The Keystone XL pipeline: Youth protests

Four days after I moved to Washington, DC, on 28 August, 2014,I was fortunate enough to find my way into the 50th anniversary celebrations of the March on Washington.  While the event was no protest, the goal was clear--direct political messaging, in this case about the confluences of racial and economic injustice.  That day provided my first taste of attending more politically charged events in this city.  Fast forward through a heated anti-drone summit by CODEPINK and a peace vigil in solidarity against the Keystone XL pipeline to today, when several hundred youth activists marched from the Red Square at Georgetown University to The White House to engage in civil disobedience dissent action to send a simple, concise, and extremely political message to President Barack Obama--say no to the construction of the northern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline.

Saying no to the pipeline sets the stage for a course correction on President Obama's "all of the above" energy policy, which is basically this: we can combat the social and ecological dimensions of climate change while still expanding offshore oil drilling, promoting fracking, continuing mountaintop removal, and becoming even bigger trade partners with Canada by importing their ecologically devastating oil.  How such an energy policy can reduce America's dependence on fossil fuels and lighten this culture's burden on the world I do not know, but at the very least saying no to the pipeline is a serious symbolic commitment that activists can gather around to wean this country and the world of toxic and climate change-inducing fossil fuel energy.

Today, I am energized by the spirit of young climate change activists who came in buses and cars from all across the country and who zip-tied themselves to The White House fence and got arrested, with the intention of showing President Obama that the youth cares deeply about the causes and effects of climate change--physical, economic, social, political, ecological.  I thus revive this blog from its hibernation by focusing my next several posts on the Keystone XL pipeline, both to educate myself and to provide you with information about the spectrum of issues that tar sands and the Keystone XL pipeline affects.

My next posts will focus on:

• the science and engineering behind tar sands extraction, processing, and transport
• a brief foray into the social implications of tar sands
• the ecological impacts of tar sands, now and possible
• arrest, direct action, and the legal issues surrounding arrest for civil disobedience and dissent
• the climate change movement's relation to other social movements
• the State Department's environmental impact statement 

Responses to this culture's addiction to oil cannot look at alternatives that continue to bolster the political, economic, and technological paradigm that has us locked in to degrading our Earth to the benefit of a few.  Tar sands represent the very worst things about the risks our government and corporations are willing to take to keep themselves in power.  Just take a look at a very real and ongoing tar sands disaster on the Kalamazoo River--here, here, here and here--in my state of Michigan.  More than three years and close to a billion dollars in clean-up efforts later, who knows when the nightmare will end. 

For now, I leave you with photos I took today during the dissent.

With knowledge comes responsibility

What is the point of learning about the world if we live for ourselves?  What the is point of research and of generating knowledge if we do not take what we learn to heart?

Scientists and engineers occupy a unique and powerful position in this culture, and they always have.  While kooks and quacks no doubt exist, scientists and engineers do important work in chemistry, atmospheric sciences, biology, physics, ecology, building and designing.  But if you're a scientist or engineer reading this, it is likely that you have been educated to (or at least told to) just doing the science and engineering, and leaving the decisionmaking that stems from it to others--policymakers, lawyers, businessmen, and politicians, many of whom do not have the best interests of people and nature at heart.  Scientists and engineers thus leave it to others, others who many not fully understand the implications of this knowledge, to decide what should be done about what we know, so scientists and engineers do not lose their "objectivity," so they do not cross the supposedly strict boundaries between scientific, reductionist research and the murky world of "values."

But in this glacier-melting, toxic tresspassing, obesity-inducing, mass-species-extinction, large corporate culture, scientists and engineers can no longer sit on the sidelines of decisionmaking.  Traditional means of scientific communication have led, for example, to politicians undermining and denying climate science (although in this episode of This American Life, it becomes clear that many politicians fully accept climate science, but just do not admit it).  Instead, given the incredible diversity of thought, skill, and knowledge they possess, scientists and engineers must take full responsibility for what they know and do, and that is to become front and center the faces of the radical social, political and economic change needed to align this culture and its laws with ecological holism and peace.

Fortunately, there are a handful of such brave men and women out there already, and Sandra Steingraber heads the list of courageous scientist activists.  A poet, essayist, author, environmentalist and ecologist, Steingraber has written extensively (in Orion magazine, among other places) about the links between industrial chemicals released into the environment and human health impacts, specifically cancer.  Recently, she has been intimately involved with the opposition to the extremely destructive practice of fracking, for which she was jailed.  In a conversation with Dick Gordon on The Story, Steingraber says,

In the absence of a powerful human rights movement behind the science, I don't think we can move this forward.  The world's most powerful industries are standing in our way.  And so I think science needs to be coupled with a kind of activism, similar to what we saw with [the] Civil Rights [Movement], similar to what we saw with the Abolitionist Movement.  And so, I feel inspired in the work that I do not just by the power of the data, whether it's on climate change, or on the growing evidence that we have linking childhood asthma to crummy air, [but also by how] Martin Luther King Jr. did what he did, and how my dad, at age eighteen, had to go off and fight global fascism even though at the time it looked like an overwhelming task...People under very desperate circumstances rose and said, "This is wrong." 

