Climate scientists
believe the 'next generation' oil sources, such shale and tar sands, must not become the new standard. Therefore
the planned XL Keystone pipeline, which will deliver tar sand oil from Alberta Canada all the way down to Texas, must be stopped. Otherwise it will be nearly impossible to ever hope to bend
downward the rising curve of polluting greenhouse gases. If this engineering monstrosity goes in as planned, it will signal
that it is acceptable everywhere to use high carbon content tar sands and shale as a new energy sources – and as leading climate scientists
James Hansen says “ If the pipeline goes in, it's games over.” So all of the environmental
groups are pulling out all stops to oppose it - hence the big 'Climate Rallies' February 17th.
Last Sunday (2/17) I trooped into the city to attend a rally held in conjunction with the big February 17th Climate Change event in DC. As we arrived expensively produced heavy card stock signs were available (although if you didn't bring a stick to mount it on, you had to awkwardly hold it up by hand.) The signs said things like “Stop the Keystone XL Pipeline” and “It's Time to Cut Carbons”(of course the real activists brought their own homemade signs.) The people flooding out of the BART station for the rally were predominately gray haired, middle class Sierra Club types, or ex hippies who had settled into responsible professional lives (like me) and gotten old and gray in the process. There was a sprinkling of college kids but virtually no blacks, few if any Latinos or Asians or any of the hodgepodge of other non-white whatevers who more and more make up the Bay Area demographic. And where were all the high voltage scruffy radical Occupy movement types? Where were the rancorous pierced and tattooed X Generation skateboarders and punksters? No militant unruly Black Bloc types were in evidence, and I saw only one smiling Anonymous Guy Fawkes mask. It was mostly the upper middle class people who fund the eco groups - the organizations that send me emails every day at almost a spam volume with petitions to sign, donations to make and environmental bad news to report. In most of the big anti-war marches I have been to the SF Tac Squad is all lined up along the way with their 2 ft long truncheons ready and waiting for an excuse to wade in and bust a few heads. This was not one the case yesterday. Only sprinkling of regular beat cops stood along the way looking bored with little to do.
So as we all arrived we
were directed to parade around the the block and then funneled into
the big concrete area that makes up north side of the Embarcadero
Plaza. There we listened to some well meaning but boring
boiler plate and uninspiring speeches and the usual Greenesque rigmarole
like Native American chanting and such. A couple of high school kids
spoke as well as a SF Supervisor. There was talk about next time calling on people to let themselves be arrested.
Unfortunately if there is no police action, it never makes the news
in any meaningful way. Maybe 5000-6000 people were there, a good
turnout but NOT NEARLY ENOUGH!! Hey, this isn't just another
liberal/left identity politics, anti-war, anti-US imperialism, anti
Reagan/Bush/Obama lost cause campaign against the status quo. This
it it! If this issue is not taken very seriously
very soon, we are all toast.
Bill McKibben of 350.ORG
is behind this full court press to get across the board
cooperation from the full spectrum of the environmental movement
(and he has) and the hopefully eventually the entire 'the liberal/ left', and to
develop something approaching a critical mass. Time is
running out. Barack Obama is a Democratic Party politician but not an
environmentalist. He is juggler of left center issues. Yet an important component of his base are the 'Greens.' So he can't ignore them but he can disappoint them – and
has in the past. Left to his own devices re: Keystone he would probably would have already let it
sail through. The august opinion makers in the NY Times for
instance have noted that even if the US doesn't let that shale oil
pipeline run through the continental US, Canada will just pipe it
over to their West coast and send it to China w/o the US getting a
cut of the profits or the oil, and the high carbon content gases will
wind up in the atmosphere anyway. So their advise: let it be built.
And of course the Repubs will skewer Obama if he blocks it. Oh, the
jobs lost! Oh the “energy independence'' we might have had! And
besides the whole climate crisis is a monumental hoax, just a rich
source of fat government grants for academic liberal Greenies!
Besides most Americans above all else want cheap plentiful gasoline.
Note all of this is coming to a head just as gas at the pump again
is hitting in the $4.00 a gallon range. So again the oil companies
have conveniently discovered they need to shut down refinery operations
“for maintenance.” And/or the oil speculators are at again it. So between the global banks and
global energy companies we are totally screwed. All we have on our
side are the wimpy and bought off (many are from coal dependent
states) Democrats. Yet Obama must know it is now or never on
addressing Climate Change. He even brought it up in his State of the
Union speech. He is well enough informed to know a slow boiling
crisis when he sees one. Yet nearly half the country is against him on
this – remember 47% voted for anti-action on the climate Mitt
Romney. The US is the only industrialized democracy in which
their major conservative party is totally opposed to confronting
global warming. But all are controlled in the final analysis by
global capital. That's why Kyota and Copenhagen never led to anything
but changes around the edges. Only the US, the leading (gluttonous)
per capita consumer of fossil fuels as well as a major producer,
can set the right example. Forget about China they are separate dimension to the problem. The US must lead. And it must happen while the Demos are in
or we are literally cooked. Rejecting the siren call of shale oil is only the first step but it is crucial.
The underlying problem is the
never ending riveting array of short term yet acute crisis's: economic imbroglios (brought on by the deepening crisis of global capitalism with its
stranglehold on the entire planet), wars,
political upheavals, the ongoing reactionary Muslim jihad with the
West (and each other), plus hurricanes, floods, tornadoes
and mass shootings, and on and on. All of this drama is brought to
us 24/7 by our friendly corporate media that feels it needs to
entertain rather than inform. So nothing is ever put in context just a series of disconnected provocative random events. This noise distracts and
blinds us to the coming doomsday scenario of an overheating planet
moving inexorably into crisis mode.
A case in point. Today
(Feb 18) in the two key leading US media newspapers the DC Climate Rally was not even mentioned. No
pictures, no articles, no editorials, nuthin!. The only indirect
reference was a Washington Post story about a hedge fund
billionaire who spoke at the DC rally and who 'could be' the new
Sec. of the Interior. Sure, after Harry Reid allowed the
phony-baloney closure vote- filibuster process to survive intact.
Get real! The Repubs know well how to say no.
Since the liberal media
is downplaying the anti-XL pipeline movement I am guessing they are
setting for Obama letting it happen. I hope I'm wrong!
Obama letting it happen. I hope I'm wrong!
