The biggest meeting on the issue of fracking for shale gas to be held in the UK will take place in Manchester on Saturday in an attempt to set up a broad nationwide coalition to stop the controversial practice.
Protest groups have been set up in areas currently affected by shale gas exploration activities or likely to be the sites of fracking in future.
But anti-fracking campaigners want to step up the pace of their protests as support for shale gas grows rapidly in some political circles.
The concerns over fracking follow its widespread use in the US over the last few years. Environmentalists say it has caused contamination of water supplies, gas leaks and the despoliation of the countryside over wide areas.
They want to ensure that similarly destructive practices do not take hold in the UK. Green groups also fear that an over-emphasis on gas will put carbon-cutting targets far out of reach – some research even suggests that shale gas from fracking produces more greenhouse gas emissions than coal when burned – and will crowd out investment in renewable forms of energy.
But Cuadrilla, the only UK company currently engaged in fracking, argues that the bad examples of the US would not apply in the UK, where the industry is more tightly regulated.
The company has invited people to its site and says its equipment and methods are of a higher standard than those that have caused problems in the US.
All fracking operations for shale gas in the UK are currently suspended, pending scientific evaluation of two small earthquakes in the Blackpool area last year that, according to a report from European seismic experts, were directly linked to fracking operations in the area.
U.S. Supreme Court to Review Apache Stronghold’s Case on Nov. 22, 2024
For Immediate Release: November 7, 2024
Media Contact: Ryan Colby | media@becketlaw.org | 202-349-7219
WASHINGTON – A coalition of Western Apaches, other Native peoples, and non-Native allies yesterday asked the Supreme Court to reject plans by the federal government and a multinational mining giant to destroy a sacred site where Apaches have held religious ceremonies for centuries. In Apache Stronghold v. United States, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals refused to stop the federal government from transferring Oak Flat to Resolution Copper, a foreign-owned mining company that plans to turn the site into a massive mining crater, ending Apache religious practices forever (Watch this short video to learn more). The latest Supreme Court filing rebuts the government’s argument that religious freedom protections in the U.S. Constitution and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) do not apply on federally controlled land.
Since time immemorial, Western Apaches and other Native peoples have gathered at Oak Flat, outside of present-day Superior, Arizona, for sacred religious ceremonies that cannot take place anywhere else. Known in Apache as Chi’chil Biłdagoteel, Oak Flat is listed in the National Register of Historic Places and has been protected from mining and other harmful practices for decades. These protections were targeted in December 2014 when a last-minute provision was slipped into a must-pass defense bill authorizing the transfer of Oak Flat to the Resolution Copper company. Resolution plans to turn the sacred site into a two- mile-wide and 1,100-foot-deep crater. The majority owner of Resolution Copper, Rio Tinto, sparked international outrage when it deliberately destroyed 46,000-year-old Indigenous rock shelters at one of Australia’s most significant cultural sites.
“Oak Flat is our spiritual lifeblood—like Mt. Sinai for Jews or Mecca for Muslims—the sacred place where generations of Apache have connected with our Creator,” said Dr. Wendsler Nosie Sr. of Apache Stronghold. “The government should protect Oak Flat just like it protects the sacred places of all other faiths in this country—not give it to a foreign-owned mining company for destruction.”
Apache Stronghold—a coalition of Apaches, other Native peoples, and non-Native allies—filed this lawsuit in January 2021 seeking to halt the proposed mine at Oak Flat. The mine is opposed by 21 of 22 federally recognized tribal nations in Arizona, by the National Congress of American Indians, and by a diverse coalition of religious denominations, civil-rights organizations, and legal experts. Meanwhile, national polling indicates that 74% of Americans support protecting Oak Flat. The Ninth Circuit ruled earlier this year that the land transfer is not subject to federal laws protecting religious freedom. But five judges dissented, writing that the court “tragically err[ed]” by refusing to protect Oak Flat.
“Blasting the birthplace of Apache religion into oblivion would be an egregious violation of our nation’s promise of religious freedom for people of all faiths,” said Luke Goodrich, vice president and senior counsel at Becket. “The Supreme Court has a strong track record of protecting religious freedom, and we expect the Court to take this case and confirm that Native American religious practices are fully protected by federal law.”
In addition to Becket, Apache Stronghold is represented by Erin Murphy of Clement & Murphy PLLC, Professor Stephanie Barclay of Georgetown Law School, and attorneys Michael V. Nixon and Clifford Levenson.
Apache Stronghold v. United States is one of the most significant decisions pending the U.S. Supreme Court. To allow Resolution Copper/Rio Tinto to destroy sacred Oak Flat would be like destroying St. Patrick’s Cathedral to put up a McDonald’s just in time for Christmas. The masses (no pun intended) of people would go ape shit cray-cray. Resolution Copper/Rio Tinto is capable of such atrocities; may enough of the judges show true heart-mind and make the right-wise decision in favor of Apache Stronghold and the well-being and balance of the Earth. – Mankh
An example of what Rio Tinto has done… Simandou, Guinea, “with over two billion tonnes of reserves and some of the highest grades [iron ore] in the industry (66% – 68% Fe which attracts premium pricing), has a back-of-the-envelope calculation value of around $110 billion at today’s prices.”
A crowd of 3,000 anti-tourism protesters descended on posh downtown Barcelona last July, their demeanor one of delighted malice. They cordoned off hotels and eateries with hazard tape, as if demarcating a crime scene. They sprayed with water guns the blithe holidaymakers seated in restaurants. Video footage showed unhappy couples and glowering young men chased from their seats by the mob, stunned at the indignity.
The protesters shouted, “Tourists go home.” They held signs that said, “Barcelona is not for sale.” They spoke of “mass touristification” and inveighed against the greed of restaurateurs and hoteliers and Airbnb landlords profiting from the madding crowd while the average Catalan struggled to meet the skyrocketing costs of daily life. One of the protesters told an interviewer, “The city has turned completely for tourists. What we want is a city for citizens.”