I carry around this German name, Steingraber, and my dad [was] also German...and what I learned from my dad was to not be a "good German."  If you see something is wrong because you have evidence, whether it is the kind of evidence that the French partisans had or whether it is evidence like I have as a biologist, we have a moral obligation to make sure that that evidence [leads to change].  You don't just say, "Here's the evidence," and that's your job, you're done.  But if nobody is coming to take the evidence and turn it into change, then you have to do that yourself.  It becomes your own responsibility. 

I hope to continue to develop these thoughts on the blog over the days and weeks to come; they formed an important part of my dissertation, and continue to be something I write about more academically.  I hope to translate more of that writing here.  I am sure many of you have thoughts on this very important issue, and I welcome them in the form of comments and even guest blog posts.  Until then, I encourage you to listen to Gordon's full conversation with Steingraber, which I have posted below.  You can also find the conversation on The Story's website, here.

Part 1 of Gordon's conversation with Steingraber.

Part 2 of Gordon's conversation with Steingraber.

Little girls? No. Strong women

I entered a session titled Change starts with a passion at the Ann Arbor Reskilling Festival yesterday and had no idea who I was about to meet.

As we have seen with the Civil Rights Movement, the protests against the Vietnam War, as well as with the Occupy movement, it is through youth that leadership is exemplified. This is because it is the youth that are most imaginative, the most free in spirit, and most inquisitive and questioning about norms. They are, therefore, the most discerning about the realities of our actions. (More about this soon.) But many times, when we think of "the youth", we think of college students and the recently employed. We tend not to think of middle schoolers and high schoolers. But we ought to...

What started off as an effort to understand why orangutans are endangered has turned into a massive campaign to rid our food of palm oil, the plantations of which are also destroying biologically diverse habitats and releasing massive amounts of greenhouse gases through deforestation and peat demolition. This effort started off five years ago, when two Ann Arbor seventh graders, Madison Vorva (on right in picture below) and Rhiannon Tomtishen (on left), took on an advocacy project as girl scouts. They realised that Girl Scouts cookies contain palm oil, and have since been on a mission to rid our foods of palm oil.

Rhiannon and Madison (from a2reskilling.org)

I met Madison, now a junior in high school, yesterday, and was awestruck and inspired by her maturity, her confidence, her passion. It takes a whole lot of all of those things to create a movement and endure the subsequent downs and challenges. Five years in, their movement is really gaining traction.

I am hoping to bring them to speak to students here at the university. There's so much to learn from these strong women. More thoughts soon. For now, check out their TEDxRedmond talk.

How appreciation is activist

It is not hard to see that there is much that is not working around us--everything from government's continuing failures to a lack of community resiliency and a reliance on others to make decisions for our personal lives. Much of these failures arise from our continual cultural want for more. We want better infrastructure, cheaper access to things made around the world, continued materialism. And the providers of our wants can't keep up with our demands. Furthermore, there is a differential access to provisions, further exacerbating inequalities that currently exist. I will be the first to admit that this power dynamic must change, but maybe the way we are going about creating the change is futile. Are there ways in which we don't have to directly feed the system and cause these changes? Might appreciation be activist?

Activism as we currently think about it is about taking a stand for something, generally with political motives and outcomes. That something could be promoting firearms legislation allowing everyone easy access to guns. Activism can also be about taking a stand against something, like trying to block firearms legislation that allows such easy access to guns, again, with political motives and outcomes. But I also think that activism can also be about doing something we are not culturally programmed to do, and to appreciate is one of those things. And that's what turns appreciation from an acceptance of the way things are to something that is political.
 
This is a system, a culture, that is driven by a decided unappreciation of everything--of our bodies, of the land beneath our feet, the air we breath, and the water we drink. We cherish and respect the things we appreciate. We seem to violently demolish everything that we don't. And because this is a kind of activism, a way of being that this culture does not know, it does not know how to deal with it. If we are to change "the system" fundamentally, I think that we must act in activist ways that don't lend legitimacy to the system, but rather in ways that destabilise it. Appreciate what you have. This appreciation then opens up our lives to more positivity, and more control over ourselves, rather than continually giving proxies to others.

Haiku #4

http://petervanham.wordpress.com/2011/11/22/305/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/blogpost/post/occupy-wall-street-torah-missing-after-zuccotti-park-eviction/2011/11/15/gIQAD5MhPN_blog.html

http://theassailedteacher.com/2011/11/24/zuccotti-park-one-week-after-the-eviction/

"You have had your chance!

Gates and guards around the park!"

Protest quelled, not rape

Freedom and the status quo

There is no better day to write a few words about freedom than on this most inspiring Martin Luther King Jr. Day (a day on which I had lunch with Michele Norris...you read that right!). MLK advocated for and engaged in activism that vehemently challenged the status quo, and envisioned a nation in which non-whites were freely accepted and integrated into the greater American community.


It is ironic then, that when viewed differently, freedom itself is the status quo and a small space around it. Freedom is comprised of the social and cultural norms that our lives are embedded in. It is the very average of our individual thoughts and opinions. Anything that falls outside of the bounds of this freedom is deemed "radical". And we all know what everyone thinks about "radicals"...


I find it extremely motivating then that Tim DeChristopher was able to find his freedom in committing an act that, under current laws, was illegal, and indeed radical. It was radical when viewed conventionally as outside the bounds of "normal", but more strikingly, it was radical in its originality. 


