{"id":12035,"date":"2015-01-20T10:04:35","date_gmt":"2015-01-20T15:04:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=12035"},"modified":"2015-01-23T14:12:30","modified_gmt":"2015-01-23T19:12:30","slug":"mlk-and-pipeline-opposition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2015\/01\/mlk-and-pipeline-opposition.html","title":{"rendered":"MLK and pipeline opposition"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\nThe fossil fuel opposition is the child and grandchild of Mohandas K. Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nWith their nonviolence, truth, and action as a model, we shall overcome.\r\n

\r\n\r\nBill McKibben, The Guardian, 25 August 2011,\r\n\r\nMartin Luther King’s legacy and the power of nonviolent civil disobedience:\r\nIn opposing the Keystone XL oil pipeline, demonstrators are getting a sense of the civil rights leader’s courage<\/a>,\r\n

\r\n

\r\nPreacher, speaker, writer under fire, but also tactician. He really\r\nunderstood the power of nonviolence, a power we’ve experienced in\r\nthe last few days. When the police cracked down on us, the publicity\r\nit produced cemented two of the main purposes of our protest: First,\r\nit made Keystone XL “ the new, 1,700-mile-long pipeline we’re\r\ntrying to block that will vastly increase the flow of “dirty” tar\r\nsands oil from Alberta, Canada, to the Gulf of Mexico “ into a\r\nnational issue. A few months ago, it was mainly people along the\r\nroute of the prospective pipeline who were organising against it.\r\n(And with good reason:\r\n\r\n tar sands mining has already wrecked huge\r\nswaths of native land in Alberta, and endangers farms, wild areas,\r\nand aquifers all along its prospective route.)\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nAquifers, like the Floridan Aquifer we defend against the Sabal Trail pipeline and fracking.\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nMcKibben said the message was getting through, witness\r\n“the incredibly strong New York Times editorial opposing the building of the pipeline that I was handed on our release from jail.”<\/a>\r\n

\r\nHe continued:\r\n

\r\n

\r\n<\/a>\r\nSecond, being arrested in front of the White House helped make it\r\nclearer that President Obama should be the focus of anti-pipeline\r\nactivism. For once Congress isn’t in the picture. The situation\r\ncouldn’t be simpler: the president, and the president alone, has the\r\npower either to sign the permit that would take the pipeline through\r\nthe Midwest and down to Texas (with the usual set of disastrous oil\r\nspills to come) or block it.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nAnd in February 2013, 40,000 people went to the White House<\/a> (I was there, as were others you know).\r\n

\r\nIt’s not just Obama’s mind which was being changed.\r\nA few days earlier,\r\nSierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune was arrested in front of the White House<\/a>,\r\n“in the first act of civil disobedience in the\r\norganization’s 120-year history. \r\nHere is Brune\r\n\r\nwith Georgia’s own Julian Bond<\/a>.\r\nJulian Bond, about whom\r\n\r\nMLK wrote a letter in 1966<\/a> quoting John F. Kennedy,\r\n

\r\n“War will exist until that distant day when the conscientous\r\nobjector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today.”\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nBond had opposed the Vietnam War, and the Georgia legislature\r\nhad refused to seat him as an elected representative.\r\nBond and King\r\n\r\nappealed to the Georgia Supreme court and won<\/a>.\r\nAnd in 2013 Bond stood with Brune and McKibben to be arrested in front\r\nof the White House, opposing the root of our wars for oil:\r\nthe fossil fuel industry that wants to drive the Keystone XL\r\npipeline through the heart of the country for corporate profit.\r\nThe same industry that wants to drive the Sabal Trail pipeline\r\nthrough the heart of Bond’s and King’s and our beloved southland for\r\ncorporate profit.\r\n

\r\n\r\nWhen Sabal Trail Transmission entered the FERC pre-filing process in\r\nOctober 2013, everyone had already seen the above events in the news.\r\n

\r\n<\/a>\r\nIt’s not a stretch to assume everyone at the\r\n\r\nSpectraBusters protest in front of the Leesburg, GA courthouse 10 July 2014<\/a>\r\nknew about most of the above, as probably did the protesters in Albany, Valdosta, and Jasper,\r\nand those getting arrested at the FERC offices in DC and at Spectra’s own home office.\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nIn September 2014,\r\n\r\n400,000 rallied in New York City against climate change<\/a>\r\n(others you know were there).\r\n

