by DGR News Service | Jun 4, 2020 | ANALYSIS, Human Supremacy
Grassroots activist Suzanna Jones observes how even long-time environmentalists can become misled.
Faulty: Bill McKibben’s Crisis Logic
By Suzanna Jones
Vermont has a reputation for producing sturdy New England farm folk – hardscrabble people who lived full lives in challenging conditions. Our neighbors, Frank and Virginia, were prime examples. Living well into their eighties, they never owned a car or a phone, and never went on a vacation; they saved and reused everything, and grew their own food. Despite – or probably because of – the simplicity of their lives, they were happy.
Now there is a different kind of folk in the Green Mountain landscape. You’ll find them rushing to the airport in their hybrid car, smartphone glued to their hands, trying to catch a plane for their vacation abroad. Often well-meaning and ‘progressive’, they tend to look down on people like Frank and Virginia for not being ‘green’ enough. The reality, of course, is that these self-described environmentalists have a far greater impact on the Earth than those older Vermonters did.
Mainstream notions of monetary and career ‘success’ lead us to dismiss simpler ways of life. Unfortunately, this leaves us utterly wedded to the economic system that lies behind all our environmental problems, including climate change.
Crisis Logic
Bill McKibben‘s recent appearance in Hardwick to promote his new book, Falter, got me thinking about this. Back in 2008 McKibben correctly identified our growth-obsessed economy as the source of the ecological collapse we face today, explaining that when the economy grows larger than necessary to meet our basic needs, its social and environmental costs outweigh any benefits.
He pointed out that our consumerist way of life – in which we strive for more no matter how much we already have – is one of the ways corporations keep our bloated economy growing. The irony, he added, is that perennial accumulation does not even make us happy. But now, sadly, McKibben studiously avoids criticizing the very economy he once fingered as the source of our environmental crisis.
During his talk he referred to Exxon’s ‘big lie’: the company knew about climate change long ago but hid the truth. Ironically, McKibben’s presentation did something similar by hiding the fact that his only ‘solution’ to climate change – the rapid transition from fossil fuels to industrial renewables – actually causes astounding environmental damage.
Out of the Back Comes Modernity
Solar power, he said, is “just glass angled at the sun, and out the back comes ‘modernity’.” But solar is much more than just glass. One example? Like wind power, it requires the environmentally devastating – and fossil-fuel based – mining of rare earth metals. And that ‘modernity’ coming out the back? That is the lifestyle that is killing the planet.
McKibben extolled the virtues of Green Mountain Power’s industrial ‘renewable’ developments, failing to mention that GMP sells the Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) from those projects to out-of-state utilities, thereby subsidizing the production of dirty energy elsewhere. He also neglected to say that one of GMP’s parent companies is tar sands giant Enbridge, which owns a $1.5 billion stake in the Dakota Access Pipeline and is currently working to use Vermont as a corridor for future fracked-gas transport.
Therein Lies the Deception
McKibben once claimed that “every turn of the blade” of an industrial wind turbine “reduces fossil fuel consumption somewhere.” When the RECs are sold, however, this is simply untrue. And while the production and installation of every turbine has serious environmental costs, every reduction in consumption really does reduce fossil fuel use somewhere, while simultaneously reducing environmental impacts.
Renewables only make sense in tandem with drastic reductions in energy consumption, and are best implemented through small-scale, grid-free efforts. But what we have instead is corporations continuing to market the psychotic American dream – powered by ‘renewables’! This co-opted response to climate change is no longer about protecting nature from the ever expanding human nightmare, it is about sustaining the comforts and luxuries we feel entitled to. It is business-as-usual disguised as concern for the Earth. It is utterly empty, but it serves the destructive economy.
Though not Mckibben’s intent, this is what he implicitly supports.
Changing the Fuel Does Not Stop Ecocide
Climate change is a crisis, but it is only one of many ways the planet is being destroyed. Changing the fuel that runs the system that is killing the planet is not a solution. An effective response would resemble shifting towards the way Frank and Virginia lived. It won’t look ‘cool’, or stroke the attention-seeking narcissism of social media addicts, but it would have immediate benefits.
That shift will require a major rethinking of our lives and economy; it asks us to have the maturity, courage, humility and wisdom to put nature and her needs first. McKibben deserves credit for sounding the alarm about climate change early on, but now he should tell people the unvarnished truth: that if we cannot sacrifice our comforts, luxuries and rapid mobility because we love this Earth, then there really is no hope.
Suzanna Jones lives off grid on a small farm in Northern Vermont. She has been fighting injustice, destruction of the land, and industrial wind projects for decades and has been arrested several times.