The most visionary acts are those that imagine a truly different world, and a truly different world must be guided by a completely different set of norms and moralities. Freedom then is the expression of discontent. This expression must come with the understanding of the brutal consequences one may face because of it. It is very true, though, that the nobility of an act of freedom, a freedom that is in the interests of all, not just a few, throws even more light on brutal repression. Such is what has transpired in Yemen and Syria, and such is what has transpired with Tim DeChristopher. 


Freedom manifests itself in different and contradictory ways in this culture. We have the "freedom" to consume, but not the freedom to change what drives ecological degradation. We are preached at, from young age, about the freedom we all have to determine the courses of our lives. We hear our politicians and leaders preaching to other countries about what freedom is to us, and what it ought to be to them. Freedom it seems, is about liberty and self-determination. However, it is as clear as the Michigan winter is long that the freedoms that have the largest effect on us as collectives are those that allow the almost free and limitless destruction of this world. They are the freedoms of free pollution, and the freedoms of the creation of a culture that has enslaved its people and left them in many ways bereft of the power to self-determination. (Many of the Republican candidates for president would think otherwise.)


On this MLK day, let's explore the faces of freedom from all angles. I am certain that once you scratch the surface, you will be shocked at what you find.

Tim DeChristopher on "freedom"

For the next couple of posts, I want to elaborate on the word "freedom". For today's short post, I want to share with you some powerful words from Tim DeChristopher during a conversation with Terry Tempest Williams.

Tim DeChristopher is an inspiring climate activist and leader. Better known as Bidder #70, on 19 December 2008, after having taken a final exam in an economics course at the University of Utah, Tim took the train to observe and protest a Bureau of Land Management auction that was leasing land to oil and gas companies. He ended up bidding on vast tracts of land, for which he owed  two million dollars, just to keep the land out of the hands of the oil and gas companies. Of course, he didn't have the money to pay for the land. On 2 March 2011, Tim was found guilty of violating the Federal Onshore Oil and Gas Leasing Reform Act on two felony charges, and later sentenced to two years in federal prison and ordered to pay a ten thousand dollar fine. Writes Terry Tempest Williams, "Minutes before receiving his sentence, Tim DeChristopher delivered an impassioned speech from the courtroom floor. At the end of the speech, he turned toward Judge Dee Benson, who presided over his trial, looked him in the eye, and said, 'This is what love looks like.'"

We might think that Tim gave up his freedom to protect land from oil and gas corporations, our atmosphere from greenhouse gas emissions, and our future from climate change. But what Tim now thinks about freedom is a challenge and call to all of us wanting to envision and create a fundamentally different culture.

TIM: If you look at the worst-case consequences of climate change, those pretty much mean the collapse of our industrial civilization. But that doesn’t mean the end of everything. It means that we’re going to be living through the most rapid and intense period of change that humanity has ever faced. And that’s certainly not hopeless. It means we’re going to have to build another world in the ashes of this one. And it could very easily be a better world. I have a lot of hope in my generation’s ability to build a better world in the ashes of this one. And I have very little doubt that we’ll have to. The nice thing about that is that this culture hasn’t led to happiness anyway, it hasn’t satisfied our human needs. So there’s a lot of room for improvement.

TERRY: How has this experience—these past two years—changed you?

TIM: [Sighing.] It’s made me worry less.

TERRY: Why?

TIM: It’s somewhat comforting knowing that things are going to fall apart, because it does give us that opportunity to drastically change things.

TERRY: I’ve watched you, you know, from afar. And when we were at the Glen Canyon Institute’s David Brower celebration in 2010, I looked at you, and I was so happy because it was like there was a lightness about you. Before, I felt like you were carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders—and you have broad shoulders—but there was something in your eyes, there was a light in your eyes I had not seen before. And I remember saying, “Something’s different.” And you were saying that rather than being the one who was inspiring, you were being inspired. And rather than being the one who was carrying this cause, it was carrying you. Can you talk about that? Because I think that’s instructive for all of us.

TIM: I think letting go of that burden had a lot to do with embracing how good this whole thing has felt. It’s been so liberating and empowering.

TERRY: To you, personally?

TIM: Yeah. I went into this thinking, It’s worth sacrificing my freedom for this.

TERRY: And you did it alone. It’s not like you had a movement behind you, or the support group that you have now.

TIM: Right. But I feel like I did the opposite. I thought I was sacrificing my freedom, but instead I was grabbing onto my freedom and refusing to let go of it for the first time, you know? Finally accepting that I wasn’t this helpless victim of society, and couldn’t do anything to shape my own future, you know, that I didn’t have that freedom to steer the course of my life. Finally I said, “I have the freedom to change this situation. I’m that powerful.” And that’s been a wonderful feeling that I’ve held onto since then.