The revolt in Spain — resident population 47 million; yearly visitation 85 million — is no outlier in the hypervisited destination countries of Europe. In Greece and Italy, for example, residents also rose up this year to say they will accept no more the invasion of their native ground, as mass visitation strains to the breaking point infrastructure, natural resources – especially water – and, at last, social sanity.
It’s the culmination of years of exploitation and maltreatment, said writer Chris Christou, who produces “The End of Tourism” podcast. “In the last decade, especially in southern Europe,” Christou told me in an email, “we’ve seen local movements sprout and mobilize —typically from the grassroots Left — against the relentless conversion of home into a veritable theme park for ignorant foreigners.” Christou has documented the industry’s long train of offenses: environmental degradation; cultural appropriation and what he calls petrification (“the stasis or congealing of culture’s flow or growth”); spiraling economic inequality; the Airbnbization of dwelling; gentrification and displacement; corporate and government nepotism; the revolving door of corruption between tourism bureaus and industry; the rise of an extremely precarious labor force; and, not least, “the spectacled surveillance of place that effectively turns home, for local residents, into a turnstile Disneyland.”
Mainstream media during the summer figured out there was a story here. In the New York Times, the Guardian, Bloomberg, Forbes, and Reuters, the scourge of “overtourism” made headlines for the first time. The images of thronged locales published across the web and in newspapers had the quality of Hieronymous Bosch’s paintings of hell: people piling on one another, grasping, motioning, their forms indistinguishable, as the newly empowered consumers of the burgeoning global middle-class swarm across Earth in record numbers.
There is no end in sight to this growth, as it appears to be the norm of fossil-fueled footloose modernity. In 1950 there were 25 million international tourist arrivals. Twenty years later the number had jumped to 166 million, by 1990 it was 435 million, and by 2018 it hit an all-time pre-Covid high of 1.442 billion. By 2030, almost 2 billion tourist arrivals are projected.
In Barcelona, the big money is not in maintaining a city for citizens but in the flux of Boschian creatures. Some 26 million visitors crammed into Barcelona in 2023 and spent nearly $14 billion. The Barcelona city council and the Catalan government dedicate millions of tax-payer euros to ensure this continual flow through global marketing campaigns that sing the city’s praises.
The pressures from hyper-visitation and the greed of those who profit from it have become so great that residents have formed the Neighborhood Assembly for Tourism Degrowth, whose purpose is to reverse the toxic touristification process. The group’s co-founder, 48-year-old Barcelonan Daniel Pardo, described touristification as “a transformation enacted on a territory and a population” by governments in collusion with commercial interests. He believes that degrowth of tourism means regulating it nearly out of existence.
“It means not only regulating tourism markets but promoting other activities in order to reduce the weight of tourism in the economy of the city,” Pardo told me. Most important is the recognition of the almost pathological dependence on tourism in Barcelona and the many places like it. The city has been shown to be painfully vulnerable to any unexpected crisis that upends travel patterns.
“It happened with Covid,” said Pardo, “happened before that with a terrorist attack, and before that with a volcanic explosion in Iceland.” And it will happen, sooner or later, because of the climate crisis and unleashed geopolitical chaos. “Better than keeping on the tourism wheel, which smashes lives, territory and environment, let’s plan a transition process for Barcelona which reduces this risky dependance,” Pardo told me. “How? Not easy to say, since nobody is trying that almost anywhere.”
One place to start is with the ideological error in how we think of leisure travel as a right rather than a privilege.
“The right to fly does not exist. The right to tourism does not exist,” said Pardo recently on the End of Tourism podcast. “You cannot extend a model of tourism everybody thinks about to all the population. It’s impossible.” Pardo added in an email to me that the central issue is “about the limits of the planet, something so many people absolutely do not want to hear about.”
The tourism explosion can reasonably be explained by the IPAT math formula used in the ecological sciences. Intended to measure how endless growth of modern industrial civilization strains a finite Earth, the formula states that impact equals population times affluence times technology.
With IPAT in mind, one could argue that too many would-be travelers with newly acquired affluence have access to new technologies. Easy online bookings and guides, smartphones in general for facilitating and smoothing the travel experience, high-quality digital photography and video equipment made available for use by amateurs on social media, with its influencers driving place-based envy and desire — all this combines in a noxious stew on an overpopulated planet of societies abased by lust for money.
***
I have watched the touristification process wreck lives in an American city I once considered a place to settle and raise a family. Moab, Utah, is called “the adventure capital of the world,” and the hordes converge on it for exploration of the surrounding desert wildernesses on vast public lands that include two legendary national parks, Arches and Canyonlands. In the last 20 years, the city has become a nightmare of hypervisitation. The Utah state government and a cabal of elites – landowners, businesspeople, speculators, moneylenders, rentiers – have joined to market Moab across the United States and globally so that huge profits can be reaped from a harvest of ever-increasing numbers of tourists.
The effect is no different from that in Barcelona, especially in the spawning of a precariat working class in Moab. These are the service-industry peons at the bottom rungs of a system of economic inequality that has only worsened with hypervisitation. Many are driven out of town by the high cost of living and end up car-camping on public lands, where they are vulnerable to predation. Such was the case of Kylen Schulte and Crystal Turner, a gay couple described as “deeply in love” and who lived out of their car, who were stalked and murdered in August 2021. As my friend Laurel Hagen, attorney and long-time Moab resident and mother of two young children, put it to me, “Moab’s people are being fed slowly but surely to the tourism Moloch.”