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by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Sep 19, 2018 | Protests & Symbolic Acts
In Solidarity with #NoBayouBridgePipeline National Day of Action
by Ginew
BEMIDJI, Minnesota—Early Tuesday morning, September 18th, a group of indigenous water protectors from the Ginew Collective, raised a tipi and blocked a bridge south of Bemidji, halting work at a construction site for the recently permitted line 3 pipeline. Ginew (Golden Eagle) is a grassroots, frontlines effort led by indigenous women to protect Anishinaabe territory from the destruction of Enbridge’s Line 3 tar sands project.
While the tipi blockade prevented bulldozers and street paving machines from laying down new asphalt over the Mississippi, a local Anishinaabe woman held a water ceremony on the bank of the river offering medicine, prayers and songs. The action took place just miles from 3000 year old Dakota village sites near Lake LaSalle where Clearwater county road 230 crosses the headwaters of the Mississippi River.
One member of Ginew declared “We’re here today protecting our water, our burial sites and standing in solidarity with our brothers and sisters down south who are fighting the Bayou Bridge Pipeline. The Mississippi River begins here in the headwaters, where we are standing right now, and it ends in the Gulf of Mexico, in the bayous, where folks have been fighting against Energy Transfer Partners (ETP) for months, putting their bodies on the line for clean water and safer communities. We’re fighting Enbridge here, a different company that is also invested in ETP. Enbridge wants to cross over 200 water ways and drill under the Mississippi River multiple times to construct Line 3. Enbridge wants to put this new poisonous black snake where the river begins and turn this area into an industrial corridor. They want to poison our seed of hope for clean water and turn us into another alley of cancer.”
Many of the work trucks bore out of state plates, one indigenous woman pointed to the out of state plates and explained that “Extractive industry impacts indigenous peoples first and worst – the men come into our communities to build these destructive projects and we women face increased risks of violence, harassment, and potentially life-threatening assaults while our native communities are jurisdictionally limited in the right to prosecute offenders.”
Another water protector put it simply. “We will make it clear that indigenous territories are not sacrifice zones, and the tar sands machine must stop. Line 3 is Enbridge’s single largest project in the company’s history, and with the cancellation of Energy East and uncertain financial backing of Kinder Morgan and Keystone XL, this has become a fight that could cripple the industry while changing the narrative of indigenous peoples within mainstream society. Standing Rock planted seeds across Turtle Island and the world, we Anishinaabe in what is now known as Minnesota are prepared to fight and to stand side by side with indigenous and non-indigenous peoples alike in our work.”
by DGR News Service | Jun 28, 2018 | Biodiversity & Habitat Destruction, Climate Change, Colonialism & Conquest, Indigenous Autonomy, Obstruction & Occupation
For Immediate Release
June 28, 2018
Activist risks arrest in front of Minnesota Public Utilities Commission Office during its final hearings to permit the Line 3 tar sands pipeline
Contact: Ethan Nuss, (218) 380-9047, stopline3mpls@gmail.com
ST PAUL, MN – A water protector ascended a 25-foot steel tripod structure erected in the street in front of the Public Utility Commission (PUC) office to demonstrate ongoing resistance against Enbridge’s proposed Line 3 tar sands pipeline. Today marks one of the final public hearings held by the PUC on its decision to grant a certificate of need to the controversial pipeline.
All five of the directly affected Objibwe Tribal Nations in Minnesota oppose the dangerous project because of the threat it poses to their fresh water, culturally significant wild rice lakes, and tribal sovereignty. Line 3 will accelerate climate change by bringing carbon-intensive tar sands bitumen from Alberta to refineries in the Midwest. Climate change disproportionately impacts Indigenous and frontline communities across the world. This deadly infrastructure project is another example of the genocidal legacy of colonialism faced by Native peoples and the ecological destruction caused by corporate greed. Water protectors, climate justice advocates, landowners, and faith leaders stand united alongside Native communities against this dangerous pipeline.
At around 7AM CST water protectors blockaded traffic by erecting 25-foot steel poles in a tripod structure on 7th Pl. in front of the PUC offices in downtown Saint Paul, MN. Ben, a 30-year-old Minneapolis resident, ascended the structure and unfurled a banner that reads, “Expect Resistance,” a clear message to Enbridge and the PUC that fierce opposition to this pipeline will continue to grow at every stage.
“If the PUC doesn’t stop Line 3, then we will,” said Ben, suspended from the 25-foot structure in the street in front the PUC. “Today’s action isn’t about me but is a demonstration of the growing resistance to Line 3. ” Ben continued, “We’re taking action in solidarity with Native people, who continue to fight for their existence on occupied land and with people all over the world who resist the desecration of nature by extractive industries.”