Opening spaces for ourselves

Honestly, I am pretty tired (for now, at least...but I don't think I will be rejuvenated any time soon) of talking about the role of "government", "industry" and "education" to addressing the problems we face. We always hear from the industrial and corporate world, "Well, if the governments only did this, this and this, things would be okay," or "We need to deregulate," and so on and so forth. Government, on the other hand is dependent on the private sector more than ever before, whether it is for election campaign expenditures, taxes, war machinery, or whatever. Education seems to be the default answer to everything...and it's true. I do not disagree with that. Education (which to me means at bare minimum being equipped with knowledge and communication, cultural, analytical and critical skills that we can distill into critiques, appreciation, and wisdom to advocate for change, take action, tear down oppressive systems and forge ones, big or small, based more humane and ecologically sensitive values, and being able to live at peace with ourselves, our families, and communities...and not just something that provides us with a resume so that we can get a job...it is clear that this isn't what our government thinks of the role of education) seems to be the default fallback for all conversations: "If we only educate people differently, or better, things will change." Well, no duh. But education and changes to it also take time to unfold, all the while while ecosystems are being destroyed, waters polluted, and more and more people getting obese by eating shitty food.

And so, I hear this government/industry/education discussion all the time...and barely anything changes. For example, let's talk about something that we all relate to--food. You all probably know or have heard of Jamie Oliver, the sustainable and healthy food advocate from Essex. His awesome work and efforts have won him great recognition and publicity--a TV show, and the 2010 TED Prize. I encourage you to watch his talk below.



Oliver is energetic and passionate. Watching his talk makes you want to jump up and do something. Oliver has done a tremendous job at figuring out systemic problems in food production and service in the US and elsewhere, and has talked passionately about how government and corporations need to change. In response, he gets something like this: "Tomato sauce on pizza is a vegetable, says Congress." Now, I don't want to hear about the lobbies, about government intervening in our lives, and such. We all know about this. And so given this mess, what can we do? How can we open spaces for ourselves to create movements, change or tear down "the system", find the chinks in the armor? I am inspired by JR, a photographer, graffiti artist, activist, and winner of the 2011 TED Prize. Watch his amazing talk below.



There seems to be something so unique and different and exciting about JR's approach to awareness and engagement. It seems that his approach touches at something deep and fundamental and raw. And clearly, he is changing communities, and the world. I wonder, how can we jump on a different wagon of engagement and activism, rather than the same, old approaches that always seem to get diluted?

You plus me equals us

[Don't worry...this is a positive post. I promise. =)]

Another year goes by, and another unsurprising event--yet another round of climate talks have failed. This time in some other exotic location. Year after year, we are drawn into the process of international bargaining, negotiation, hardheadedness, and bullying. Year after year, we continue to find faith in "the process," hoping that the leaders of the world will come together, have epiphanies, realise that many of them have been wrong in the past, and will then suddenly accept guilt and blame for their actions, and resolve to do all in their power to stop raping our Earth. Year after year, universities and non-governmental organisations send students, faculty, and activists to these talks, as "observers." Year after year, I hear the same so-called "solutions"--we need newer energy sources, reduced pollution, "sustainable development", government regulation, government deregulation, and so on and so forth.

And it is our lives, the lives of the young, the lives of those who we hope will come in the future, to be founded on a deep bond and sacred connection to the biophysical world, the soil, the air, the water, and all sentient and non-sentient beings, that are at stake. Yet, it seems to fail each one of these supposedly "educated" "representatives" of ours in government that meaningful steps must be taken yesterday to address the increasing rape of the Earth. But hell, if an increasing number of people don't buy into climate change, then why would someone that wants to be elected by those very people believe in climate change? Shouldn't the representatives be just that..."representative"?

(Back home with my parents in Pennsylvania now, I smell the frackers coming. I know their type. They are the type that will pay the broke five thousand dollars, portray a sense of responsibility and humility, just to go to degrade aquifers, pollute soil and water, and leave when the job is done. I do not trust them. You shouldn't either)

As Wangari Maathai (and my father) has said, many of the problems we face are of our own doing, of our own making. While many of us may be forced into problematic situations at times, if we do not have the resolve within ourselves to extricate us from those situations, we find it easy to find reasons and excuses to just get by. Nothing changes then, other than the possibility of ending up actually believing that we aren't the cause or contributor to the problem, but rather that "the system" is the cause. We've lost at that point.

If we cannot envision our lives fundamentally differently, then there is no hope for a changed world. The possibilities of a different world, of different lives, of different relationships to people and place must be borne out in ourselves first. Wendell Berry wrote this many years ago. And with timeless problems such as the human-environment dichotomy, the solutions are exceedingly obvious, yet stupendously intractable. We must make the obvious the status quo. Action must be taken by us, now. Whether that is marching towards city hall and fighting fracking, whether it is standing on the street and having the conversations that must be had, whether it is reading books on industrialisation and capitalism and doing all that you can to extricate yourself from the complex, whether it is tending a garden and planting a tree, whether it is choosing to eat locally, whether it is deciding not to buy a new car, whether it is digging deep inside of yourself and questioning your long-held beliefs and assumptions, the change is you and me and us. We cannot be scared. We must be hopeful. We cannot be blindly optimistic. We must keep our eyes and ears open to explore issues from all angles. We must change the way we speak, change the way we use words. We must make degrading words and concepts obsolete, and we must make Earth- and relationship-cherishing words more common, or maybe even introduce some new ones.

You can do this. Yes you can. We can do this. Yes we can.

A gap in communication and language

I was in Montreal all of last week for a biofuels and aviation workshop. It was a fascinating time to say the least, particularly because I experienced first-hand how large scale technologies, particularly those that are meant to address environmental issues (biofuels are aviation's response to climate change), supported by the government and industry are implemented. At the same time, a block away, Occupy Montreal was growing in strength.