The beneficiaries are also the same as in Barcelona. “Those who benefit the most from hypertourism,” Jon Kovash, a writer and radio journalist in Moab, told me, “are the hedge funders engaged in raping the town. Anybody selling gasoline or liquor or restaurant food. Realtors and land pimps. The internet lodging industry.” Kovash also includes in this list of villains what he calls the “adventure scammers.” These are the businesspeople who seek to convince the public of the need for paid guides or expensive mechanized rent-a-toys to get into the backcountry, when all one needs really is boots, backpack, a compass and map and a modicum of courage. (I lived in Moab for several years and spent glorious times in the backcountry without spending a nickel.)
Moab’s citizens are today under assault “like never before” – so longtime friends in town tell me – with the arrival of the UTV tour industry. Utility task vehicles, or “side-by-sides,” are small, powerful four-wheel-drive autos designed for aggressive driving both off-road and on. Piston, camshaft, clutch, gearbox, and various belts produce extraordinarily high levels of noise. Renting a UTV to tear about Moab and into the surrounding desert at full blast has become the thing to do.
“People in Moab should be defending their homes against UTV colonization and the violence of noise pollution,” Christian Wright, an author and former National Park Service historian, told me when I first met him in 2022. Wright, who in 2019 published a book about radicalized “miners for democracy” in the coal towns of the American West, had himself been radicalized by the torture of years of living around UTVs in Moab. The machines, he said, “are destroying the peace, harmony, and friendliness that once characterized Moab Valley. Do we not have mountains of evidence that the constant noise leads to elevated heart rates, discontentment, and unprecedentedly colorful manifestations of language?”
The problem became so widespread that some Moabites, who happened to be parents dealing with infants terrified of the sound of the machines, described UTV tourism as a danger to the health of children. Jon Kovash and his daughter Josie Kovash, who lived a few blocks from her dad and was herself a new mother, produced a radio documentary in 2021 cataloging the complaints of besieged residents.
None of these concerns were aired in a political vacuum. Officials of Grand County, of which Moab is the seat, noted that their offices had in recent years received more complaints about noise than about any other issue. According to former Grand County prosecutor Christina Sloan, the impacts on residents included “stress-related illnesses, high blood pressure, hearing loss, sleep disruption and lost productivity,” along with “feelings of isolation,” “lowered morale” and “emotional trauma.”
Acting on these concerns of the great majority of Moabites, the city in 2021 placed restrictions on UTV businesses and daily tours, setting up an enforcement system to reduce noise levels – only to see the Utah state legislature, friend to the industry, kill the local ordinances with passage in 2022 of an extraordinary bill that appeared to violate municipal sovereignty. The infamous Blue Ribbon Coalition, a rightwing astroturf lobby group funded by fossil fuel companies and auto manufacturers, joined the fray with the filing of a lawsuit against the city of Moab for the attempt at regulation. Christina Sloan declared the 2022 pro-UTV bill “an illegal restraint on county and municipal constitutional police power. ” It turns out Utah is now the only state in the union that has made UTVs street legal while also prohibiting municipalities from opting out of their use on streets.
Such is the hypocrisy that one finds everywhere across the rightwing American West: local sovereignty is sacrosanct only so long as it doesn’t conflict with industrial profits. In this case, tourism trumped both liberty and democracy.
***
As a global force of havoc in the natural world, tourism is well-known to be “one of the leading sectors with deleterious effects on the environment.” The air travel related to tourism accounts for 8 percent or more of all greenhouse gas emissions. Tourism is anathema to biodiversity, implicated in producing wildlife deserts, as masses of people in animal habitat tend to adrenalize the animals and scatter them while impairing the habitat with dispersed pollutants. Backcountry tourism in Colorado, to take one example, has caused the die-off of elk populations.
Tourism is implicated in diminished freshwater supply for local residents. It increases the chance of contamination from sewage and chemicals, soil erosion from trampling, and the accumulation of waste and air pollution. Craig Downs, a toxicology expert who runs the Haereticus Environmental Laboratory in Virginia, has found that sunscreen effluent from mass tourism produces “a cascade of insults to the ecological structure” of both marine and freshwater ecosystems, reducing the life cycle viability of aquatic wildlife – in other words, poisoning the animals to the point they can no longer reproduce.
Tourism is also a source of enormous volumes of noise pollution. The effect of noise pollution on human health is well-documented. Over time, it is debilitating to body and mind, and the problem is only getting worse with the growing din of technoindustrial civilization. What about the effect, on a captive population, of the peculiarly grating racket of UTVs? Moab is an experimental site, one resident told me, “to see how people react to the presence of high-pitched whining machines. I think we are guinea pigs and the goal of the experiment is to see how long it takes to drive us nuts.”
Christian Wright, the historian who worked for the National Park Service, was driven almost to the edge. His case, sensationalized and twisted in the media, made headlines across Utah. On February 17, 2023, he was surrounded at a gas station in Moab by heavily armed police. He was arrested, and his house was raided and searched. Police found five AR-15-style assault rifles, along with a stash of psychedelic mushrooms, possession of which made it illegal under Utah law to own the guns. His phones, computers, and hard drives were also seized. Local newspapers declared him a terrorist in waiting.
The evidence marshaled to justify the raid and arrest was that Wright may have participated in a vandalism campaign in which stickers were glued to various public objects in town, including utility poles. The campaign, I later learned, involved numerous Moabites who were posting such stickers. Wright was not some lone nutter. One of the stickers said DEATH TO INDUSTRIAL TOURISM: it burns oil – destroys habitat – low wages – expensive housing. Another said UTV NOISE IS CHILD ABUSE, and another said UTV NOISE IS RAPE CULTURE.
A sticker that Wright gave me as a gift was the old chestnut, DIE YUPPIE SCUM. Another that police allegedly found in their raid of his house was decorated with an image of an assault rifle and stated, DEFEND YOUR HOME, RESIST UTV NOISE HARASSMENT, ABUSIVE TOURISTS & SLC POLITICIANS TAKE NOTE: MOAB IS NOT YOUR WHORE.