For photos and live updates go to: twitter.com/ResistLine3
(Update: the tripod was occupied for three years before being vacated)
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Oct 24, 2017 | Lobbying
Washington, D.C.– Two and half years after asking the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to reverse its decision to permit construction of the “Algonquin” Pipeline Expansion, residents are finally getting their day in court. Ellen Weininger from Westchester County, New York made the trip to DC Circuit Court for oral arguments Thursday. “From its inception Spectra’s massive Algonquin pipeline expansion violated federal law to avoid a full review of its cumulative impacts. While the courts finally hear oral arguments on the case today in D.C., tens of millions of people in New York and across New England, living and working in the pipeline’s path, continue to remain in harm’s way.”
FERC approved the first phase of Spectra Energy’s massive pipeline expansion in March of 2015. The project, dubbed the “Algonquin” Incremental Market Expansion (AIM) was just the first of a three part expansion designed to increase the volume of fracked gas carried by the “Algonquin” system to facilitate export of ‘natural’ gas overseas. From April of 2015 until January 2016 a “Tolling Order” issued by FERC blocked residents from proceeding with legal action to challenge the approval. Since then, residents from New York to Massachusetts have been waiting for their day in court. Today, lawyers representing grassroots organizations, including SAPE, the non-profit organization Riverkeeper, the City of Boston, and the Town of Dedham, MA will present oral arguments in the case.
In the intervening two and a half years much has happened. The AIM segment of the expansion was built despite being fraught with delays and violations of environmental law, plagued by whistleblower accusations of cutting corners to speed up construction. Spectra, parent company of “Algonquin” Transmission was purchased by Canadian oil and gas giant Enbridge, a partner in the Dakota Access Pipeline. The second segment of the expansion, dubbed Atlantic Bridge because it will serve as a “bridge” to carry fracked gas through New England to Canada, was approved by FERC, and just last week, despite missing numerous permits in Massachusetts, Spectra began work in New York and asked FERC to put certain portions into operation. The third segment of the pipeline expansion, Access Northeast, was halted due to an unconstitutional attempt to pass construction costs onto electric ratepayers in Massachusetts.
Despite all of this, residents and environmental groups persisted in their fight to stop Spectra on the grounds that the approval of the AIM project violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and endangered millions living around Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant in Buchanan, NY. “Every day we live with the risk of this pipeline next to the elementary school, the nuclear power plant, the church, and before we can even get our day in court, FERC gives Spectra permission to pick up where they left off with AIM by just changing the project name to Atlantic Bridge. Same pipe, same place, same project,” said Courtney Williams, a resident of Peekskill, NY.
NEPA requires that FERC consider the cumulative environmental impacts of the projects it considers. Challengers contend that the AIM project was merely the first step in a massive expansion of the pipeline, arbitrarily broken into the parts to avoid a full accounting of the impacts it would have. Indeed marketing materials for the projects show they follow-on one another in time and location like pieces of a puzzle, clearly interconnected.
There is precedent for this kind of wrong-doing being overturned in the District Court. In 2015 Delaware Riverkeeper challenged FERC’s approval of the Northeast Upgrade project on the Tennessee Gas Pipeline on the grounds that it didn’t consider the cumulative environmental impacts of other expansion projects being considered at the time. In the case of the “Algonquin” expansion, while the tolling order was in place on the AIM project, Atlantic Bridge was under consideration and Access Northeast was in ‘pre-filing’ with FERC. “All three projects had FERC docket numbers simultaneously. FERC can’t pretend they didn’t know that Spectra intended to enlarge the entire length of the ‘Algonquin’ Pipeline,” said Williams, a scientist and member of SAPE from Peekskill.
The other major concern of New York residents involved in the legal challenge is the proximity of the pipeline to Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant. The new segment of the “Algonquin” Pipeline runs underneath the Indian Point property and passes only 105 feet from critical safety infrastructure at the plant. “The approval of the Spectra AIM project was based on a faulty analysis by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) of the co-location of the gas pipeline and the Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant. FERC ignored Richard Kuprewicz, the nationally recognized pipeline safety expert’s conclusion that the risk of a pipeline rupture could cause a catastrophic release of radiation,” said Susan Van Dolsen, a co-founder of SAPE. New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo agreed, ordering an as yet unreleased risk assessment be conducted by state agencies and asking FERC to halt construction. FERC refused, and the risk assessment, ordered in February 2016 has still not been released by the Governor.
