Culture and Coexistence into the Great Unknown
Joe Nocera in the New York Times believes Dr. James Hansen, because he is head of NASA’s Goddard Institute, should just shut up instead of participating in the anti-Keystone XL movement. Peter Jefferson Nichols argues this should be the role of any government scientist who recognizes the danger of passing climate tipping points, producing irreversible climate impacts.
“Blocking a pipeline, isn’t the same as blocking the flow of oil.” Hell yeah it ain’t! Diversity of targets! Diversity of tactics! If I am going to stop the single most profitable and destructive commodity on the planet from permanently spoiling our finite commons, the market place, I’ve got to do more than merely hold rallies and get arrested. I’ve got to organize. And that’s exactly what I’m doing, along with my siblings in solidarity.
Idle No More has awakened indigenous voices from all over North America, blockading highways and border crossings, flash-mobbing in shopping malls, facing arrest and imprisonment. At issue are sovereignty and treaty rights, dancing and demonstrating for Mother Earth: for the protection of the air, the water, and the land, motivating native peoples out of their idleness and into the streets.
While bulldozers and diggers bashed a 50-foor-wide path for the Keystone XL pipeline, planned from Cushing, Oklahoma to Port Arthur, Texas, a group of tar sands blockaders have taken to the trees.
Developer David Mirvish hopes his string of sculptural towers in Toronto arts district will provide an antidote for the banality of the traditional glass box condo tower. “I am not building condominiums,” he said at the announcement. “I am building three sculptures for people to live in.”
The Earth has a voice. And the fact that any native people have survived on the planet should be a clue that there’s a way that does not include money and politics. We have survived by our relationship with natural force. Water is sacred. Air is sacred. If the tar sands isn’t stopped, we are going to have a whole new set of problems.
The Obama Administration will continue to face the decision whether a leak-prone dirty tar sands oil pipeline, associated with destruction of ecosystems and indigenous communities as well as global climate destabilization, is in the US national interest.