I had been corresponding with Wright for close to a year prior to his arrest, and we had become friendly. Nothing in our exchanges suggested he was dangerous to people (though he might have been dangerous to property, which in the United States can be a worse crime). We had gone on long hikes together in the desert backcountry when I visited him in the snowy January of 2023, navigating the treacherous ice of red rock cliffs to collect in our backpacks the plastic detritus – mostly water bottles – that hikers had left in remote canyons of Arches National Park the previous summer. We had gone out boozing at a Moab saloon and had a fine time getting drunk. We played music in his basement, me on his drums, he on piano. He had a punk-rock style, with his mullet and leather jacket. He was aggressive in a gentle way, and a weirdo, and maladjusted (I can relate).
Yet here was Wright, one month later, confined to a holding cell in the Moab city jail, charged with crimes – terroristic threats, illegal possession of assault rifles and drugs – that made him sound like a lunatic ready to burst. It’s true that he had sent Grand County attorney Christina Sloan a letter, in 2022, stating that he wanted to chop up with an ax the owner of a UTV rental company that operated next door to the house he owned in Moab. The unceasing UTV traffic was like a jackhammer in his brain. He made no attempt to communicate with the person he wanted to kill, however, but only told prosecutor Sloan of his intentions – which is not how one usually conducts a death threat.
Sloan herself came to his defense in an article she published following his arrest. “I’ve watched this smart, articulate, engaged, empathetic human fall apart over the last two years,” she said of Wright. “It has made me feel more passionately than ever that noise pollution is a significant public health issue that needs our full attention.” Sloan recalled Wright’s comments on UTV tourism to the Grand County Commission in April 2021, noting that “he and his mullet were vibrant and refreshing.” Wright, she said, “articulately countered the pro-[UTV] conservative talking points hailing the supremacy of the American dollar above all else.”
Not long after his arrest, Wright was remanded for four months to a mental health facility in Utah, where he was treated for post-traumatic stress disorder. He appreciated the care from the loving staff but didn’t enjoy being regarded as a “terrorist” based on slander spread by Moab authorities. As of this writing, he is back in his home, and most of the charges against him have been dropped.
***
The conflict over hyper-visitation plays out wherever there are lovely places that people want to consume as travelers. In my backyard, on the highlands along the Hudson River valley north of New York City, a man named Dave Merandy, ex-mayor of the touristed village of Cold Spring, is fighting to stop the flood of people on his home ground.
The Hudson Highlands is a major draw with its green hills and handsome cliffs that afford scenic views of the wide Hudson. The area already attracts hundreds of thousands of people a year. Merandy, who stepped down as mayor of Cold Spring in 2021 after seven years of service, is a leader in the opposition to a planned expansion of tourism amenities that will likely increase the number of visitors in the Highlands to more than a million per annum. Known as the Fjord Trail project, the expansion is supported by the New York State government, numerous environmental NGOs, and a friendly neighborhood billionaire named Chris Davis, heir to a Wall Street fortune who considers himself the lord over the commoners in this stretch of rural New York.
Why stop the growth of tourism in the Highlands? “Because we already have enough,” Merandy told me during a visit at his house. “We don’t need more people.” He understood with clear eyes that the conflict was part of a global problem. “Nobody wants to address overpopulation. Everybody thinks it’s sustainable. We think we can just keep growing and growing. It’s crazy. This is a case where we want to have as many people as possible. You only have X amount of acres that can sustain a certain number of people. But then we tell ourselves, just bring them in, more and more and more. Put up a neon light, have a ribbon cutting, and everybody will say Chris Davis the billionaire is a hero.“
After I left Merandy, I stopped at a busy intersection on Route 9, in the town of Fishkill, where a masked man stood in the median in a black robe that whipped in the wind of the passing cars. He wore the infamous Scream mask and a big analog clock around his neck. This, obviously, was the Grim Reaper. I stopped to ask him what he was doing. “I’m Death,” he said. “And I’m reminding people they’re going to die.”
It struck me that, yes, lots of us are going to die a lot sooner than we expect if the growthist monster isn’t stopped. Climate change and ecological collapse, driven by overpopulation coupled with affluence-seeking, will kill out not only the beautiful wild things worth keeping on this planet but also a large part of humanity that hasn’t the money to buy its way out of collapse.
The place to build opposition to the monster is in your backyard, where the consequences are most painfully felt. En revanche, the prostitutes of business-as-usual – say, the billionaire lords up in the manor – will curse and slander you, declare you reactionary, the enemy of “progress,” and, perhaps worst of all, a nimby, somebody who wants selfishly to keep the backyard all to yourself. Merandy, who grew up in the Highlands and learned there a love of nature, has been called all these things, as have the resisters in Barcelona and Moab.
Wright and Merandy and the Barcelonans armed with water guns are all engaged in the same fight in defense of the place they call home. They have the right and the duty to take their stand. And history will prove them to be honorable. Those who oppose mass tourism today are in fact doing a service for humanity tomorrow. The reality is that travel as we know it will have to end if society is to meet the reductions in carbon emissions to keep warming below catastrophic levels. The tourism industry – along with the billions who see an exotic vacation in their near future – will not accept that judgment.
An abridged version of this piece first appeared at Truthdig.
Under the banner Oil Kills, small groups of activists have occupied airport departure lounges, plane cabins, terminals, tarmacs and roads across three continents — and they aren’t done yet. Here are the numbers so far: 500 people, 31 airports, 22 groups, 166 arrests, 42 people on remand in prison — all in support of their one demand.
The coalition formed when members of Extinction Rebellion, the A22 Network and Stay Grounded began reaching out to other groups globally. What resulted was an unprecedented alliance of civil resistance groups focused on the sustained disruption of airports — a key pillar of the fossil fuel economy.
