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The Sit In Begins (photo: Shadia Fayne Wood)
Global Warming Worth Going to Jail Over
By Rob Briggs
Normally, I would feel mortified learning that my arrest and incarceration had made front-page news in my local paper (Daily News, Aug. 23). But last Tuesday, I looked forward to telling my mother, who agrees that global warming is worth going to jail over.
My charge was failure to leave the “postcard area” in front of the White House until the Park Police agreed to arrest me. I was guilty as a dog and prepared to admit it. After two days in jail, I was released without charge.
If you read Tuesday’s story, perhaps the words “hippy radical” came to mind. Actually, those supporting the ExxonMobil megaloads traveling through downtown Moscow or the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, “a 1,700 mile fuse to the largest carbon bomb on the planet,” are the radicals.
Burning fossil fuel – oil, natural gas or coal – releases carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas and important regulator of Earth’s temperature. Atmospheric concentrations have risen roughly 40 percent since humans began extracting fossil fuels. Earth’s crust contains five times more recoverable fossil fuel than we should burn, if we want to pass on to our children a world similar to the one we inherited. The only plausible solution to this dilemma is for the nations of the world to agree to leave most of this carbon safely underground.
Fortunately, all major nations committed to exactly that. They ratified the United Nation’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, the foundational treaty for international cooperation to protect world climate. The United States ratified it in 1992 with bipartisan Senate support and the signature of Republican President George H.W. Bush. Global warming was not a hoax back then. Radicals now suggest it is.
The late Milton Friedman, well-known for his PBS TV series ‘Free to Choose,’ was one of the most conservative economists of his time. Friedman consistently argued that the fairest and most-efficient way to deal with pollution was to tax it. The vast majority of today’s economists agree and support a carbon tax. Faced with higher energy prices, Americans would cut energy waste and invest more in carbon-free alternatives. Radicals oppose this authentically conservative policy.
We teach our children to pick up after themselves. If their baseball breaks a neighbor’s window, we teach them to accept responsibility and pay for the damage. They soon learn to move batting practice to the ball field.
But the fossil industry doesn’t play by the rules of civic responsibility we teach our children. They insist on paying nothing for the climate damage their product inflicts. They use campaign contributions, media intimidation and disinformation to prevent effective public policy, subverting democracy in the process. In the absence of effective climate policy – like taxing carbon – consumers will be paying hidden taxes in the form of skyrocketing prices for life’s essentials, as global warming gathers momentum.
Here is the scary part: The burn-it-all scenario for fossil fuels eventually could raise average global ocean temperature from 60-degrees Fahrenheit currently to 100- degrees F. This is the unregulated “free-market” outcome. The climate science news the corporate media fails to cover has progressed from alarming to horrifying. A study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences projected yield reductions of between 63 percent and 82 percent by 2095 for three major U.S. crops – soybeans, cotton and corn.
The radicals in today’s climate fight are not those being leg shackled in Washington, D.C., or handcuffed in Moscow. The radicals are the corporations and their supporters who would alter the composition of Earth’s atmosphere in defiance of the gravest and most emphatic warnings of the scientific community.
Perhaps I come to civil disobedience more easily than others. Tuesday’s story mentioned that I am a Quaker. Early Quakers in 17th century England gathered to worship in defiance of edicts prohibiting public meetings. Eventually, English jails became so packed with Quakers that authorities relented and recognized the right of free assembly—a big, early victory for civil disobedience. In this country, the strategy has proven effective in asserting moral authority in struggles over slavery, civil rights, and women’s suffrage.
The D.C. Park Police came down unexpectedly hard on me and 64 others, in hopes of scaring away protesters from two weeks of planned civil disobedience. After two days in D.C.’s Central Cell Block, I prepared my words carefully for any reporters who might ask about conditions inside. “Yes, it was uncomfortable. But if I were offered this bargain – a stable climate for my kids, like the one I’ve enjoyed, in exchange for spending the rest of my life in that cell block – I’d go back in a heart beat.”
No, Devin Rokyta (Our View, Aug. 16), we are not giving up on stopping the tar sands, we will not be selling out our children’s future for pocket change, and we are not giving up on this planet.
