Today I, along with 140 other people, was arrested in front of the White House. We were there to protest the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, which, if constructed, would carry unrefined oil from the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, to refineries in the Gulf of Mexico. You need only look at pictures of the tar sands to see evidence of a culture gone absolutely mad with avarice, with no sense of limits or decency or respect for the planet and the life it supports. We know that the oil will run out. We know that its extraction and refinement and consumption dump countless tons of carbon into the atmosphere, irrevocably altering the planet's climate. We know that the time to find sources of energy other than coal and oil has long since come. And yet our efforts to extract every last drop of oil from the planet persist, irrespective of the cost to indigenous communities, to the plant and animal life that has the misfortune of living on the ground under which the oil lies, and even to ourselves. Look at these pictures and see the face of a culture insane with desperation, in the midst of what amounts to a death spiral, and making no effort to right itself but rather steepening its own descent.
I want to write more about this soon, but I also want to share something that was very noticeable about the nature of this protest, from the training session last night to the actual arrest today. Last night, one of the organizers identified herself as part of the indigenous community of Canada. The area most impacted by the tar sands excavation is home to some indigenous communities, and it is, unsurprisingly, causing no small amount of devastation. The pollution is so awful and complete that in some areas it is possible to light the water on fire. Communities have been uprooted, their ties to the land severed. Adding to the sheer criminality of the excavation is the fact that it isn't even clear that the Canadian government has the right to grant access and ownership of the land to the oil companies involved. Treaties grant a great deal of control over the land to the indigenous communities. Given the history of treaties between the governments of the North American continent and indigenous peoples, their wholesale violation is unsurprising, but it should not fail to outrage.
We were asked as a group to think about what it meant to be in solidarity with the people who live near the tar sands excavation, to act to some extent in place and on behalf of them. And I was not quite prepared for this exercise. I came here largely because actively seeking new sources of oil, irrespective of the damage done, seems to me the height of insanity, and deserving of opposition. The planet as a whole simply can't take it. I have to admit I didn't give the communities there much thought. And even the pictures linked to above don't seem to show the direct cost to local communities.
And then today we hear of the effects of hurricane Irene. Some communities and cities in its path were spared catastrophe. But Vermont, where I lived for over a year, is almost literally underwater. When Bill McKibben, longtime environmentalist and one of the organizers of today's protest, spoke this morning, he described a brief telephone call he had with his wife, with whom he lives in Vermont. "It's all but washed away," he said. He was referring to the state. Covered bridges that have stood for over 200 years are gone, destroyed by rivers swollen to many, many times their usual size and strength. Entire towns are underwater, farms upon which and houses in which people have lived for generations are currently uninhabitable or just taken away by floodwaters. Many people are missing.
McKibben spoke of the people of Pakistan, many millions - millions - of whom were made homeless by torrential rains last year. He said that we, the protesters, were fortunate in comparison. We will be able to go home after our arrests.
Even though the rich and powerful will be able to protect themselves, for a while, from the worser effects of climate change, the unique thing about this planet-wide crisis is that there is ultimately no hiding from it. The people displaced in Pakistan, they are no different from you or me. It is only though a trick of fate, an accident of birth, that they live there and you live here. To think otherwise is delusion. And clearly we are not to be spared from the extremes of weather. The people of Vermont, well, probably a few of them chose to live there precisely because it is beyond the reach of tropical storms and hurricanes. That's certainly one of the many things I liked about it. But even that is no longer a guarantee.
And do you think that an oil company will hesitate before scraping your community off the face of the earth if tar sands are discovered there? What makes you so special? Do you think that the displaced and poisoned communities of Alberta, Canada, thought any differently than you? We are all at risk. Martin Luther King said that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Chief Seattle spoke of a great web of life. "All things are connected, like the blood that unites us all," he said. Do not be deceived into thinking that this is abstraction. Solidarity, for me, means recognizing these sayings, and countless others expressing the same idea, as truth.
