While my videographic skills leave much to be desired, this video I shot on August 21st gives some sense of how the non-violent direct action training for the Keystone XL protest went.
Video of Keystone XL training
Leave a reply
Category Archives: Oil sands
Participant accounts of the Keystone protest
Bill McKibben and the organizers of this summer’s protest against the Keystone XL pipeline are encouraging people who participated to post an account of their experience.
I will link interesting ones as they appear.
Here’s a good one to start with: A Minor’s Reflections on the Keystone XL Pipeline and Civil Disobedience by Ariana Shapiro.
Operational security and the Keystone protest
Operational security is a bit like tradecraft — it is the set of techniques an organization uses to avoid being subject to the will of its opponents. It includes systems where existing members vouch for newcomers, secure channels of communication, and so on.
One notable thing about the Keystone XL protest in Washington is that there was none of that. All the information was online: when and where to show up for training, the aims of the organizers, the tactics to be used, the real name and photo of everyone getting arrested, and so on.
Regardless of how they felt about Keystone XL or civil disobedience, anyone who wanted to could have come to the training, to the action itself, and to the jail where participants were released.
That openness was necessary to bring together, train, and organize 1200 participants in 15 days. It is also evidence of the strong moral arguments for what was being done. The act of civil disobedience is open defiance against an unjust law, rule, or organization. The strength comes from the clear moral case of the participants and from their dedication.
The open and inclusive character of the Keystone protest were evidence of both of those qualities.
Choosing risks for future generations
In some ways, choosing not to pursue unconventional fossil fuels like the oil sands, coal from moutaintop removal mining, and shale gas is imposing a risk on those in the future. It will be up to them to find energy sources capable of powering the kind of lifestyle they want. There is no guarantee that it will be possible to do everything we do now using sustainable forms of energy. In addition to becoming more efficient, they may simply have to make do with less.
That being said, choosing to exploit unconventional fossil fuels is still akin to throwing your child into the deep end of the pool in order to teach them to swim. Instead of being pressed to learn how to use energy more efficiently, develop sustainable energy sources, and perhaps adopt a less energy intensive lifestyle, future generations in a world where we choose to exploit unconventional fossil fuels will be pressed to learn how to deal with dangerous and severe climate change, and all the unpredictable consequences that will accompany it. In addition to that, they will still need to learn how to live without fossil fuels once those last especially dangerous reserves are exhausted.
We cannot guarantee that future generations will be able to enjoy the luxuries that we do, in the form of things like cheap intercontinental travel. What we can do is choose which set of risks an challenges they will confront. It seems far more ethical to leave unconventional fossil fuels buried and challenge them to find alternatives than to burn those fuels and challenge future generations to live with a radically changing climate.
Ottawa action against the Keystone XL pipeline
There is now a website up for the action happening in Ottawa on September 26th: OttawaAction.ca.
Power and organization
Another huge group of more than 100 people put themselves on the line and got arrested in front of the White House today.
This whole action has ben remarkably well organized. The recruiters have brought people in from all over North America, day after day. The trainers have efficiently and effectively prepared them to participate in each day’s peaceful protest. The media people have done a great job of attracting attention from the mainstream press, and Bill McKibben has been a powerful spokesman, both in his own statements and in television and radio debates with pipeline supporters.
Because of the organization, this action has progressed in a smooth and effective way. Of course, it is the dedication and depth of feeling of the participants that has provided the essential motive force that has been directed by the organizers. There hasn’t been a civil disobedience action like this in the American environmental movement in a long time. The depth of support is evidence for how concerned people are about this pipeline, about the oil sands generally, and about climate change.
Another big day, and an appeal to the Canadian ambassador
For the second day in a row, more than 100 people got arrested outside the White House protesting the Keystone XL pipeline.
A group of Canadians also delivered a letter to the Canadian ambassador to the United States, calling on him to stop promoting the oil sands.
That seems a distant prospect. Canada seems determined to dig up and burn as many fossil fuels as possible, no matter how unjust that may be or how much it will worsen climate change.
Hopefully Obama will block this pipeline and help keep that Canadian oil buried. In so doing, he would do a great service to Canada in the long term. Climate change is not in out national interest, and the transition to renewable energy can only e delayed by the expensive and harmful pursuit of the world’s dirtiest oil.
James Hansen arrested, taken to Anacostia jail
In front of the White House today, NASA climatologist James Hansen got arrested along with 139 other people. They were calling upon President Obama to reject the Keystone XL pipeline, which would carry oil from Canada’s oil sands down to the refineries of the US Gulf Coast. In particular, he highlighted the fact that burning all that oil would contribute substantially to climate change, which will already occur to a dangerous extent because of human greenhouse gas emissions.
As has been the case for every day since September 21st, those arrested in front of the White House were taken to the Anacostia jail, which is the headquarters of the Park Police. Within a few hours of being arrested, all the protesters were released.
It is a bit dispiriting that a scientist of Hansen’s calibre feels the need to get arrested in protest. You would hope the American political system would be able to incorporate scientific knowledge in a more ordinary way, and that concerns like abrupt or runaway climate change would be incorporated into undertakings like the U.S. State Department’s environmental review of the Keystone XL pipeline.
Unfortunately, the American political system continues to ignore the seriousness of climate change and the policies that are necessary to reduce the risk of it becoming a catastrophe. Hopefully, this action will help to alert Barack Obama to what needs to be done, and he will take an important first step by blocking this pipeline.
Keystone XL discussed on The Current
They Keystone XL pipeline and protests against it were discussed as the lead story on CBC radio’s show The Current today. They spoke to Patricia Warrick, a Canadian protester, and Terry Cunha, a spokesperson for the TransCanada Corporation which is behind the pipeline.
The segment can be listened to online.
CBC interview tomorrow
Tomorrow, August 24th, I will be speaking with Alan Neal on the CBC radio program All In A Day. The interview will be about the ongoing protest against the Keystone XL pipeline, happening in Washington D.C. every day until September 3rd.
The interview will be live in the Ottawa area and on the CBC website.