\r\nIn November 2014,\r\n\r\nthe U.S. Senate rejected Keystone XL<\/a>.\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nAnd in November 2014,\r\n\r\nMr. Obama went to China<\/a>\r\nand with\r\n

\r\n

\r\nChinese President Xi Jinping announced announced on Wednesday\r\ncommitments to reduce both countries’ greenhouse gas emissions. The\r\nsurprise announcement, which came while Obama visits Beijing this\r\nweek, is the clearest sign yet the two countries are serious on\r\nclimate change.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nAlso in November 2014, after three years of cautious temporizing, president\r\nObama finally\r\n\r\ncategorically opposed the Keystone XL pipeline<\/a>,\r\n

\r\n

\r\nUnderstand what this project is. It is providing the ability of\r\nCanada to pump their oil, send it through our land, down to the\r\nGulf, where it will be sold everywhere else. That doesn’t have an\r\nimpact on U.S. gas prices.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nJust like the Sabal Trail fracked methane pipeline.\r\n

\r\nOn 6 January 2015, Obama’s press secretary came right out and said\r\nObama would veto any Congressional\r\nattempt to pass Keystone XL<\/a>.\r\n

\r\nObama hasn’t publicly made the connection between Keystone XL and methane pipelines;\r\nrather he’s still pushing\r\n“natural” gas as an energy independence solution.\r\nHowever, in December 2014\r\n\r\nthe EPA proposed a methane emissions rule<\/a>,\r\nwhich Obama promoted\r\n\r\nin a 14 January 2015 press conference<\/a>.\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nLimiting methane emissions from fracking, pipelines, and compressor stations\r\nis indeed a step forward.\r\nStopping fracking and new pipelines, compressor stations, and LNG export\r\nwould be even better.\r\n

\r\nThe point remains: Obama likely never would have done any of this if \r\nnot for Bill McKibben and Michael Brune and 40,000 and 400,000 others\r\nemulating Dr. Martin Luther King Jr and Mohandas K. Gandhi by\r\nnonviolently opposing Keystone XL and the fossil fuel industry\r\nthat is cooking the planet.\r\nThe leaders of the world’s leading nations are probably only finally\r\nseriously considering doing something about climate change\r\n\r\nat the December 2015 U.N. meeting in Paris<\/a>, because of these\r\nchildren and grandchildren of MLK and Gandhi.\r\n

