258 The Environmental Debate
We don’t have the money to compete with those
corporations, but we do have our bodies, and
beginning in mid August many of us will use
them. We will, each day through Labor Day,
march on the White House, risking arrest with
our trespass. We will do it in dignified fashion,
demonstrating that in this case we are the con-
servatives, and that our foes—who would change
the composition of the atmosphere are danger-
ous radicals. Come dressed as if for a business
meeting—this is, in fact, serious business....And one more thing: we don’t want college
kids to be the only cannon fodder in this fight.
They’ve led the way so far on climate change.... Now it’s time for people who’ve spent their
lives pouring carbon into the atmosphere (and
whose careers won’t be as damaged by an arrest
record) to step up too. Most of us signing this
letter are veterans of this work, and we think it’s
past time for elders to behave like elders. One
thing we don’t want is a smash up: if you can’t
control your passions, this action is not for you.
This won’t be a one-shot day of action. We plan for
it to continue for several weeks, to the date in Sep-
tember when by law the administration can either
grant or deny the permit for the pipeline....Winning this battle won’t save the climate. But
losing it will mean the chances of runaway cli-
mate change go way up—that we’ll endure an
endless future of the floods and droughts we’ve
seen this year. And we’re fighting for the political
future too—for the premise that we should make
decisions based on science and reason, not polit-
ical connection. You have to start somewhere,
and this is where we choose to begin.If you think you might want to be a part of this
action, we need you to sign up here. As plans solid-
ify in the next few weeks we’ll be in touch with you
to arrange nonviolence training; our colleagues at
a variety of environmental and democracy cam-
paigns will be coordinating the actual arrange-
ments.this pipeline. But in the last few months the
president has signed pieces of paper opening
much of Alaska to oil drilling, and permitting
coal-mining on federal land in Wyoming that
will produce as much CO2 as 300 power plants
operating at full bore.
And Secretary of State [Hillary] Clinton has
already said she’s ‘inclined’ to recommend the
pipeline go forward. Partly it’s because of the
political commotion over high gas prices, though
more tar sands oil would do nothing to change
that picture. But it’s also because of intense
pressure from industry. TransCanada Pipeline,
the company behind Keystone, has hired as its
chief lobbyist for the project a man named Paul
Elliott, who served as deputy national director
of Clinton’s presidential campaign. Meanwhile,
the US Chamber of Commerce—a bigger funder
of political campaigns than the RNC and DNC
combined—has demanded that the administra-
tion “move quickly to approve the Keystone XL
pipeline,” which is not so surprising—they’ve
also told the U.S. EPA that if the planet warms
that will be okay because humans can ‘adapt
their physiology’ to cope. The Koch Brothers,
needless to say, are also backing the plan, and
may reap huge profits from it.
So we’re pretty sure that without serious pres-
sure the Keystone Pipeline will get its permit
from Washington. A wonderful coalition of
environmental groups has built a strong cam-
paign across the continent—from Cree and
Dene indigenous leaders to Nebraska farm-
ers, they’ve spoken out strongly against the
destruction of their land. We need to join
them, and to say even if our own homes won’t
be crossed by this pipeline, our joint home—
the earth—will be wrecked by the carbon that
pours down it.
And we need to say something else, too: it’s
time to stop letting corporate power make the
most important decisions our planet faces.