Culture and Coexistence into the Great Unknown
Trump and his Big Oil cronies want to destroy all of us, just green-lighting the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, one in a long line of planned and approved climate and environmental policy brutalizations. Sorry, folks, this is not hyperbole. Yet the story doesn’t end there…
The Lakota phrase, Mni Wiconi, Water is Life, has inspired a Native Nations protest against the recent approval and ongoing construction of the Dakota Access Fracked Oil Pipeline, that threatens all communities and ecosystems downstream. After military-style assaults on Native Water Protectors, construction has almost reached the Missouri River.
The most recent oil spill on the Santa Barbara coast that has decimated wildlife and soiled California beaches with tar over a 350-mile area has been an unmitigated disaster. It illustrates weaknesses in basic safety measures for pipelines and crude by rail, as well as risks associated with industry plans to expand tar sands and other extreme drilling infrastructure on the West Coast.
The fracking boom threatens Puebloan and Hopi ancestral homelands around New Mexico’s sacred Chaco Canyon and local Diné communities are fighting drilling, pipeline projects and just general industrialization of their region without bringing real economic development. See the videos from the Solstice Project.
The boom in North Dakota shale oil and the growth in Alberta tar sands, as well as the political costs of building pipelines has encouraged a move to ship more oil by rail. The move comes after high-profile disasters and the threat of massive climate disruption has caused heightened scrutiny of unconventional oil shipped by train to the global market.
David Osborn from Rising Tide asserts all new fossil fuel extraction must immediately stop if we want any chance of a habitable climate and a livable future. The climate movement needs more actions like Swamp Line 9 in Ontario, which shut down a pumping station to protest the Enbridge Line 9 Tar Sands Pipeline Reversal.
Traditional Goolarabooloo and Jabirr Jabirr land custodians from the Kimberley, Western Australia, voiced concerns about the proposed $30 billion liquefied natural gas (LNG) project at Walmadan or James Price Point. They say turning their coast into a gas hub will have devastating impacts on wildlife and nearby communities. The project was canceled due to rising costs.