Here are pictures of Occupy Montreal from Square Victoria. The movement there was completely democratic, super peaceful, yet incredibly energetic.

 

 

The Occupy movement I have written about in the last couple of blog posts. I appreciate it, especially after seeing a large one such as that in Montreal, because it has been peaceful. And although the individual messages of the movement is changing in time and location, the rhetoric and sentiment expressed is resolute, constant, and resoundingly clear--that people (and the environment by extension) have been treated unfairly, that "the system" is set up in such a way that it maintains a power gap between decision-makers and the larger public, that there is a concentration of power and influence the higher and higher up you get. "The system" is comprised of government, of industry, of military.

More broadly, though, the Occupy movement raises questions that I think all of us need to be thinking about, which are, What's the point of it all? Why do we choose to live our lives this way and be bound to this system? Such questioning is of course social and environmental. The answers to these questions make our lives unfold in ways that affect people and the environment. In response to such questions, take a look at the following picture, which is of a massive poster (six feet by eight feet maybe?) by We Are Beings.

In stark contrast to this is how and where the powerful make decisions that affect all of our lives, our environment. The workshop I went to was put on by the International Civil Aviation Organisation, which is a UN body that governs all international aviation. The meeting was full of business persons, economists, technologists, government officials, engineers, and so on. As you can tell by the venue, the workshop showed privilege and power--sixty foot ceilings, big, cushy, comfortable chairs, individual microphones in front of every attendee, suits, suits, and more suits.

But the most important difference and gap between the Occupy movement and its demands, and "official" meetings and its way of operation is the language being used. If you take a close look (you can here) at the sentiment being expressed on the We Are Beings poster, it is one of compassion, of care, of respect, of kindness, of empathy. On the other hand, the language that the people at the workshop use is that of economic and technological efficiency, of growth, of money. The point is, the people that social and environmental activists are trying to get to listen to them just don't use language that the activists are using. They probably don't understand it. I doubt that government officials think about compassion, I doubt that they think about power dynamics.

And so, if activism is to have a chance, we must first of all communicate using a language that they can understand. In no way does this mean we "turn into" one of them. Instead, it means that the movement must be adaptable and thoughtful enough to speak to those that really need to listen.

Openly speaking about norms and values

One of the most important things to come out of any experiment or project or different way of being is the conversation that is provoked because of actions that go in the face of social norms and values. Any project like living trash-free is provocative for several reasons. First, the tangibility of trash and waste and their embeddedness in our every day lives allow everyone to relate to the messages I am intending to elaborate on. Second, living trash-free just isn't the norm. If it was the norm, then it would say something differently about the society and culture we lived in, that social interactions are not dependent on trash and waste. This is definitely not the case. Third, it serves as a judgement of the norms. As Ethan, a sociologist, mentioned to me, what is most fascinating about such projects is the way they provoke people and at times make them uncomfortable.

Norms and values aren't talked about unless someone breaks them. Breaking them exposes underlying assumptions. But norms and values can be broken in our individual lives, secretly (like celibacy, maybe?), or they can be broken in public and criticise social construction more broadly (like trash and culture). To me, living trash-free has been a journey on many levels, spiritual and social. Again, the goal is to unearth and unpack individual and social values and norms, and to have a conversation.

But today, we see very little explicit talk about norms and values. Erik Reece writes in his essay, The Schools We Need, that

I suspect the hesitancy by many high school teachers to hold active class discussions about real moral and ethical dilemmas may be a byproduct of how contested and politicized the word values has become. No one wants to talk about them because someone might become offended, or someone might say the wrong thing, or the messiness of open debate might get exposed.

Although debates about ethics and behaviour are prevalent, they are more and more detached from our every day experiences, as Aidan Davison has written in Technology and the Contested Meanings of Sustainability. More generally, however, as has been seen on this blog, as well as on other websites and media, resistance to the breaking of norms, and explicit voicing of values (having been provoked by doing something like living trash-free and writing about it openly) don't necessarily have to have a face to them. We can pass judgement against those that are indeed willing to be activist or change convention by saying whatever we want to anonymously.

This is also applicable to those who want to speak out and against social norms and values, going to show that many of us are scared to speak out, fearing that we will lose social standing and acceptance. Derrick Jensen writes about this self-censorship in a recent essay, This Culture is #/?*#-+, in Orion:

When I give talks, I routinely ask audiences: Do you fear the U.S. government? Do you censor yourself for fear of government reprisals? If you spoke honestly about the near corporate control of the United States government, and how so-called elected representatives better represent corporations than they do living, breathing human beings, and about what you believe is necessary to halt environmental degradation, do you believe you would be arrested or otherwise harmed by the United States government? Nearly everyone--and I'm talk about thousands of people over the years--says yes.

We can all say what we want, and be cast as lunatics. That is what many environmentalists and activists have been branded as - "extreme," "unrealistic," "treehugger," "job-killer," "soft on terrorism." Individual attempts to get anything done then are quickly silenced and quashed. What I believe Jensen is trying to get at is that any meaningful attempt at dismantling the environmentally and socially-degrading industrial complex will be met with a strong resistance from those in power. Okay. And what does Jensen say about social standing?