Unifying aims, collective strategy and diverse tactics
All Oil Kills participants are committed to nonviolent direct action and to the central demand, but from there, individual creativity and context has led to an array of actions. The resulting structure is a decentralized yet cohesive power bloc with unified aims that becomes more than the sum of its parts, rather than a lowest common denominator coalition.
Each participating group has adopted the central demand that governments must work together to establish a legally binding treaty to stop extracting and burning oil, gas and coal by 2030, as well as supporting and financing poorer countries to make a fast, fair and just transition. But each local group also brings its own unique knowledge and demands which are in turn supported by the coalition. Futuro Vegetal in Spain, for example, focuses on the imperative to adopt a plant-based agri-food system while Students Against EACOP in Uganda demand a stop to the East African Crude Oil Pipeline — and all stand in solidarity with one another.
Each group also brings its own creative tactics, from airport glue-ins, to plane occupations, to spray-painting terminals, to street marches. “The airports don’t know what to expect because we don’t even know exactly what to expect from each other — it’s beautiful and effective,” said a coalition member who requested to remain anonymous for legal reasons.
On Aug. 9, Students Against EACOP in Uganda joined the Oil Kills campaign, planning a peaceful march to the parliament in Kampala and the delivery of a petition demanding an end to the East African Crude Oil Pipeline, and for their government to sign the treaty to end fossil fuels.
Kamya Carlos, a student at Kyambogo University and spokesperson for Students Against EACOP, connects the inequitable and ecocidal nature of today’s airline industry to its origins in neocolonial extractivism. “New oil, gas and coal infrastructure continues to exacerbate the climate crisis. As the global temperatures hit their tipping points it is clear that projects such as the East African Crude Oil Pipeline should never be constructed in the first place,” he said. “These projects, which end up being used almost exclusively by rich people and polluting the atmosphere, should never be allowed by right thinking members of society. We demand the government to sign a fossil free treaty and call an end to EACOP.”
Even though police repression represents a major threat, on Aug. 27, 20 climate activists and persons affected by the oil pipeline came back out in another peaceful march to petition Uganda’s Ministry of Energy. They were again violently dragged from the street by police in fatigues and held on remand until Sept. 6, when the court finally granted their release on bail. All 20 have been ordered to appear for a hearing on Nov. 12.
“The resilience under extreme repression shown by Students Against EACOP is an inspiration and metaphor for the Oil Kills movement,” said Jamie McGonagill, an Oil Kills member from XR Boston. “We refuse to die.”
You can’t arrest a rising sea
As of this writing, 22 Oil Kills activists remain in custody in Uganda, six in Germany and 14 in the U.K. Speaking to the increasing criminalization of dissent, McGonagill explained that “draconian responses that imprison nonviolent climate activists, especially as we’ve seen lately in the U.K. and in Uganda, show that the authorities misunderstand us. They will not stop us. We will just get more and more creative.”
Oil Kills is not alone in facing repression. On Aug. 8 in New York City, a 63-year-old grandfather and professional cellist, John Mark Rozendaal, was arrested and hit with a criminal contempt charge, carrying a maximum sentence of seven years in jail, for performing Bach’s “Suites for Cello” at Citibank’s headquarters. Rozendaal was participating in the Summer of Heat campaign to pressure Citibank to divest from fossil fuels through sustained nonviolent civil disobedience. Connecting this case to the burgeoning international movement, U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders Mary Lawlor, in following Rozendaal’s case, has expressed her “strong concern” at the severity of the charges.
In a disturbing trend that has become the new normal in Italy, peaceful eco-activists are being branded a “danger to security and public order,” served with specious charges, banned from cities without trial, and criminalized under anti-terrorist laws intended to prosecute the Mafia.
Last week in the U.K., several high profile journalists and activists affiliated with the movement for Palestinian liberation were arrested in a sweep by counter-terrorism police for their opposition to genocide. They have been held under Section 12 of the U.K.’s Terrorism Act, which outlaws support for a “proscribed organization.” Such an application of the law would mean that you can go to jail for 14 years for expressing an opinion.
XR NYC organizer Meg Starr, a long-time Puerto Rican solidarity activist and coordinator of the XR Allies sub-circle, noted that the links between genocide and ecocide — in Palestine and elsewhere — are becoming clearer and more important to emphasize. “Our targeting of Citibank,” Starr commented, “included a focus on Citi’s major support of the Israeli military as part of their role as the world’s leading financier of oil and gas expansion.”
“Repression is not a gradual process, it leaps out at you and takes you off guard,” he warned from his prison cell. “Do you remember the Solidarity leaders in Poland? They were invited into talks with the Polish government but when they got to the meeting, they were arrested in one fell swoop and imprisoned for years. You don’t think it will happen to you and then it does.”
Hallam’s message is that we can expect more repression, but that authorities must also expect more resistance. “You can’t negotiate with physics, with a thousand peer-reviewed articles,” he wrote. “Just Stop Oil reminds us what resistance, that far-off folk memory relegated to Netflix, actually looks like in the present moment. Thousands of arrests, hundreds of imprisonments and a five-year sentence for making a speech.”
In a statement announcing a pause in international actions to allow politicians to consider their demands, Oil Kills echoed the realism of Hallam’s framing. “The facts are clear, we are flying towards the obliteration of everything we know and love. Continuing to extract and burn oil, gas and coal is an act of war against humanity. …To know these facts and yet to have no plan to end the extraction and burning of oil, gas and coal is reckless and immoral.”
They point out that while activists sounding the alarm and demanding change are increasingly criminalized, our politicians are actually the ones who are complicit in the greatest crime in human history. “Whether those in charge realize that they are engaging in genocide is not the question. For this is how it will be seen by the next generation and all future generations,” Oil Kills warned. “For now we are taking a pause, but governments must take heed: you cannot arrest your way out of this, just as you cannot imprison a flood or serve injunctions on a wildfire.”