\r\nAs MLK said\r\n\r\nat Oberlin College in June 1965<\/a>,\r\n

\r\n

\r\nI’d like to suggest some of the things that we must do in order to\r\nremain awake and to achieve the proper mental attitudes and\r\nresponses that the new situation demands. First, I’d like to say\r\nthat we are challenged to achieve a world perspective. Anyone who\r\nfeels that we can live in isolation today, anyone who feels that we\r\ncan live without being concerned about other individuals and other\r\nnations is sleeping through a revolution. The world in which we live\r\nis geographically one. The great challenge now is to make it one in\r\nterms of brotherhood.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nNow it is true that the geographic togetherness of our world has\r\nbeen brought into being, to a large extent, through modern man’s\r\nscientific ingenuity. Modern man, through his scientific genius, has\r\nbeen able to dwarf distance and place time in chains. Yes, we’ve\r\nbeen able to carve highways through the stratosphere, and our jet\r\nplanes have compressed into minutes distances that once took weeks\r\nand months. And so this is a small world from a geographical point\r\nof view. What we are facing today is the fact that through our\r\nscientific and technological genius we’ve made of this world a\r\nneighborhood. And now through our moral and ethical commitment we\r\nmust make of it a brotherhood. We must all learn to live together as\r\nbrothers—or we will all perish together as fools. This is the\r\ngreat issue facing us today. No individual can live alone; no nation\r\ncan live alone. We are tied together.”\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nMake no mistake: this is a revolution of decentralized energy.\r\nLike the change from \r\n\r\nhorse and buggy to cars and trucks<\/a> a century ago,\r\nthe world revolution to solar power, including solar powered vehicles,\r\nis already well on the way,\r\n\r\nbacked up by wind and water power<\/a>.\r\nYet this revolution is already happening\r\n\r\nas fast as the Internet revolution put a supercomputer in your pocket<\/a>,\r\nwithin a decade.\r\nAs\r\nformer FERC Chair Jon Wellinghoff predicted,\r\nsolar power\r\n\r\nmore than doubled deployment in the past two years<\/a>,\r\nand will continue to do so.\r\nWhile solar increased 200% in two years, the most positive\r\npredictions for shale gas are for a 56% increase for the 28 years from 2012 to 2040,\r\nand that was before\r\n\r\nOPEC pushed prices of oil and gas to record lows<\/a>.\r\nSpectra the oil war stock<\/a>\r\nsuddenly got\r\n\r\ncut to hold and Spectra Energy CEO Greg Ebel has to try to defend his position<\/a>.\r\nThe\r\n\r\nfragility of centralized systems<\/a> has been exposed.\r\nWhile Sabal Trail struggles through a multi-year process for a single pipeline,\r\nGeorgia Power and others have busily been deploying solar power in Georgia and elsewhere<\/a>.\r\nPipeline opponents merely have to delay new pipelines a few more years,\r\nand the truth will be clear to everybody, including energy investors:\r\nfossil fuels are a bad bet; the smart money is on solar<\/a> and wind power.\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nIt’s not just on the international and national levels, either.\r\nThis month, after\r\n\r\nyears of patient protests<\/a>,\r\ntown hall meetings, and lobbying the legislature\r\nand the Georgia Public Service Commission, and directly talking to\r\nGeorgia Power and its parent Southern Company,\r\nsolar power proponents led by Georgia Sierra Club\r\nfinally are in sight of victory:\r\n\r\nGeorgia Power appears to be claiming credit<\/a>,\r\nfor\r\n\r\na solar financing bill<\/a> in the Georgia legislature.\r\n

\r\nAs MLK said\r\n\r\nduring a visit to India in 1959<\/a>,\r\n

\r\n

\r\n“It was a marvelous thing to see the amazing results of a non-violent\r\ncampaign. The aftermath of hatred and bitterness that usually\r\nfollows a violent campaign was found nowhere in India…”\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\n\r\nAhimsa, nonviolence, non-harming, love in action<\/a>: call it what you will, this\r\nwas the seed of all of Gandhi’s actions, and MLK’s as well.\r\n

\r\nAs MLK said 7 December 1964 in London a few days before he\r\nreceived the Nobel Peace Prize<\/a>,\r\n

\r\n

\r\nIt also says that it is possible to struggle against an evil, unjust\r\nsystem, with all your might and with all your heart, and even hate\r\nthat unjust system, but yet you maintain an attitude of active\r\ngoodwill and understanding and even love for the perpetrators of\r\nthat evil system. And this is the most misunderstood aspect of\r\nnonviolence. And this is where those who don’t want to follow the\r\nnonviolent method say a lot of bad things to those of us who talk\r\nabout love. But I still go on and believe in it, because I am still\r\nconvinced that it is love that makes the world go round, and somehow\r\nthis kind of love can be a powerful force for social change.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nI’m not talking about a weak love. I’m not talking about emotional\r\nbosh here. I’m not talking about some sentimental quality. I’m not\r\ntalking about an affectionate response. It would be nonsense to urge\r\noppressed people to love their violent oppressors in an affectionate\r\nsense, and I have never advised that. When Jesus said, “Love your\r\nenemies,” I’m happy he didn’t say, “Like your enemies.” It’s pretty\r\ndifficult to like some people. But love is greater than like. Love\r\nis understanding creative, redemptive goodwill for all men.\r\nTheologians talk about this kind of love with the Greek word agape,\r\nwhich is a sort of overflowing love that seeks nothing in return.\r\nAnd when one develops this, you rise to the position of being able\r\nto love the person who does the evil deed, while hating the deed\r\nthat the person does. And I believe that this can be done.\r\nPsychiatrists are telling us now that hatred is a dangerous force,\r\nnot merely for the hated, but also the hater. Many of the strange\r\nthings that happen in the subconscious, many of the inner conflicts,\r\nare rooted in hate. And so they are saying, “Love or perish.” This\r\nis why Erich Fromm can write a book entitled The Art of Loving,\r\narguing that love is the supreme unifying force of life.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nSome people call that sacrifice, or selfless: MLK did.\r\nBut where is the sacrifice in removing the wooden beam from your own eye\r\nso that you can speak about the speck of sawdust in others’ eyes?\r\nSee Jesus, Matthew 7:3<\/a>.\r\nWhere is the selflessness in working to protect ourselves and\r\nour neighbors from\r\n\r\na corporate invasion<\/a>?\r\nWhere is the selflessness in working for a cleaner, safer, more prosperous\r\nworld for all of us?\r\nI say it is mutual aid, it is cooperation, it is helping ourselves, and ahimsa is the seed.\r\n