The truth is, we no longer need the government to censor us; we now preempt any such censorship by censoring ourselves. This self-censorship has become utterly routine...But fear of state repression or loss of funding are trivial, I think, compared to our primary reason for self-censorship: fear that we'll lose credibility. We are, after all, social creatures, to whom credibility  can be more important than finances or even safety (when global warming is threatening...the planet..., the weakness of our responses makes clear that safety has long since been left in the dust).

Cartoon along with Derrick Jensen's essay

I encourage each one of you to take on challenges, projects, experiments, and movements that challenge, question, criticise, and overturn social norms. These are the norms that keep people silent when they should be speaking out, the norms that keep massive industrial systems in place that wreak havoc on our environments, the norms that condone and accept violence as a means to end conflict or dominate this Earth. Take on these challenges, and develop the conversations. As Mark Slouka recently wrote, we need "men and women capable of furthering what's best about us and forestalling what's worst."

Preaching to the choir

As a novice activist, I have realised that not many people are concerned on a day-to-day basis about the environment and this Earth, and are ambivalent about how their individual choices affect the environment. Yes, as individuals, we do have agency. We have the power to make differences. Pressure must constantly be applied, so that when the earthquake happens, it is because of the constancy and unabated and unswerving pressure that has been applied from all angles, for a long time. I have written about this at length, several times.

Yet we see that in light of all of this ecological degradation, all of this unsustainability, all of this injustice, that the masses are barely moved. As environmentalists and activists, we preach to the choir, and this blog is complicit in that, I suppose. I do not want it to be this way, but of course, it is hard to deny that it is this way. While it is important to surround ourselves with people that agree with us and challenge us (especially because we are a minority), as a recent comment from Tanny said, the divide to those that are unconcerned must be overcome.

Last night, I got to know Avik, my Argentine tango dance instructor, a little bit more. He completed his undergraduate and master's degree in electrical engineering, but then switched gears and got a Ph.D. in environmental policy and behaviour...and he is of Indian descent. (Awesome! That is so nice to see. There are very few non-White people in the environmental movement. It is not hard to see then that many people think the movement is elitist.) He said that for all that the environmental movement has done, it has not been able to move the masses and reach across the divide. Of course when the Cuyahoga River was burning a few decades ago, people took notice. But he said that the reason why people haven't latched on to the movement is that impacts of people's choices need to be felt immediately, and with environmentally-conscious choices, it is very difficult to achieve this. For example, when someone buys a car, the "positive" impacts of that choice are felt immediately - you gain mobility, and accessibility, and the ability to drive cross-country on a whim. (Of course, we would rather have it that you don't need a car to be mobile and to have access.) But what if you don't buy a car out of some environmental awareness? Are the positives of that choice evident to you immediately? Likely not, unless you choose to bike, you become healthier, you feel better, have better endurance, eat healthier, and so on. All of this can take a while, though, and it requires effort, and every day awareness.

It is not as if the negative impacts of environmental choices aren't felt directly or tangibly. They are, to those people that are least capable of defending themselves. Environmental justice can be a framework under which it is possible to mobilise the masses. But how do you take the masses to Delray? Can you take them all to a landfill? Will everyone watch Waste Land or Gasland? And when there is success in getting to the mainstream, as Al Gore did with An Inconvenient Truth? How do you tell the masses about the heroes that win the Goldman Environmental Prizes?

How much has the middle class been adopting environmentally-guided behaviour in their lives, then? Not much, apart from maybe switching out light bulbs and calling it good. All of these people live in comfort. Unemployment may affect them a little bit, but in all seriousness, the middle class is well off in suburbia. How do you connect to these people, those that form the bulk of the population, and those whose choices have massive implications in legitimising large corporations and corrupt governments?

I have thought to myself that environmentalism is a spiritual journey, that in our effort to reduce our ecological footprints, that in our efforts to tread lightly and respect this Earth and its creations, we realise more about ourselves as individuals - our fallibility and our power as ethical beings. Yet Avik said that discussion about ethics and morality outside of the contexts of religion can be very academic. I agree with him to an extent, and yet I have still held on hope that people can more holistically think about and understand their choices, through morality and ethics, and contemplate the influence that their lives have on other people and this Earth.

There are a couple of forces at play here. First, the powerful have put up boundaries and barriers between those well-off, those that serve in the interests of their existence, and those that face the negative outcomes of our collective actions. They have set up physical barriers (like highways and dams and bridges) and mental barriers ("Those that are not well-off are so because of the way that have chosen to lead their lives."). But as individuals, we too have set up mental barriers ourselves so we don't have to deal with challenging situations. Think about the barriers we put up when we are approached by a homeless person asking for money.

How come there were only one thousand people that got arrested in protest of the Keystone XL pipeline between Alberta and Texas? Why not ten thousand? Or one hundred thousand? How do we not preach to the choir? How do we make discussions about environmentalism less academic? How do we move the masses? The masses are powerful, because they have the capacity to take down oppressive systems. I will try my fullest to write in a manner that appreciates Avik's thoughts, because he makes very valid points.

Further thoughts on activism in science

The philosophy of science, and of the technologies stemming from that science, assume that science is dispassionate, that there are irreducible laws of nature, and that science in itself has no morality. What this has come to mean is that in order to practice science and have any credibility in the community of science, the scientist should generally not speak out about the application of science to society (unless, of course, the science or technology has positive implications for the economy, which technology at least always seems to have).