Oppose oil injustice, propose mobility justice
Stay Grounded is a network of individuals, local airport opposition and climate justice groups, NGOs, trade unions, initiatives fostering alternatives to aviation like night trains and organizations supporting communities that struggle against offset or projects to develop so-called “sustainable aviation fuels.” Importantly, Stay Grounded goes beyond affirming the conclusion that business as usual is not an option, and stands for a 13-step program to transform transport, society and the economy to be just and environmentally sound.
“Flying is the fastest way to fry the planet so it’s key to start by cutting pointless and unfair flights like private jets or short haul flights,” said Inês Teles, a spokesperson for Stay Grounded and an Oil Kills member. “Our actions disrupting airports should be a shock to the system that is driving us towards climate catastrophe.”
In summary, Stay Grounded’s program begins with a positive vision for justice. It includes advice for achieving a just transition, shifting to other modes of transportation, developing economies of short distances and changed modes of living, as well as strong political commitments for land rights, human rights and climate justice.
Their program then details what must be avoided — obvious yet important items like growing the harmful air travel industry, including infrastructure expansion, loopholes and privileges for aviation, and common greenwashing pitfalls like carbon offsetting, biofuels, and illusory technocentric fixes.
Though Stay Grounded’s aims are more specific to the air travel industry than Oil Kills’ unifying demand for a treaty to end fossil fuels by 2030, coalition members are able to build on these positive aims, utilizing leadership from frontline communities affected by the air travel industry. Sharing and even cross-pollinating pro-social and ecologically healthy programs, in addition to opposing destructive practices, has been an effective way of galvanizing and sustaining support across diverse movements and communities.
Covering activism isn’t activist
The choice to focus on disrupting the air travel industry in order to pressure governments to adopt a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty is as bold as the demand itself. Much of the media’s reaction so far has been unsurprisingly harsh, condemning the disruptions as “not the right way to do it.” Very little critical analysis has been audible above the din, but that doesn’t mean critical analysis isn’t happening.
It turns out, if you actually listen to them, that Oil Kills activists take strategy extremely seriously — after all, they’re knowingly putting their own freedom on the line through their actions. That is not a decision to be taken lightly, especially in today’s legal context. While news coverage of their “stunts” has circulated widely, what about the reasons behind their actions and assessments of their impact?
Covering climate activism well is a critical part of getting the climate story right. Too often journalism focuses on protesters’ tactics and not the problems they’re drawing attention to or the arguments they’re making. In a recent roundtable discussion, author, journalist and activist Bill McKibben urged fellow journalists to consider that, “we can serve our audiences better, treating activists as the newsmakers they are, rigorously evaluating their arguments as we would a public official.”
Journalists often shy away from foregrounding activists as sources of information and analysis for fear of being perceived to be more “activist” than “objective.” This framing is entirely misleading however, and can more accurately be explained as the pressure to avoid platforming those seeking to change the system in deference to those whose position exists to maintain the system. Why is a politician or a business owner an appropriate subject, but not an activist? There is no objectivity in this, but there are salaries and awards.
The myth that journalism must keep activism at arms length also misses the point that many of these ordinary people taking action are some of the best informed on the biggest news story of our time: the climate and ecological emergency. Activists have been speaking on climate science and policy for decades, many have even been personally affected by ecological disaster, but they have been almost exclusively ignored by the mainstream press. After decades of fossil fuel industry gaslighting, it turns out the activists have been right all along. It’s past time to hear these people out as legitimate subjects and newsmakers, able and deserving to speak about their work and their areas of expertise.
Why target air travel?
First, the obvious answer: oil kills. And the air travel industry is very, very oily. Aviation is by far the mode of transport with the biggest climate impact. If aviation was a country, it would be one of the top 10 emitters.
Emissions from aviation are rising more rapidly than any other sector of the economy. The number of aircraft and the number of passenger-miles flown is expected to double over the next 20 years. If left unchecked, they could consume a full quarter of the available carbon budget for limiting temperature rise to 1.5 C.
Second, oil isn’t extracted equitably, burned equitably, and neither does it kill equitably. At the turn of the millennium, less than 5 percent of the world’s population had ever sat in an aircraft. But it is mostly non-flyers who bear the brunt of the climate crisis and the negative effects of airport expansion like land grabbing, noise, particle pollution and health issues. Communities in the Global South that have barely contributed to the crisis are affected most. Indeed, well before the repression of the Oil Kills coalition, climate activists — especially in Latin America — have faced what is being termed “ecopoliticide”: the targeted and strategic murder of those who dare take action.
Stephen Okwai, a project affected person who has joined the movement to stop the EACOP pipeline in Uganda, feels there is now greater risk in inaction than in protesting. A project affected person, or PAP, is a legal term for the people directly affected by land acquisition for a project through loss of part or all of their assets including land, houses, other structures, businesses, crops/trees and other components of livelihoods. They are legally owed compensation, but in the case of Okwai and others affected by EACOP, there has been no such justice.
“Currently most of us in western Uganda are being disturbed,” he explained. “You cannot know when the rain is going to start and when it will stop yet most of these people are farmers. The effect of this oil project is greatly impacted on the people.”
After he was arrested during the Aug. 27 march in Kampala, Robert Pitua, a member of Oil Kills, Students Against EACOP, and a PAP, said that, “Livelihood restoration programs [have been] insufficient, and now we cannot manage to restore the initial livelihoods we had. Most people are given unfair and inadequate compensation.” This structural and planned destruction of hundreds of communities has left PAPs no choice but to resist, and is the source of a common refrain in Students Against EACOP’s demonstrations: “We refuse to die.”