Residents say they are not surprised that these critical legal and safety issues were overlooked. They cite extensive reporting by investigative journalist Itai Vardi at DeSmog Blog which has revealed numerous conflicts of interest, with FERC commissioners having vested financial interests in the pipeline companies or those hired to conduct environmental reviews.
Nancy Vann, whose Reynolds Hills community had property taken by “Algonquin” by eminent domain drove home the need for reforming the system that approved this project, “We are finally getting our day in court (actually just 20 minutes) after four long years of struggling to bring FERC’s attention to the unconscionable danger posed by this unnecessary project. We must not let our rights to a clean and safe environment be further eroded for the profits of a handful of fossil fuel company executives. We need elected officials who will stand up for us on every level of government to stop the slide toward nuclear catastrophe, irreversible climate change and planetary devastation. The world is watching us.”
by Deep Green Resistance News Service | Jul 3, 2017 | Lobbying, Protests & Symbolic Acts
by Michael Bucci / Deep Green Resistance New York
Honorable Daniel F. McCarthy, Town Justice
Town of Cortlandt Justice Court
One Heady Street, Cortlandt Manor, New York 10567
Re: Order to Appear at Violation of Conditional Discharge Hearing-June 29, 2017, Docket # 15110186
Dear Judge McCarthy,
Thank you for the opportunity to present our necessity defense during our trial and to explain why we were, on that chilly morning in November, 2015, blockading the construction of Spectra Energy’s Algonquin Incremental Market Project pipeline that runs 400 feet from elementary schools and homes, and 105 feet from critical safety infrastructure at the failed Indian Point nuclear power plant on the Hudson River in Westchester County, NY.
I accept full responsibility for my action. We were all prepared for jail-time. I do realize that the sentence you imposed on us is an attempt to keep us out of jail. And I appreciate that.
I cannot, however, comply with certain provisions of your sentence which includes a 12-month conditional discharge, community service requirements, and fines/fees of $350.00. I cannot comply because the sentence imposed on us Montrose 9 resisters, who oppose the construction of this 42 inch, high-pressure, fracked methane-gas pipeline in our community, is actually a form of punishment meant to keep activists like us fearful, quiet and acquiescent. The sentence seems very harsh to me, especially as an alternative to incarceration, and for just a violation: a non-criminal infraction virtually equivalent to a traffic ticket! The sentence imposed is an attempt to break our will and bully us into submission.
In all honesty, I cannot abide by your conditional discharge requirement not to be arrested over the next year fighting this pipeline. This is a form of judicial repression meant to keep us from freely exercising our first amendment, constitutional rights to protest and resist, in this case, the much greater harm that fossil fuels and greenhouse gasses are wreaking on communities. Our necessity defense at trial, in a very real way, coupled with the dire environmental crises we face and injustices worldwide, require us to continue our resistance efforts in an even more concerted way — disrupting the fossil fuel industry, and perhaps breaking the law whenever necessary, to prevent or diminish the much greater harms of global heating, climate catastrophe and eventual systemic environmental collapse.
I cannot agree to not fighting for justice, alongside my friends, for fear of being arrested when so many injustices must be made right, especially these days, when we need to act powerfully and intelligently to dismantle entrenched systems of oppression. We will even need to directly break some unjust laws, like the unconstitutional and mean Muslim ban, for example. Given the enormous environmental harm being done to our living planet, and the efforts to divide us from one another, we will need to be smarter and even more militant, not less so, in keeping the powerful from harming humans and the living planet, while we build diverse and strong communities of love, support and resistance, like we are doing.
Moreover, we did no harm to the community. In fact, we alerted the community to impending crises. Requiring us to perform community service for fighting on behalf of our neighbors, for trying to protect our community, the water and the land base, from devastation and degradation, I consider wrong-headed and almost insulting, given the way I have tried to live my life in service to the betterment of our communities. (Please see details of my work and “community service” activities, attached.) *
You know that I also disagree with your verdict of guilty both on the merits of the case and with respect to our necessity defense. Regarding who was responsible for the traffic blockage on Route 9A, I do not think that the prosecution actually proved their case, that we were the cause of the traffic jam. There was sufficient doubt given the obvious failure of the State Police to control traffic, which would have taken minimal effort on their part. I also believe we proved the elements of our necessity defense. The harm of burning fossil fuels, especially methane, 80 times more harmful than CO2, is overwhelming and imminent, locally and globally. Threatening our community and destroying the environment for profit with impunity is what is wrong. I doubt that a jury would have found us guilty.