\r\n<\/a>\r\nTruth is the soil for that seed of non-harming, as Gandhi said,\r\n

\r\n

\r\n\r\n“Ahimsa and Truth are so intertwined that it is practically\r\nimpossible to disentangle and separate them. They are like the two\r\nsides of a coin, or rather a smooth unstamped metallic disc. Who can\r\nsay which is the obverse and which the reverse? Nevertheless ahimsa\r\nis the means; Truth is the end.”\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nAhimsa is the bedrock of [satyagraha, literally truth-force, Gandhi’s movement of nonviolence], the “irreducible\r\nminimum” to which satyagraha adheres and the final measure of\r\nits value.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\n\r\nTruth like Keystone XL would only produce 35 jobs<\/a>\r\nand the\r\nSabal Trail pipeline similarly would produce almost no local jobs\r\nand is quite likely\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n\r\nactually for LNG export<\/a>, which would\r\n\r\ndrive up the domestic price of natural gas<\/a>.\r\nWhile solar power is already producing\r\nrural jobs right where we need them<\/a>\r\nwhile reducing electric bills, promoting real energy independence,\r\n\r\nburning no water<\/a>, without taking anybody’s land<\/a>, without drilling under any rivers,\r\nand with no leaks or explosions.\r\nThere are already\r\n\r\nmore solar jobs than jobs in non-supervisory oil and gas extraction<\/a>.\r\nThe truth is that new pipelines, whether for tar sands oil or for fracked methane,\r\nare a bad investment,\r\nwhile\r\nsolar and wind power are good investments.\r\nRefusing to invest our land, water, and air in corporate bad investments\r\nis just good common sense.\r\n

\r\nTruth like it’s no accident that refineries, fracking, and pipelines<\/a> tend to be built where there are black people and poor people without\r\nfinancial means to defend themselves against corporate colonization.\r\nTruth that fighting against the centralized fossil fuel industry and for distributed renewable energy is fighting for Dr. King’s primary goal of racial equality.\r\n

\r\nAction is the water for that seed of non-harming.\r\nAs MLK said in London in 1964:\r\n

\r\n

\r\nAnd so it is wonderful to have a method of struggle where it is\r\npossible to stand up against segregation, to stand up against\r\ncolonialism with all of your might, and yet not hate the\r\nperpetrators of these unjust systems. And I believe firmly that it\r\nis through this kind of powerful nonviolent action, this kind of\r\nlove that organizes itself into mass action, that we will be able to\r\ntransform the jangling discords of our nation and the world into a\r\nbeautiful symphony of brotherhood. Certainly this is the great\r\nchallenge facing us.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nTo the fossil fuel corporations we are all backwards natives to be\r\ncolonized or shoved out of the way for their hundred-foot wide rights of way\r\nfor their yard-wide pipelines under our rivers and through our fields, forests, and far too close to our schools, businesses, and people.\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nJust as economic divestment was used successfully against apartheid in\r\nSouth Africa,\r\n\r\nfossil fuel divestment is even more rapidly succeeding<\/a>,\r\nstarting at Harvard and spread already to Valdosta State University\r\nand even to the heirs of Standard Oil, with\r\nthe Rockefeller Brothers Fund divesting from tar sands oil<\/a>.\r\n