This leads to the third reason to target aviation. The Oil Kills uprising is highlighting that the problem of aviation is part of a bigger story of injustice — it is in fact a pillar helping to hold up a system of injustice. The air travel industry is contrary to the need to eliminate fossil fuel use; it is tied to the military-industrial complex; and it is connected with the undue influence of big business on public policy, including trade, economic development and climate.
“Not only is the air travel industry a cornerstone of globalized fossil capitalism, but it is also a symbol of inequity,” Jamie McGonagill said. “By disrupting a major column of the system, we aim to disrupt the system itself.”
Rather than plentiful data and common sense reasoning, it is more often a powerful underlying consciousness that has spurred many to action. When asked why it was necessary to disrupt air travel across Europe and North America, Just Stop Oil spokespeople replied, “because governments and fossil fuel producers are waging war on humanity. Even so-called climate leaders have continued to approve new oil, gas and coal projects pushing the world closer to global catastrophe and condemning hundreds of millions to death.”
The Oil Kills coalition has rallied around reality with the seriousness it deserves, refusing dystopia by disrupting it, and demanding a clear and urgent path towards repair. “Our leaders from wealthier countries must seek a negotiating mandate for an emergency Fossil Fuel Treaty,” said coalition members in an Aug. 14 statement. “They also need to immediately finance and support poorer countries to make a fast, fair and just transition.”
If increased media attention on the climate and ecological emergency is any indicator of success, and it is, the Oil Kills uprising is punching well above its weight. “Oil Kills” was mentioned over 2,900 times in the press during the first week of the campaign. The Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty initiative has also never attracted so much media attention worldwide, with an increase of over 1,000 percent in mentions from the week prior to the campaign’s launch. Oil Kills actions drew comments from politicians, government officials and from the vice president of Norwegian oil giant, Equinor. For only 500 people spread out over three continents, they have indeed been hard to ignore.
It is true, not all publicity is created equal — but pleasing the general public is not always the priority. In a recent article, Mark Engler and Paul Engler, coauthors of “This is an Uprising,” discussed why protest works even when not everyone likes them. They explain that a very common result is that, when asked about a demonstration that makes news headlines, respondents will report sympathy for the protesters’ demands, but they will express distaste for the tactics deployed. They will see the activists themselves as too noisy, impatient and discourteous.
The coauthors, both experienced activists and resistance scholars, point out that this is actually an age-old dynamic, and one addressed eloquently by Martin Luther King Jr. in his renowned 1963 “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” They explain that, “this letter was written not as a response to racist opponents of the movement, but rather to people who professed support for the cause while criticizing demonstrations as ‘untimely’ and deriding direct action methods. ‘Frankly I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was ‘well timed’ in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation,’ King quipped. But confronting these criticisms, he made the case for why the movement’s campaigns were both necessary and effective.”
In a similar vein, Oil Kills participants, like medical student Regina Stephan who recently took action at the Berlin airport with Letzte Generation, feel they have no choice but to act: “Just yesterday, the state of Lower Saxony gave the green light for new gas drilling off Borkum,” Stephan said. “That can’t be true! As long as our decision-makers work hand in hand with the fossil fuel companies and put profit before human life, I’m standing here — on the tarmac — and I can’t help it!”
Joining in this sentiment, Anja Windl, who took action at Stuttgart airport said very succinctly: “As long as our livelihoods are being systematically destroyed, our protests will not stop.”
Importantly, Oil Kills participants are not demanding that everyone utilize the same tactics. Rather, these activists are urging others to join the climate justice movement in diverse ways. Anja continued, “if you also want to campaign for an end to fossil fuels, you don’t have to sit on an airfield like I did: Just come to a Disobedient Assembly near you!”
In recent years, there has been considerable research published that attempts to measure radical flank effects and track the polarizing effects of movements. Mark Engler and Paul Englers’ analysis cautions that, “while there are limits to how much protest impacts can be precisely quantified, the cumulative result of such research, in the words of one literature review, is to point to ‘strong evidence that protests or protest movements can be effective in achieving their desired outcomes,’ and that they can produce ‘positive effects on public opinion, public discourse and voting behavior.’” They conclude that both the historical experience of organizers and recent studies provide backing for the idea that “support for a movement’s issue can grow, even when a majority of people do not particularly like the tactics being used.”
Finally, success cannot be fully measured by public opinion, especially when the strategy is to trouble public consensus. Oil Kills has been very clear that they are not acting in order to sooth or please anyone — they are intentionally sounding the alarm as a way of empowering people to act. By treating the climate crisis as a crisis, and reacting accordingly, activists are, in a sense, giving other people permission to do the same and showing them how. It’s like when someone is real with you and that makes you feel like you can be real too — and we all need to get real, real fast. The spell of complacency is like the tranquilizer that helps walk a cow to slaughter. Oil Kills is shouting, “wake up and live!”
In a debrief by the Oil Kills campaign on Aug. 16, they addressed the public: “it is time to face reality: no one is coming to save us. There is no free pass, no shelter from the coming storm. Our best chance of survival is to resist. To join the growing numbers of ordinary, everyday people, from across the globe who are refusing to stand by while hundreds of millions of innocent people are murdered.”
Offering a pathway forward out of doom, Oil Kill’s messaging has remained crystal clear: “The climate crisis will not end until every single country has phased out fossil fuels, [and] those who bear the greatest responsibility and have the greatest capacity must do the most … In this time of crisis, we expect our governments to work collaboratively, as we have done, and negotiate a Fossil Fuel Treaty to end the war on humanity before we lose everything.”
The next rebellion is coming
Coming back down from the hugeness of our crisis and into ourselves as individuals often causes a feeling of paralysis, especially for the majority of people not yet interconnected within communities of resistance and solidarity. But there have been actions where small groups or even lone activists have held up an Oil Kills banner and received media coverage and support because they are part of a global campaign which can’t be ignored. Every single contribution adds to that.