Rob Briggs is an architect, a former national laboratory scientist and a founding member of Wild Idaho Rising Tide. [Also, a very decent man; I'm proud to call him a friend. -- jc]
41 Comments
Thanks for the update Scarecrow, please keep us informed about the protests. I hope there is some long term plan for future civil disobedience when the Little Zero approves the pipeline.
Having 60 people a day arrested was a good start but it will be necessary for hundreds to be arrested each day to throw a sabot into the gears of progress.
The moral argument is a strong one, and is really the only argument I think has a chance of working.
Briggs notes that “those supporting the ExxonMobil megaloads traveling through downtown Moscow or the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline [...] are the radicals.”
It’s also a pretty radical argument for polluting corporations to make if they try to argue that children are more responsible than they are.
Today’s Obama decision to kill the EPA air regulation proposal means 12000 pre-mature deaths per EPA -
it also has a massive climate change effect as coal will now be preferred over gas heat.
But I guess Obama needed to give the Koch Brothers and their coal company Reiss Coal a massive wet kiss.
So can anyone explain to me why the Sierra Club and other enviornmentalist groups endorsed Obama?
“Clean coal” Nuclear Power and now this.
Oh yeah that is right
Veal Pen politics.
I went to a Sierra Club meeting in a Denver suburb back in the nineties. I had difficulty finding a place to park my Saturn sedan because there were these huge SUVs parked all over the place.
I went into the very nice, upper middle class living room where the meeting was and found the owners of the SUVs. The chairman of the little group was wealthy enough to own one of the early hybrid cars and showed it off. At least he put his money where his mouth was. Later, he ran as a Green candidate for Congress.
The others? Well, you know me. I asked them why, if they were so environmentally conscious, they all drove SUV’s that averaged about 13 miles per gallon. They had the usual excuses, more room for groceries or taking kids to soccer games, SUVs were safer for their kids, the usual hypocritical blather. I told them they were hypocrites. They were oh, so offended.
The Sierra Club and other environmental organizations are composed mostly comfortable dilettantes who embrace a cause so they can feel smugly superior, but won’t for a minute make any REAL lifestyle sacrifices for that cause. And no, recycling bins alone don’t matter much.
This is BIGGER than it appears. Do we continue down the path of CO2 or do we change our ways?
Money wants CO2, People want a future.
This is the framing that will win.
Today in the Fargo Forum, an op-ed by one of your fellow protesters, scarecrow.
Pipeline will carry world’s dirtiest oil through our state.
link = http://www.inforum.com/event/article/id/332695/group/Opinion/
The Village and their Big Oil benefactors may be turning their backs on this issue, but everyday Americans aren’t.
A flip of the tail fin to the people getting arrested and protesting over this issue!
The Obama Administration thinks that putting you in jail for peacefully protesting is a good idea.
Frankly, I’m going to welcome Obama’s defeat next year.
The powers that be apparently have a death wish for those who they govern and/or rule.
I still can’t believe just how easily the Obama team (including the truly vile Hillary Clinton) just got right behind the oil industry on this issue.
The national Democrats can’t even *pretend* to environmentalism at this point …
And just think what obama and team will do if he gets a second term. I just can’t bear the thought.
Guilty as a dog, and not afraid to admit it.
I agree with you that we should pick up after ourselves. I just don’t agree that CO2 is a pollutant, any more than water vapor is.
“Oh we care about global warming, but not enough to put an end to the capitalist system over it.”
Well said Scarecrow! Bravo! Recommended.
Out of Greed, they will destroy the earth’s ability to support many cultures and ways of life. It matters not to them.
I’m getting very confused by this protest. One minute it’s about the possibility of the pipeline bursting, the next it’s about aquifers. Now it’s about global warming. Is it just about “against”? Because in that case, I don’t support it. If it’s really about global warming or there’s a genuine threat to the aquifer, I support it. But if there’s really no problem with it but people feel there’s a need to have a protest and have latched on to an issue, then I’d like to find a real issue.
Another craven political move for the reelection of this jackass.
More gently: Guess Obama doesn’t want to eat his peas.
I will not be assisting them in this regard. The best thing that any working person can do to respond to what is happening at this late juncture is to not legitimize the political class by participating in their (objectively) rigged election process.