Unfortunately, this view is flawed - science and technology are deeply moral. They both have massive implications for human thought and behaviour. Technologies are applied within the context of communities and the environment those communities exist in. Therefore, it is fallacious to think that the job of the scientist is done with the discovery of a theory, or the provision of data. In fact, that is where the job of the scientist begins. As I have mentioned in previous post, data do not speak for themselves, but are interpreted and internalised by different people differently. It is up to the scientists to maintain the integrity of the data, and to make sure that only the well-intentioned outcomes resulting from those data are pursued.

And so I wonder why I hear of only a few prominent scientists speaking up about what should be done socially given the data we have (1, 2).

Through irreducibility, science has come to distance itself from the context within which is it pursued. Distractions such as human emotion must be left far away from science. But once we know what the data can say, there must be an emotional response to the data. If this were a different time, I could maybe respect the role of the scientist as a dispassionate provider of data and theory. But things need to change here and now. So why not it begin with those that know the outcomes of human behaviour?

On activism in science

I have written a little bit about science and technology philosophy on this blog, and their implications to society. But one thing I haven't really touched on much (apart from this one previous post, What if scientists quit?) is what the role of scientists ought to be given what we know.


Much of science is based on incrementalism, and very little about the process of science itself is about disrupting the status quo in it. Scientists build upon the work of other scientists. The process feeds on itself. Of course, there are many brilliant people that have come and gone before us, and to discredit their work doesn't really...work. At the same time, science has done an acceptable job at describing, to a great extent, the world around us. Planes fly, computers send email. But it seems to me that this mindset of incrementalism, of not disturbing the status quo, of being the geek with limited social skills that sits at a computer, does a tremendous disservice to what the potential of scientists can be.

In his book The Honest Broker: Making Sense of Science in Policy and Politics, Robert Pielke Jr. elaborates on the various roles scientists can play in informing the governmental policy process. Scientists (and engineers, of course) can

• solely provide data, and leave the answer of what to do about the data to the "decision-makers,"
• be "stealth advocates," and fly under the radar while secretly helping some group's cause, or
• be "honest brokers," and openly discuss data, and take public stances on what the data should mean for action.

Unfortunately, the roles that he talks about assumes that scientists rest within the current structures of society that lead to much inertia - the government-university-industry complex. Again, the status quo.

As I mentioned in a previous post, for those who know about ecological degradation, we cannot let others not know. I believe this to be a responsibility of knowing (to a certain extent) and understanding (to a certain extent) what it is that causes ecological degradation. This knowledge and understanding has philosophical and consequently scientific and technological dimensions to it. It therefore allows us to be empathetic with those who have borne the brunt of ecological degradation. So why aren't scientists out there protesting and shouting on the streets, other than a few here and there (James Hansen chief among them)?

Further thoughts tomorrow.

What if scientists quit?

As any person that does research would tell you, any probing into nature and complex systems always raises more questions than answers. As a chemical kineticist, I can assure you that people haven't even agreed on the kinetics of hydrogen+oxygen, the simplest group of reactions physically possible in combustion. (I am at times worried that fist fights will break out at conferences over peoples' differences in the understanding of these simple kinetics.) As humans, we are curious, and it is nice to "know" more about how things and the world work. But inevitably, the rise of more questions makes us think that we should find the answers to those questions, which inevitably leads to more research. In no way am I saying that all research is bad, but I believe that there comes a time when more research is not the best use of our time, of our energy, of our emotions.

Climate change is a fitting example of this. We have known for decades now that greenhouse gases are responsible for climate change, and that it is humans that are responsible for the emissions of these greenhouse gases. Yet, there is more and more research being done into climate change, and more and more articles and assessments being published, and more and more grants being written, and more and more time and effort and money being expended. We are never going to know how the climate works totally, but we do have a good enough understanding of how it does. And more fundamentally, we know (we know, we know, we know, we know!) that our behaviour, our ethics, are driving us to release more and more greenhouse gases. What should we do about this knowledge? (Of course the techno-optimists will say, 'We need better technology.' Well, we know how well that has worked out...) More research is probably leading to more lost time.

What if scientists said, 'Enough is enough! The best use of our time is to actually mobilise and act on our findings, not to beat a dead horse and learn more about the nuances of climate.' What if scientists quit? What if they boycotted "research" and became activists? Many of you might say, 'Well, scientists are socially awkward, and they'd be terrible organisers.' Okay. But think about the power that they have. They are the ones bringing in money to institutions of "learning." They are the ones that are teaching the youth about the issues. And they are the ones that know full well how our behaviours are leading to ecological degradation. We know all that we need to know to make huge strides towards treading lightly on this planet. We just need to take those steps.

Many people have talked about the role of scientists and engineers in public policy. Robert Pielke Jr. does a good job at delineating those roles in his book The Honest Broker. But the roles that he talks about assumes that scientists rest within the current structures of society that lead to much inertia - the government-university-industry complex. Only a handful are out there, writing more publicly, trying to organise and mobilise.

Changing the system, or navigating it with integrity

"The task of the activist is not to navigate current systems with integrity. The task of the activist is to take down systems of oppression." ~Derrick Jensen

I keep coming back to Jensen's talk the other day, because it was just full of fascinating ideas, thoughts and encouragement, but also replete with cynicism and a sense that we are just running out of time. I must agree that we are running out of time, in the biggest sense, first and foremost. With something like climate change for example, it doesn't seem like the world is gung-ho on making sure Mauritius doesn't drown. There are other deeper issues that do need to be dealt with, though, such as a redefinition of norms and ethics, which I think Jensen is trying to get at, too.

