigating whether the company violated anti-racketeering laws.
While courts are beginning to recognize the climate crisis, the governments of the world are doing so as well. Last month was the ceremonial signing of the Paris agreement, which is recognized by experts as inadequate to face the climate crisis. The absurdity of inadequate leadership is seen when government’s recognize a collective responsibility to keep total warming somewhere below 1.5 degrees Celsius, but in February we were at 2 degrees Celsius. Governments are demanding too little, too late.
All of this leads to the inevitable conclusion that our job is to turn the climate crisis into a political crisis that forces the corruption of the oil and gas industry into the open and shames governments for their failure to act on an urgent situation that threatens life on the planet as we know it. The failure of the political and economic systems to respond as quickly and strongly as needed puts the responsibility on people to resist oil and gas exploration, carbon infrastructure and continued reliance on dirty energy that is destroying the planet. The reality we face justifies resistance and disobedience to do all we can to slow or stop the use of carbon energy, heighten debate on the reality of the climate crisis and bring climate justice to the forefront of political thought.
This month Grant Township Supervisors in Pennsylvania, a state racked by a fracking-corrupted government, passed a first-in-the-nation law that legalizes direct action to stop frack wastewater injection wells within the Township. According to the law if a court does not uphold the people’s right to stop corporate activities threatening the well-being of the community, the ordinance codifies that, “any natural person may then enforce the rights and prohibitions of the charter through direct action.” Further, the ordinance states that any nonviolent direct action to enforce their Charter is protected, “prohibit[ing] any private or public actor from bringing criminal charges or filing any civil or other criminal action against those participating in nonviolent direct action.”
Escalation Is Justified, We Can Win
The deep corruption in the current economy and in government requires people to act. The choice is between moving as rapidly as possible to 100% renewables or facing climate chaos. Making the transition to clean energy needs to be about transformative change on many fronts — how people relate to the planet, how we use energy more efficiently and create lifestyles more consistent with the realities of the environment and limitations of the planet as well as about our voracious economy based on ever growing capitalist thinking.
This week, the world passed the 400 parts per million of CO2 threshold, which means that we need to start planning to go beyond carbon neutral to carbon negative within the next few decades. That requires facing up to the destructive approaches that have developed in agriculture such as monocultures and factory farming. Research shows that regenerative agriculture not only sequesters carbon, removing it from the atmosphere, but also makes food healthier, reduces air and water pollution caused by mass agri-business and moves us to a regenerative economy which can help save the environment.
Progress is being made on all these fronts. Global investment in coal and gas-fired power generation plants fell to less than half that of renewable energy generation last year, a record year for clean energy. It was also the first time that renewable energy made up a majority of all the new electricity generation capacity under construction around the world. China alone accounted for 36% of the global total. In the US, although investment was up by a fifth to $44bn, it was still less than half of China’s. Europe bucked these trends and actually went backward, decreasing investment in clean energy by a fifth. Globally, solar had a 12% increase and wind had a 4% increase.
Solar continues to make market breakthroughs in the United States, setting a record in the last quarter of 2015 and solar and wind were the largest source of new energy for the last two years. Domestically, the market is projected to grow 25% to 50% this year and global projections are at 30%. And, we may be on the verge of a major new breakthrough in solar technology that will move us from inefficient and expensive silicon to perovskite, a light-sensitive crystal that has the potential to be more efficient, inexpensive, and versatile than all other existing solar solutions. This is one of many technological breakthroughs helping to drive the transformation more quickly. As Peter Diamandis writes: “In the next 20 years, between 50 percent to 100 percent of the world’s energy production could come from solar.”
Also this week a study by the Stockholm Environment Institute found that we could cut carbon emissions by 100M tons by 2030 by phasing out leases on federal lands for fossil fuels. This means ceasing to issue new leases for fossil fuel extraction on federal lands and waters, and avoiding renewals of existing leases for resources that are not yet producing. This is how the federal government can act consistently with the goals of the Paris Treaty and make keeping it in the ground a reality.
This week, after a five-year struggle that engaged hundreds of thousands of people, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers issued a landmark decision to deny federal permits for the biggest proposed coal export terminal in North America. This decision also recognized the rights of Indigenous peoples and honored treaty obligations.
There is a growing climate movement that is having an impact. It is stopping pipelines, compressor stations, export terminals and stopping the leasing of federal lands for more extreme extraction of dirty energy. We are transforming the economy to clean energy with rapid expansion of wind and solar. People are challenging the voracious, capitalist economy the puts profits before people and planet. We are winning and we will win even bigger victories if we keep building the movement, mobilizing people and refusing to compromise on the essential issue of climate justice. It is time to break free of fossil fuels.