NATIONOFCHANGE / OP-ED
by George Zornick
Tuesday, August 23, 2011 / Nation of Change
Progressive Journalism For Positive Action

Originally published Monday, 22 August 2011 in The Na­tion.
Copy­right © The Na­tion – dis­trib­uted by Agence Global.

see also KEYSTONE XL PROTESTORS UP AGAINST FADED INTEREST IN US CLIMATE EFFORT, Elizabeth McGowan in SolveClimateNews, Aug 24, 2011

bill mckibben addressing protestors outside white house

Civil Disobedience on Tar Sands Begins Outside the White House

More than seventy activists were arrested at the north gates of the White House Saturday during a protest against the Keystone XL pipeline

The largest act of civil dis­obe­di­ence by en­vi­ron­men­tal­ists in decades began out­side the White House this morn­ing, as more than sev­enty ac­tivists were ar­rested at the north gates dur­ing a protest against the Key­stone XL pipeline, which if ap­proved by the ad­min­is­tra­tion would carry 900,000 bar­rels of oil per day from Al­berta, Canada to the Gulf of Mex­ico.

The ac­tivists, who sat down at the gates at 11 am hold­ing large ban­ners read­ing “Cli­mate change is not in our na­tional in­ter­est,” were warned three times by US Park Po­lice to move along, and were hand­cuffed and re­moved after they re­fused. More than 2,000 peo­ple have pledged to be ar­rested out­side the White House every day until Sep­tem­ber 3, in daily in­stall­ments of sev­enty-five to 100 peo­ple.

The Key­stone Pipeline would carry oil gouged from the “tar sands” of Al­berta—areas where soil is thick with bi­tu­men, which can be re­fined into syn­thetic crude oil. The process is en­vi­ron­men­tally dev­as­tat­ing. Parts of Al­berta have al­ready been rav­aged by the ex­trac­tion, and the re­fin­ing process in­volved cre­ates twice the green­house gases as pro­duc­ing a nor­mal bar­rel of crude.

Since the pipeline would cross an in­ter­na­tional bor­der, the State De­part­ment has ju­ris­dic­tion and is com­plet­ing an en­vi­ron­men­tal as­sess­ment of the pro­ject, which could be re­leased this week. The White House will have ninety days to de­cide whether to grant a per­mit for the pipeline. The grass­roots group 350. org, which in­cludes many Na­tion writ­ers, has called for a cam­paign of non­vi­o­lent di­rect ac­tion aimed at per­suad­ing the ad­min­is­tra­tion to deny the per­mit.

The Al­berta tar sands rep­re­sent the sec­ond-largest repos­i­tory of oil in the world, and cli­mate sci­en­tists are hor­ri­fied with the prospect of pump­ing that much car­bon into the at­mos­phere. En­vi­ron­men­tal­ist Bill McK­ibben, who led today’s ac­tion, noted that if all of the oil were ex­tracted overnight it would in­crease the car­bon in the earth’s at­mos­phere from 393 parts per mil­lion to 550 parts per mil­lion—a dev­as­tat­ing in­crease. NASA cli­mate sci­en­tist James Hansen re­cently wrote that since phas­ing ex­ist­ing car­bon emis­sions out is al­ready an enor­mous task, “if the tar sands are thrown into the mix, it is es­sen­tially game over.”

Be­yond the cli­mate con­cerns, there’s the issue of pipeline safety—Key­stone XL would tra­verse the en­tire coun­try, from Mon­tana to the Gulf of Mex­ico. Any­one un­con­cerned with po­ten­tial pipeline fail­ures should note the re­cent in­ci­dent un­der­neath the Yel­low­stone River, where an Exxon pipeline rup­tured and spilled over 1,000 bar­rels of crude into the river.

There are, of course, mas­sive fi­nan­cial in­ter­ests be­hind the con­struc­tion of Key­stone XL. Tar sands com­mer­cials are ubiq­ui­tous on tele­vi­sion, par­tic­u­larly dur­ing news pro­gram­ming. The in­dus­try, led by the Amer­i­can Pe­tro­leum In­sti­tute, has launched an enor­mous ad­ver­tis­ing and lob­by­ing push.

McK­ibben ral­lied the ac­tivists in Lafayette Park mo­ments be­fore the ac­tion began, and noted the enor­mous amount of money on the other side of the fight. “There is enor­mous pres­sure com­ing down on the White House from the fos­sil fuels in­dus­try. These are the rich­est peo­ple. They are the most pow­er­ful peo­ple on our planet. They usu­ally win,” McK­ibben said. “We have to find a dif­fer­ent cur­rency to work in. Our cur­rency today and for the next two weeks is our bod­ies and our cre­ativ­ity and our spirit. And that’s all we’ve got to put up against all that money, and we will find out if it’s enough.”

Since Con­gress is not in­volved in this de­ci­sion, the White House is the de­ci­sive choke­point for the Key­stone XL pro­ject—Obama doesn’t have to tan­gle with in­dus­try-friendly mem­bers of Con­gress. McK­ibben told re­porters in Lafayette Park that “it is re­ally the en­vi­ron­men­tal test for Barack Obama, re­ally in the course of his first term.”

Many of the ac­tivists wore but­tons from the Obama 2008 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, which cli­maxed in Den­ver at the De­mo­c­ra­tic Na­tional Con­ven­tion, where Obama fa­mously marked the mo­ment “when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” McK­ibben pre­dicted that “if Barack Obama mans up and says ‘no’ to this thing, it will send a surge of elec­tric­ity through all of the peo­ple who voted for him three years ago. It’ll be the re­minder of why we were so en­am­ored with this guy in 2008.”

When the ar­rests began, the ac­tivists—in­clud­ing McK­ibben, Fire­DogLake founder Jane Hamsher, Lt. Dan Choi, and Ver­mont Law School pro­fes­sor Gus Speth—re­peated chants of “Hey hey, ho ho, Key­stone XL’s got to go” and “Ain’t no power like the power of the sun, be­cause the power of the sun don’t stop.”

They were hand­cuffed with zip ties, led one-by-one into a tent set up by the US Park Po­lice, processed and loaded into the back of a large van as tourists watched. The ar­rest­ing of­fi­cers gave the ac­tivists water over the course of the two-hour process, which took place in the swel­ter­ing late-sum­mer heat of Wash­ing­ton. Sev­eral ac­tivists noted that if Key­stone XL isn’t stopped, the hottest weather is surely yet to come.

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ABOUT GEORGE ZORNICK

George grew up in Buffalo, NY and holds a B.A. in English from the State University of New York at Buffalo. Prior to joining The Nation, George was Senior Reporter/Blogger for ThinkProgress.org. He worked as a researcher for Michael Moore’s SiCKO and as an Associate Producer on “The Media Project” on the Independent Film Channel. His work has been published in The Los Angeles Times, Media Matters, and The Buffalo News.

Copy­right © The Na­tion – dis­trib­uted by Agence Global.