\r\nAction like that of Bond and McKibben and Brune, and the 40,000 at the White House\r\nand the 400,000 in New York City, and even the dozen in Leesburg, Georgia.\r\n

\r\n\r\nThe fruit of the seed of love in the soil of truth, watered by action, is already growing.\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nThat fruit is a world\r\nwithout new pipelines ravaging our lands and waters for corporate profit.\r\nW world run on real renewable energy, sun, wind, and water.\r\nA world without wars for oil.\r\nA world that corporate greed no longer cooks for its profit.\r\nA world of more prosperity for more people and more community.\r\n

\r\nIt is not selfless to work for such a world.\r\nIt is for all our selves and for all the other creatures on this planet\r\nthat we work to create a better world.\r\n

\r\nAs MLK said at Oberlin College:\r\n

\r\n

\r\nYes, we shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is\r\nlong, but it bends toward justice. We shall overcome because Carlyle\r\nis right: “No lie can live forever.”…\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nWe shall overcome because William Cullen Bryant is right: “Truth,\r\ncrushed to earth, shall rise again.” With this faith we will be able\r\nto hew out of the mountain of despair, the stone of hope. With this\r\nfaith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our\r\nnation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood, and speed up the\r\nday when, in the words of the prophet Amos, “Justice will roll down\r\nlike waters; and righteousness like a mighty stream.”\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nLet us stand up. Let us be a concerned generation. Let us remain\r\nawake through a great revolution. And we will speed up that great\r\nday when the American Dream will be a reality.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\n\r\n\"600x338<\/a>\r\n\r\n

\r\nWith nonviolence and truth and action,\r\nwe shall overcome.\r\nThe sun is already rising on Georgia, Florida, Alabama, and the world.\r\n

\r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>\r\n

PS: As Karma Norjin Lhamo has noted, the ancestors go back farther, including\r\n\r\nLeo Tolstoy’s direct influence on Gandhi<\/a>. Gandhi wrote about a very influential letter<\/a> from Tolstoy:\r\n

\r\n

\r\nThere is no doubt that there is nothing new in what Tolstoy preaches. But his presentation of the old truth is refreshingly forceful. His logic is unassailable. And above all he endeavors to practice what he preaches. He preaches to convince. He is sincere and in earnest. He commands attention.\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nTolstoy in that letter wrote:\r\n

\r\n

As soon as men live entirely in accord with the law of love natural to their hearts and now revealed to them, which excludes all resistance by violence, and therefore hold aloof from all participation in violence—as soon as this happens, not only will hundreds be unable to enslave millions, but not even millions will be able to enslave a single individual.\r\n<\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The fossil fuel opposition is the child and grandchild of Mohandas K. Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. With their nonviolence, truth, and action as a model, we shall overcome. Bill McKibben, The Guardian, 25 August 2011, Martin Luther King’s legacy and the power of nonviolent civil disobedience: In opposing the Keystone XL oil pipeline, […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[47,141,14,15,16,18,19,20,6124,559,6687,24,134,55],"tags":[8179,1303,4679,8719,8745,1003,8704,8705,8706,3787,1763,8701,8708,1300,8709,8182,6176,8702,8710,12,7,2838,8181,8027,562,8178,8782,6076,6597,8180,34,8714,6966,6,8743,8727],"class_list":["post-12035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-climate-change","category-co2","category-economy","category-education","category-environment","category-georgia-power","category-history","category-law","category-natural-gas-2","category-oil","category-pipeline-2","category-solar","category-vsu","category-water","tag-ahimsa","tag-bill-mckibben","tag-civil-disobedience","tag-climate-change","tag-co2","tag-divestment","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-environment","tag-fossil-fuel","tag-fpl","tag-georgia","tag-georgia-power","tag-harvard","tag-history","tag-julian-bond","tag-keystone-xl","tag-lake","tag-law","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-martin-luther-king-jr","tag-metta","tag-michael-brune","tag-natural-gas","tag-nonviolence","tag-oil","tag-pipeline","tag-sabal-trail-transmission","tag-satyagraha","tag-sierra-club","tag-solar","tag-spectra-energy","tag-valdosta","tag-vsu","tag-water"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-387","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12035"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12035\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12071,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12035\/revisions\/12071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}