I’m through being held hostage to the Republicans by the Democrats. They’re all no good at all.
Pajarito bienvenido al nido!
The best thing any of us can do is boycott the process that creates and maintains this completely corrupt, exploitative political class. The American national elections are shell game being practiced by the devil himself. The only response to a rigged game is to refuse to play along. What legitimizes the political class is elections, which are rigged by monetary infusions in mass media and between elites. What creates mandates is high turnout in elections.
Low turnouts in elections, people vocally refusing to participate in a rigged process … this not only strips the two political parties of their illusory credibility, but the entire political class.
That’s what we can do -
A fact that I learned recently you all probably know, but just in case. . . Washington D.C. is the Mecca of the Democratic Party. The voter regisgtration rolls show Democrats outnumbering Republicans 10 to 1 with even Independents having a 2 to 1 advantage. Why can’t these numbers be mobilized to join in this protest? The food in the DC jails can’t be that bad. It illustrates vividly the absence of leadership in the party with a D. I think we’re missing a golden opportunity here, “to make Obama do it.”
I’m with you.
I believe that virtually everyone embraced Obama because during his election he pretended to be a sincere reformer and activist with commitments to environmentalism, economic change, and ending corruption.
That said, why would you pay attention to the Sierra Club? They are a playground for the corporate rich class that believes themselves “liberals” as a form of indulgence. They’re in a bubble created by private wealth. They are not environmentalists really, they’re a turn-out-the-vote group, I believe.
No, radicals are on the left. Reactionaries are on the right and uphold the status quo.
Should be “those supporting the ExxonMobil megaloads traveling through downtown Moscow or the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline(…)are the reactionaries”.
As to your content, I agree wholeheartedly.
Ondelette,
Refining tar sands requires 2-4 times the fuel compared to conventional oil refining, thus 2-4 times the CO@ is generated per barrel of oil refined. Far, far worse than conventional oil refining. It will hasten the continued decline of our climate. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_sands
It does nothing to convert us away from oil for energy, and harms the planet. Bill McKibben has covered this well on Democracy Now and NPR has clear explanation.
The sad fact is that the pipeline is about all of the things you mention. It’s an environmental disaster any way you look at it. Here is a link to one of many sites that explain it:
http://www.foe.org/keystone-xl-pipeline
truly vile Hillary Clinton?????
like Hillary tells Obama what to do?
“truly vile” – hard to face the fact the wrong choice was made in 08, isn’t?
Thank you Rob Briggs for your efforts and peaceful demonstration. Thank you Scarecrow for bringing Rob’s post to us!
Sorry – it is just science – pollutant has the connotation of inherently bad – and that is not what is being said.
CO2 – and water vapor – trap heat – but CO2 in the models and ice core samples is indeed the real culprit.
But with a little more warming we release the frozen methane in the ground, and then CO2 is no longer the worst part of the problem – but of course by then we have turned the corner on the way to Vensus like heat and no one sees a way back to stability in some human sustaining atmosphere.
But not to worry about CO2 – plants like it – in reasonable moderation. And it is time to try a new set of life forms on the earth, right?
We are – or may be per the models – getting close to a tipping point on climate change(we are moving out of that which can be explained by cycles and may not be able to “cycle back” due to man made / caused change).
Full conversion to tar sands from drilled oil is inevitable as the “peak oil” point is now and the future oil supply is the 2 trillion barrels of oil in tar sands.
The complete cycle – taking out of ground to actual burning as fuel – is only 15% worse than the current drilled oil cycle because most of the climate change effect is in the burning of the fuel – (coal is much worse) – but climate change is likely to not handle the increase very well.
But this – tar sands – should be our best chance to get public action as it combines much more air pollution in the getting it out of the ground phase, mountain top removal strip mining destruction of the environment, poisons the water at the mining site causing deformed fishes and animals, produces more highly acid oil that they are trying to move on the cheap via thinner than standard steel pipelines via a company with a history of much high than average spills (they get closer to the average in some reports by excluding spills smaller than 2300 barrels – cute), and crossing a massive mid-west underground water pool that mid-west cities and farmers depend on.