(When I say "technology," I mean the technology that has been brought into the world in the past few decades, the rate of whose introduction has followed something like Moore's law.) As I have alluded to with several posts on technology and progress (here, here, here, here, here), while I am not against technology altogether, the trend of techno-optimism are rather worrying, particularly because it has redefined what "sustainability" means. It has now come to mean "sustainable development," which fundamentally assumes that a Western-derived ethic of technological development will free us from our current society's ecologically-degrading behaviour. Instead of actually questioning our behaviour and what drives it, we come up with geo-engineering solutions that are just bound to make things worse. Now, it seems that much of our education system is set up such that it produces people to further entrench this technologically-driven, ecologically-degrading economy as the norm. And while it may be possible to engineer our way out of environmental disaster (I do not believe so), what Jensen is saying that it would be a major breakthrough if we were to take a step back and realise that our quest for ever-increasing technology has led us to where we are.

There are two ways then that Jensen says we could use our power - either we could all be techno-optimists, and make technologies that are "efficient" and "less harmful" to the environment, rather than come up with technologies that will have a degrading influence on nature and people, or we can say that the problem is our dependence on technology itself. We can get a job with BP, and try to "green" it from the inside, or we can make BP obsolete. We can try to convince people in the Department of Defense that we should have weapons that target only the intended target and minimise collateral damage, or we can stand in solidarity against everything that drives us to use violent force, and make the need for something like the Department of Defense a thing of the past. These are difficult things to do, but things that each and every one of us can influence. By saying no, we do not patronise, and we do not in any way insure the future of the system.

Compassion, "networking" and activism

It is funny how you might start thinking of something, and then realise that there are so many conversations going on pertaining to your thoughts, that you can't believe it is coincidence...

The other day I was wondering at what point people feel compelled to take action against a problem. Since then, I have listened to a wonderful conversation between Krista Tippett, the host of Being, and Nicholas Kristof (a journalist for the New York Times), about compassion and journalism. Also, in this week's New Yorker, I read Malcolm Gladwell railing against the ability of new social media and "networking" sites such as Facebook and Twitter to galvanise real support for essential activism and dissent. Both of these speak to the question I was thinking of...

Nicholas Kristof has traveled the world documenting various atrocities, in particular social ones. He had been writing for many years about "missing" girls in China, up to 40,000 per year, but stories such as the booting out of a red-tailed hawk from a building in New York City (which is still of course a legitimate story) seemed to be getting the page space he was vying for. He started looking into the neurology of compassion and empathy, and realised this: as long as people cannot make an emotional connection to a problem, they are not going to do anything about it. This may seem trivial and obvious, but it is something that all of us trying to get people to be vociferous and active, especially in the environment and social realms, have to grapple with, and probably are not doing a good enough job at. Once we make an emotional connection, we can use that as a portal to bolster our cause with more "rational" information, like numbers and facts. But another interesting part of the conversation dealt with "compassion fatigue." Kristof and Tippett spoke about this fatigue in relation to social problems, but it is easily extrapolated to any problem. Broadly, compassion fatigue is the point at which people feel the problem is too big for them to make a real impact. In one study, people were shown a picture of a starving young girl in Mali, and asked to donate money to help her. People gladly did. When shown a picture of a young boy, also starving, people gladly donated money to help him. However, when shown a picture of both of them together, donations dropped. It was at this point, the problem affecting just one more than one person, at which people felt the problem to be too big. Imagine donating for millions of starving people...

Many of you know that I am not a proponent of technology and "networking," and never have been one. Well, I guess there is more than one person other than Wendell Berry, that shares (partially) similar sentiments, Malcolm Gladwell. The subtitle of his recent piece is "Why the revolution will not be tweeted." He contends that social media cannot provide what social change has always required. Gladwell takes on the example of the Civil Rights Movement, in particular the Woolworth's sit-in that took place on 1 February, 1960. The sit-in movement in the South generated such a crescendo that it was impossible for the perpetrators of racism to continue their ways. The Civil Rights Movement, which was full of high-risk activism, was based around "strong ties" and true personal connections to the problem and activism. Social media "activism," on the other hand, is always based around "weak ties." Although it might be much easier to spread the word about something nowadays, the connections made with people are much more superficial. That is why 1,282,339 members of the Save Darfur Coalition may not accomplish much. Gladwell contends, "Facebook activism succeeds not by motivating people to make a real sacrifice but by motivating them to do the things that people do when they are not motivated enough to make a real sacrifice. We are a long way from the lunch counters of Greensboro." Further, social media activism is diffuse, with very little central authority, in stark contrast to the almost militant activism of the Civil Rights Movement. Where is the individual responsibility when you are a member of a Facebook group? And if you really feel something is a problem, how come I am not hearing about forceful action being taken? Gladwell feels that there is but very little "high-risk" activism taking place today. David Helfenbein of the Huffington Post disagrees.

I do tend to agree with Gladwell that today's "activism" is digital, diffuse, unemotional and unconnected. I know someone very high up at the University that feels the same way.