Admittedly, the Montrose 9 was not successful in our efforts to stop this segment of Spectra’s pipeline. We now need to stop the next segment, Atlantic Bridge Project, and all pipelines, and end the entire fossil fuel industry (and ultimately industrial capitalism, male domination and institutionalized racism) from destroying lives. I realize that from now on we will need to organize better and become more effective in our resistance to the extraction, storage and burning of fossil fuels, the massive infrastructure build out, as well as climate injustice against the poor, people of color and front-line indigenous peoples around the world.
As you know from our individual testimonies, we tried just about every avenue to stop the pipeline construction. In fact, many of our elected officials even agreed with us, but they were virtually powerless and/or chose not to effectively help us. Moreover, regulators continually ignored the calls of citizens and elected officials for independent health and safety assessments of this massive pipeline expansion project. Clearly, government and laws are on the side of the corporations, the rich and powerful, all of whom prioritize profits over the well-being of citizens. The law and the courts should be protecting communities from the abuses of corporations and government. The completed segment of pipeline we unsuccessfully resisted is a symptom of the failed political & economic system, a failed democracy & collapsing institutions that do not represent the interests of people or life on our planet. Indeed, we all must go way beyond our comfort zones and do everything necessary to make our world safer, to the degree that each of us can.
These days, we need the help of an independent judiciary, and judicial heroes like Constance Baker Motley and Thurgood Marshall, jurists remembered for their understanding of how citizens and communities need special legal protections from longstanding oppressive institutions, and how important it is to safeguard the civil rights of groups who are systematically targeted by oppression, especially when existing law and precedent are not on their side. They took bold, extraordinary steps, and were successful on behalf of the civil and human rights of communities of color, and all communities, against enormous odds.
I am hopeful that we both love this beautiful community on the Hudson River and want to see it thrive, and be a safe and healthy place to live. Yes, we were hoping that you would side with us against Spectra (now Enbridge) Energy and agree that their harm to this community, and destruction of the living environment for profit, would be what is considered unlawful and should be stopped. I am still hopeful that on a deeply human level, we both want the very best for our community.
Therefore, Judge McCarthy, I am asking you for your help in our efforts to stop this pipeline. If I may be so audacious, we really could use your help in this long, hard fight on behalf of our communities. We need your help and assistance from the judicial branch of government for relief, protection and support, especially since some laws may need to be challenged for the greater good to prevent greater harm. Yes, I invite you to consider joining our efforts. Together, we could definitely keep our community safer.
If you cannot yet support us and our efforts, I ask you simply to consider, at least – to think about – what we and the science and the experts have been saying about the dangers of this pipeline, methane gas leakage in our already vulnerable community, the harm of greenhouse gas emissions, and our responsibility to protect our homes and the earth. Please consider this an invitation and an opportunity to continue our year-and-a-half-long conversation about community health and safety and protection from the harms of the fossil fuel industry. While we continue our efforts to stop the construction of this pipeline with our neighbors, and fight to make our community safer, I hope we will continue this important conversation.
I appreciate your respecting my constitutional right to defend myself, & speak on my own behalf, pro se.
Sincerely,
Michael G. Bucci
Deep Green Resistance
Montrose 9 Defendant
* “Community Service” Activities
Catholic Interracial Council, Pittsburgh, PA 1964-66 – volunteer member.
Little Sisters of the Poor (homes for the elderly), Balt., MD & Wash., D.C. 1966-68 – volunteer.
Co-Founder, Storefront Soup Kitchen/Peace Center, Bronx, NY 1970-73, – volunteer.
Resistance activities/organizing to stop the Vietnam war 1969-74.
So Others Might Eat – SOME Soup Kitchen, Wash., DC 1974-75, – volunteer director.
American Red Cross in Greater New York Disaster Relief Services 1975-1977.
Clinton Housing Development Company – community organizer 1978-1981.
Co-Founded Union of City Tenants 1979-83, – volunteer.
Volunteer – New York Women Against Pornography 1984-85.
Co-founder, Men Against Pornography 1985? – volunteer.
Co-founder, New York Men Against Sexism 1989 – volunteer.
Resistance to South African apartheid 1989-1994.
Co-founder, Whites Against Racism Network (WARN) 1990-1993 – volunteer
Bowery Residents Committee – Director of Housing and Development 1981-1997.
ANHD – Affordable Housing Training to 95 under-resourced NYC community groups 2010-17.
American Red Cross in Greater New York Disaster Relief Services 9/11 volunteer.
We Are Seneca Lake – Fossil Fuel Storage Resistance – volunteer 2014-17.
Compressor Free Franklin – volunteer 2014-Present.
Deep Green Resistance – volunteer 2014-Present.
Resist Spectra – volunteer 2015-Present.
