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That Sound You Hear isn’t Dripping Oil, it’s a Ticking Time-Bomb
by Greg M. Schwartz

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Source: Business Insider [[link removed]]

Oil and gas pipelines continue to leak toxic contamination that threatens communities across the country. The leak of nearly 600,000 gallons of oil from TC Energy’s Keystone pipeline into a creek in Kansas [[link removed]] on December 8 is just the latest example of a long string of such environmental disasters. Yet the fossil fuel industry is rarely held accountable. Roughly 3 million gallons of oil [[link removed]] from pipeline accidents are spilled in the U.S. each year.

The country now has more than 2.6 million miles [[link removed]] of gas pipelines and more than 229,000 miles of oil pipelines. Ongoing oil pipeline expansion around the world has led Global Energy Monitor to suggest there’s been “an almost deliberate failure [[link removed]] to meet climate goals” by the governments endorsing the pipeline projects. That failure has not gone unnoticed by Anthropocene Alliance member communities. Two of them, 350 Wisconsin [[link removed]] in Madison, WI and Memphis Coalition Against Pollution [[link removed]] in Memphis, TN have organized to stop pipelines from fouling their communities and endangering the planet.

Regional resistance in Wisconsin
350 Wisconsin has been working with the Stop the Money Pipeline coalition to generate public pressure for widespread divestment from the fossil fuel industry. The group organized a flashmob action in front of the Chase Bank across the street from the state capitol building in Madison last year in conjunction with Earth Day, drawing attention to the fact that JP Morgan Chase is the world’s largest funder of the fossil fuel industry. Activists danced to the Bee Gees’ disco classic, and for them aptly named, “Stayin’ Alive”. “If you feel climate despair,” they repeat to the public and local legislators, “try activism! Only everyone can save us now!”

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"Staying Alive disco flash mob dance by 350Wisconsin Art Collective in front of Chase Bank, on Capitol Square in Madison, WI, during the Farmers Market on April 23, 2022."

Emily Park of 350 Wisconsin’s Divest & Defund team [[link removed]] points out that Chase is also the leading American funder of tar sands oil production, financing $382 billion from 2016-21. TC Energy — the Keystone Pipeline culprit — was the leading receiver, pocketing more than $23 billion, while Enbridge Inc., got more than $3 billion, part of which has gone to expansion plans for the aging Line 5 pipeline [[link removed]] in Wisconsin. 350 Wisconsin’s message to Chase customers in Madison is that by banking with them, your money is financing fossil fuel development and hurting folks locally.

Citizen activists in Memphis rise up stop the Byhalia pipeline

In 2021, a coalition of activists succeeded in stopping the Byhalia Connection Pipeline [[link removed]] in Memphis. Plains All American Pipeline and Valero Energy Corp. had announced a joint venture two years earlier to connect a pair of existing crude oil pipelines and run them through the mostly Black neighborhoods of South Memphis, taking advantage of questionable eminent domain laws and fast-track permitting promised by the Trump administration.

Led by Memphis Community Against Pollution [[link removed]] , activists went door to door to educate residents on the environmental dangers of the project. MCAP also teamed with the Southern Environmental Law Center to challenge eminent domain cases on behalf of local land-owners. The pipeline developers dropped the project in the summer of 2021.
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Group picture from the Byhalia Connection Pipeline Campaign, from MCAP website [[link removed]] .

“This is where power, met people-power, in a community they thought was powerless,” MCAP co-found Justin J. Pearson said at a victory gathering. The 28-year-old MCAP co-founder went on to win a special election for Tennessee House District 86 by a landslide [[link removed]] , a sign of popular support for the defeat of the pipeline.

Will the real eco-terrorists please stand up?
The overwhelming scientific consensus indicates that solving the climate change problem won’t be possible without a transition away from fossil fuels [[link removed]] . This recognition has led some to advocate more radical activism. Climate scholar Andreas Malm authored 2021’s How to Blow Up a Pipeline [[link removed]] as a manifesto for direct action (there are no instructions for creating explosive devices). Malm argues that an escalation of tactics beyond strictly peaceful demonstrations will be needed to save the Earth. But Malm’s analysis overlooks a critical issue – the oppressive legal consequences such protesters face if caught and arrested.

A current case in point is that of climate activist Jessica Reznicek, whose acts of property damage [[link removed]] against the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016-17 in Iowa landed her in prison. Reznicek’s legal team is objecting [[link removed]] to how her sentence was more than doubled after right-wing judges applied a “terrorism enhancement” [[link removed]] to her sentencing.
“The appellate justices’ decision to uphold her sentence…doubles down on a chilling message: Those who take direct action against rapacious energy corporations can be treated as enemies of the state,” warned The Intercept’s [[link removed]] Natasha Lennard last summer.

Labeling vandalism against the corporate fossil fuel infrastructure as “eco-terrorism” is a significant obstacle for current and future campaigns of climate activism. But the fact that Big Oil and their financiers insist on continuing to build more pipelines while the climate crisis deepens begs the question of who the real eco-terrorists are?

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