Civil Disobedience is Necessary to Kill Coal

Civil rights activists didn’t sit around waiting for politicians to ‘see the light’ and take action – and neither should we. If we want to shut down coal plants and prevent catastrophic global warming, we’ve got to put our necks on the line: that’s the message that Salon is sending out in an article entitled “How to kill a coal plant”.

Civil disobedience works. The case of the Kingsnorth Six, Greenpeace activists who were acquitted by a grand jury on vandalism charges after scaling a coal plant and beginning to paint it with a message to Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown, is a great example.

From Salon:

In the Kingsnorth case, world-renowned climate scientist James Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, flew to England to testify. According to the Guardian, he presented evidence that the Kingsnorth plant alone could be expected to cause sufficient global warming to prompt “the extinction of 400 species over its lifetime.”

Citing a British government study showing that each ton of released carbon dioxide incurs $85 in future climate-change costs, the activists contended that shutting the plant down for the day had prevented $1.6 million in damages — a far greater harm to society than any rendered by their paint — and that their transgressions should therefore be excused.

What surprised both Greenpeace and the prosecution was that 12 ordinary Britons agreed. The jury returned with an acquittal, and the freed defendants made the front pages of newspapers throughout the country.

The tumult also produced political results. In April, British energy and climate change minister Ed Miliband announced a reversal in governmental policy on power stations, declaring, “The era of new unabated coal has come to an end.”

The success of the Kingsnorth protest has inspired similar protests around the world, from West Virginia to Australia.

Americans are notorious for being reluctant to face unpleasant facts. The desire to conserve the status quo has lulled most people into a sense of apathy, compounded by the scurrilous efforts of the energy industry to prevent action that could harm their profits. But, simply waiting until catastrophic global warming consequences begin to occur will change their lives negatively more than anything else could.

Salon is urging environmentalists and anyone concerned about global warming to engage in nonviolent protests during this year’s U.N. climate conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. While as many as 100,000 are expected to take to the streets in Copenhagen itself, many more will participate in events in the U.S. at the same time. Learn more and pledge to join in at BeyondTalk.net.

Link [Salon]
Photo credit: Greenpeace

Capitol Power Plant Protesters Declare Victory

Yesterday, thousands of protesters converged on Washington D.C. in an act of civil disobedience against coal power. The crowd consisted of about 2,500 people who marched, held signs and spoke out against coal outside the Capitol Power Plant’s northeast corner gate. Despite planning for it (and not for lack of trying), no one was arrested.

Grist’s Kate Sheppard reported from the scene (via The Huffington Post):

“I think any time you have 2,500 people willing to take action and risk going to jail to stop a coal plant, it’s a good thing,” Michael Brune of the Rainforest Action Network told Grist as the protest wrapped up. “And I think what’s quite clear is that we have more momentum than ever to start shutting down coal plants around the country.”

Climate movement luminaries were on hand, including climate scientist James Hansen, veteran activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., actress Daryl Hannah, writer Wendell Berry, former Salt Lake City mayor Rocky Anderson, and 350.org founder and Grist board member Bill McKibben (who also blogged about Monday’s action). Hansen, McKibben, and Anderson were at the front of the action, signaling their intention to get arrested.

But it’s the rank-and-file protesters who gave the strongest sense of how the anti-coal movement is growing. Among them was Rory McIlmoil, campaign coordinator for Coal River Wind, which is fighting to get wind power going in his home state of West Virginia rather letting more mountains be destroyed by coal mining. He was arrested on Feb. 3 at an action against coal company Massey Energy, which plans to blow up Coal River Mountain, and he has since been served a restraining order to keep him off all Massey property.

The protest, which was organized by the Rainforest Action Network, the Chesapeake Climate Action Network and Greenpeace, got a big boost from some of the 12,000 students who had also convened in Washington D.C. for the PowerShift 2009 conference.

Unsurprisingly, the turnout for the ‘Celebrate Coal!’ counter-protest was dismal, with fewer than 20 people showing up. Those few who did decide to take part held signs that said predictable things like ‘Our Economy Runs on Coal’ and disparaged Al Gore. What a joke, in comparison to the huge crowd that marched against the environmental and health injustices of coal power.

Thanks to everyone who braved the extremely cold temperatures and 6 inches of snow to make sure our leaders in Washington get the message that we’re not going to accept coal power any more. Clean energy FTW!

Link [Grist] + [The Huffington Post]

Bill McKibben: I’ll Get Arrested to Stop the Burning of Coal

Coal is killing the planet. It’s as simple as that – so it’s easy to understand why 350.org founder Bill McKibben is willing to risk getting arrested in order to participate in a major act of civil disobedience at a coal-fired power plant next month.