In a Sept. 6 letter to climate activist prisoners of conscience, Naomi Klein wrote, “In a world that was right-side up, you would be celebrated as the ones who helped break the spell that is setting our world on fire. In truth, your actions could still do that, if enough people know about them.”
It continues to be an urgent and essential task to ensure that more and more people do know about Oil Kills and other manifestations of resistance, but it is also evident that the world’s elites already understand the threat that these actions represent — the threat of mass uprising. That threat is precisely why nonviolent direct action in defense of planetary life is being criminalized so viciously.
Klein continued, “Movements against climate arson are already converging with movements against genocide and unfettered greed. The next wave of rebellion is coming. Along with the tankers, I see it clearly on the horizon.” The Oil Kills uprising and fellow movements around the world have placed their bodies between those tankers and our shared future to say, “here, and no further.”
If enough of us line up behind them, their actions could very well lead the way to an adoption of a treaty to end fossil fuels by 2030 — that remains to be won. What is for certain is that their actions are troubling the autopilot system, disrupting the mechanics of fossil-capital’s death march and creating desperately needed space to pursue alternate routes. Whatever else lies on the horizon, their contributions are already impacting the world in ways we cannot yet know, but will be unlikely to forget.
Editor’s note: Changing the face of a globalist, imperialist organization whose mandate is the equitable exploitation of “the common heritage of mankind” will not stop deep sea mining. We will need to stop the first attempt at enclosure and destruction of the sea floor, by any means necessary. Delegitimize, discredit and scuttle this operation. If you would like to help contact Deep Sea Defenders.
Brazilian oceanographer Leticia Carvalho will be the next secretary-general of the International Seabed Authority (ISA), the U.N.-mandated organization that oversees deep-sea mining activities in international waters. She won the election with 79 votes, while her predecessor, 64-year-old Michael Lodge, who served as the ISA’s secretary-general for two terms, received only 34 votes. Lodge has previously been accused of siding with mining companies, which went against the duty of the ISA secretariat to remain neutral and may have influenced the direction of the prospective deep-sea mining industry.
Carvalho previously told Mongabay that she would work to make the ISA more transparent and rebuild trust within the organization.
Brazilian oceanographer Leticia Carvalho has been named the next secretary-general of the International Seabed Authority (ISA) after winning an election that could change the course of the deep-sea mining industry.
Carvalho, 50, who currently works as an international civil servant for the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), was declared the winner of the race on Aug. 2, the last day of the twenty-ninth assembly meeting of the ISA. She won the election with 79 votes, while her predecessor, 64-year-old Michael Lodge, who served as the ISA’s secretary-general for two terms, received only 34 votes.
Carvalho will begin her term at the ISA, the U.N.-mandated organization that oversees deep-sea mining activities in international waters, in January 2025. She will be the first woman, the first oceanographer, and the first representative from Latin America to serve in this position.
Commercial-scale deep-sea mining has not yet begun anywhere in the world, but mining companies have been pushing for an imminent start of this activity — and Lodge has been accused of doing more than he should to help this process along.
During his time as secretary-general between 2016 and 2024, Lodge pushed for the finalization of a mining code, a set of rules that would allow deep-sea mining exploitation to begin. However, this code was not ultimately finished over his tenure. Lodge has also been accused of advocating for mining companies, which goes against the ISA secretariat’s duty of remaining neutral and keeping the ISA’s processes and procedures unnecessarily opaque. More recently, Lodge was also embroiled in allegations that he misused agency funds and that one of his supporters tried to bribe Carvalho to drop out of the election in exchange for another high-level position within the ISA. Lodge, however, has refuted all of these claims.
In a previous interview with Mongabay, Carvalho said that if elected, she would work to make the ISA more transparent and rebuild trust within the organization.
“For me, the mission of the ISA and the leadership of the ISA is to be a trustee — an honest broker that brings decision-makers together, offering space that belongs to the whole of humankind,” Carvalho told Mongabay in July. “It should offer transparency of its own procedures, on the decision-making processes, on the management of the budgets — all of this.”
One mining company, Canadian-based The Metals Company (TMC), has repeatedly expressed its intention to apply for an exploitation license later this year, even before the mining code is finished. However, Carvalho has said that she believes granting such a license before regulations are in place would be a “source of litigation.”
Advocates of deep-sea mining say seabed minerals are needed to fulfill metal shortages and provide materials for renewable energy technologies like electric car batteries. Yet critics say deep-sea minerals are unnecessary for such technologies and that deep-sea mining could irreparably damage the seabed and overall marine environment.
A Deep-sea Exploration by NOAA. The nodules seen here and strewn across the seafloor were deposited here millions of years ago and grow about 2 millimeters every million years. Image by NOAA.
A recent study in Nature found that polymetallic nodules, metal-rich rocks found on the seafloor, produced a kind of “dark oxygen,” which experts say gives valid reason for slowing down the race to commercially extract nodules from the deep ocean.
During the recent ISA meetings, Austria, Guatemala, Honduras, Malta and Tuvalu joined a group of nations calling for a moratorium or precautionary pause on deep-sea mining. There are now 32 countries calling for such measures.
Matt Gianni, co-founder of the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, a group of NGOs that campaign against deep-sea mining, said he was surprised by the number of country delegates that came to this year’s ISA meeting or sent in their proxy votes for the election, and also that “such a large majority” voted for Carvalho.
“This is a historic moment for the ISA and we congratulate Leticia Carvalho and the government of Brazil [for] her election,” Gianni said in a statement. “The ISA has an opportunity to champion a new way forward for sound ocean governance that prioritizes the precautionary principle and secures the health of the deep sea and its benefits for future generations.”
Elizabeth Claire Alberts is a senior staff writer for Mongabay’s Ocean Desk. Follow her on Twitter @ECAlberts.