I respectfully differ. I believe that if you want to “make Obama do it”, as this point, you need to become very electorally aggressive. Even then, failure is likely, but that’s just a reason for making sure that “making Obama do it” is done with a view towards education and organizing. Not looking to build something long-lasting is a recipe for long-term failure.
As for what “very electorally aggressive” would constitute, three things come readily to mind:
1) credibly politically threaten to vote for his Republican challenger. This would mean a web site with names, brief voting history, maybe town and state, and a brief memo as to what prompted such a punishing vote, by the voters intending to do so.
2) credibly politically threatening to vote for Republican challengers in, say, up to 5-10% of Dem incumbent seats (total), where you pick your 5-10% from Dems who go along with Obama.
3) aggressively educating the public about Obama’s shenanigans (e.g., distributing Hugh’s Obama Scandal List), starting with the black demographic (Obama’s strongest demographic supporters, by far). If this is done, it may make sense to modify 1) to just not voting for Obama, as black voters may interpret 1) and 3) together as a trick to elect a Republican.
Commiserating on a progressive blog will accomplish almost nothing in the real world.
If progressives hadn’t been such wimps and so disorganized, they might have “made Obama do it” earlier on in his Presidency, with less aggressive means. At this point, the cancer has spread.
Ummmm, extremely unlikely. See my diary and links in Ugly Scientific Tribalism of CO2 Global Warming Fetishists, and a Beautiful Film on Climate Realist Svensmark
On a short term basis, it may be expedient to maintain the illusion that human generated CO2 emissions contribute significantly to global warming. The longer this charade is carried on, however, the longer it will be difficult to get the cooperation of citizens who aren’t caught up in that baloney, yet might well be allies in terms of pollution control, water preservation, and national security.
No. Your are again catapulting KochRoach Oil Company propaganda. Are you paid for each comment you make, promoting falsehoods, distractions, and disinformation about science and polluters?
He was certainly embraced due to his lofty rhetoric, but he got elected because he appeared to be the candidate who best represented “Not Bush”. The Clinton and McCrazy campaigns actually made Obama seem like a liberal.
Here’s some free advice. Instead of just buying the BS of that lobbyist outfit known as IPCC, look into the recent results of what a real scientific group, CERN, has recently published. I know you think you’ve got it all figured out, but what the hell do you know about the level of genuine scientific dissent against Catastrophic AGW? What do you know about tribalism and irrationality amongst scientists?
You are catapulting Goldman Sachs boosting propaganda, but that doesn’t bother you. Tell me something, Frank33, who do you think has more control over the US government, Goldman Sachs or the Koch brothers?
We’d be in even worse shape with Hillary “Corporate Hawk” Clinton.
She would have bombed Iran for Israel by now, and her State Dept. signed off on this pipeline as well. The wrong choice was indeed made in 2008, because the corporate media effectively dismissed Dennis Kucinich from the race.
Water vapor is generally considered to be anywhere from 150% to 800% more effective than CO2 as a greenhouse gas. This is not a controversial statement.
Distraction and disinformation. But we should all cheer the new patriotic heroes, The Tar Sands One Thousand, and the numbers are increasing.
“The burn-it-all scenario for fossil fuels eventually could raise average global ocean temperature from 60-degrees Fahrenheit currently to 100- degrees F”
This seems wildly improbable. Have average ocean temperatures ever been this high? What is the basis of this statement?
Probably an exaggerated sensitivity of the climate models to CO2. A sensitivity so high, that the models are not consistent. So says Nir Shaviv:
From Shaviv’s blog article The Oceans as Calorimeter
More links to Shaviv are in my recent diary Ugly Scientific Tribalism of CO2 Global Warming Fetishists, and a Beautiful Film on Climate Realist Svensmark
Listen to ‘THE CARBON CONTROL KNOB’ American Geophysical Union Bjerknes Lecture Dec 2008, San Francisco by Prof. Richard B. Alley of Penn State here: http://www.ecoshock.net/eshock10/ES_100108_Show_LoFi.mp3 .
Dr. James Hansen ‘Storms of My Grandchildren,’ Chapter 10 suggests much higher temperatures are possible.