McKibben, who is the scholar in residence at Middlebury College and has written a long list of well-respected books on the environment, plans to join demonstrators to protest coal’s role in global warming and the rampant use of this dirty fuel in America and all over the world. He explained to Yale 360 why it’s so important to keep this issue at the forefront of our leaders’ thoughts.

Coal provides 50 percent of our electricity. That juice comes from hundreds of expensive, enormous plants, each one of them owned by rich and powerful companies. Shutting these plants down — or getting the companies to install expensive equipment that might be able to separate carbon from the exhaust stream and sequester it safely in some mine somewhere — will be incredibly hard. Investors are planning on running those plants another half-century to make back their money — the sunk costs involved are probably on the scale of those lousy mortgages now bankrupting our economy.

McKibben explains why this march and other acts of civil disobediance against coal are so essential – not to force the Obama administration to do something they don’t want to do but to give them the political space they need to act on their convictions.  When it comes down to it, McKibben says, the bottom line is we’ve got to get the idea that coal is bad stuck in people’s minds.

When civil disobedience works, it’s because it demonstrates some willingness to bear a certain amount of pain for some larger end — a way to say, “Coal is bad enough that I’m willing to get arrested.” Which is not the biggest deal on earth, but if you’re going to be asking the Chinese, say, to start turning off their coal-fired plants, you can probably keep a straighter face if you’ve made at least a mild sacrifice yourself.

Read McKibben’s whole article over at Yale 360 – and if you’re interested in joining the march, check out this letter by McKibben and author Wendell Berry over at Chesapeake Climate Action Network.

Here’s a PSA filmed by famed climate scientist James Hansen about the march:

Learn more about coal’s effects on the environment at Coal-is-Dirty.com.

Link [Yale 360] + [Chesapeake Climate Action Network]
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

Activist Disrupts Sale of Utah Oil and Gas Drilling Leases

On December 19th, the Bush Administration held an auction in Salt Lake City for oil and gas drilling leases on land adjacent to national parks. A lot of people have been upset about this ‘fire sale’ ever since it was announced, and one activist decided to do something about it.

Tim DeChristopher, fully expecting to be arrested and charged, drove up the price of land parcels by bidding them up with no intention of paying for them. The environmental activist was escorted from the Bureau of Land Management offices after throwing the process into chaos before the sale of 132 parcels covering 164,000 acres was concluded.

From MSNBC:

“He’s tainted the entire auction,” said Kent Hoffman, deputy state director for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management in Utah.

Buyers will have 10 days to reconsider and withdraw their bids, Hoffman said.

The FBI was questioning a man who registered for the auction as Tim DeChristopher of Salt Lake City, said the bureau’s Utah Energy Team Leader Terry Catlin.

Other bidders at the auction complained about DeChristopher as unfamiliar and bidding in an unconventional fashion, which raised suspicions, Catlin said.

DeChristopher is believed to have won the bidding on 13 parcels and driven up the price of several others. He said he successfully bid on more than $1.7 million in parcels.

It’s pretty hilarious to imagine all of these uptight oil and gas company representatives and government officials getting all worked up over an “unfamiliar” man bidding in an “unconventional fashion”. Good for him for disrupting the process.  This ‘midnight sale’ was unfair in the first place, so it serves them right to have to deal with some confusion and delay.

Link [MSNBC]

Al Gore Urges Civil Disobedience to Fight Coal Plants

Al Gore has a message for you, environmentalists: it’s okay to engage in a little civil disobedience here and there when the goal is as important as stopping the construction of coal plants that don’t have the ability to store carbon.  After all, civil disobedience is one of the few ways ordinary citizens still have to make sure our voices are heard.  Gore, speaking to a philanthropic meeting in New York, said on Wednesday that “the world has lost ground to the climate crisis”.

From Reuters:

“If you’re a young person looking at the future of this planet and looking at what is being done right now, and not done, I believe we have reached the stage where it is time for civil disobedience to prevent the construction of new coal plants that do not have carbon capture and sequestration,” Gore told the Clinton Global Initiative gathering to loud applause.

“I believe for a carbon company to spend money convincing the stock-buying public that the risk from the global climate crisis is not that great represents a form of stock fraud because they are misrepresenting a material fact,” he said. “I hope these state attorney generals around the country will take some action on that.”

According to the government, about 28 coal plants are currently under construction in the United States right now and another 20 projects have permits or are near the start of construction.  The carbon emitted from coal plants are a key factor in global warming.

Part of the problem is the fact that we, as a nation, have been apathetic for too long.  We’ve allowed money-hungry corporations to control our lives and dictate our futures, to the extent that every living creature on earth is now in danger. The truth is that we do hold a lot of power in our hands.  We outnumber the executives and the government officials.  If we all stand together and demand something, it will be done.  We just haven’t taken that power into our hands on a mass scale.  So we say, hell yeah, Al.  Civil disobedience is definitely called for in these frightening times.

Link [Reuters]
Photo credit: Sydney Indymedia