I’ve believed for many years that in the race against time to prevent ecosystem and societal meltdown because of climate heating and climate disruption, a key front in that struggle is the prevention of the buildout of new oil and methane gas pipelines and associated infrastructure, like compressor stations, export terminals and gas-fired power plants.
This isn’t just the opinion of me and the many tens of thousands of activists around the country who have been waging these fights for over a decade. Both the International Energy Agency, in 2022, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in 2023, have said that in order to have a chance of preserving and improving the conditions of life on earth in all its forms for future generations, this is what governments should be doing.
Unfortunately the US government, under both Democratic and Republican administrations, has refused to do this. Both have allowed for fossil fuel infrastructure expansion, although there has been and is a pretty strong sector of the Democrats who get it on this requirement for the world’s survival and have taken part in the nationwide no new fossil fuels movement, inside and outside the Biden Administration and in Congress.
Trump/MAGA control of Congress and the White House means that there will be a major effort to ramp up the building of new oil and gas infrastructure. There have been reports that they want to build hundreds of new pipelines, compressor stations and export terminals. It’s like they’re just fine with the very real possibility of ecocide.
Fortunately, the no new fossil fuels movement is in no way demoralized, speaking generally. And a very good example of this fact is what happened in the town of Pearisburg, Virginia, deep in the heart of coal country in southwest Virginia, a few days ago.
On Tuesday February 25th 12 pipeline fighters, almost all of them young people, were sentenced in a Giles County courtroom for nonviolent direct actions they had taken over the last year and a half trying to stop the completion of the fracked-gas transporting Mountain Valley Pipeline. All locked themselves to construction equipment, inserted their bodies into pipelines or locked down to block roads leading to construction sites. Some were facing felony charges, though most were charged with misdemeanors.
Without any on the ground knowledge, people not from this part of the country, coal country, would likely expect the sentences handed down to be harsh, but that wasn’t the case. No one was sentenced to jail time; instead, after negotiating down all the felonies to misdemeanors, each of the 12 was sentenced to 50 hours of community service per misdemeanor. For some with three misdemeanors this meant a sentence of 150 hours.
And though the issue of fines was put off to future court dates, it is impossible to see this result as anything but a big victory for the climate justice movement.
A major reason for this positive result was the presence of over 100 supporters, mainly but not solely young people, filling to overflowing the 89-seat courtroom. One court officer said that there had never been anything like this before. An additional reason was the refusal of those charged to plead guilty to any felonies or overly repressive deals over the many months leading up to this day of reckoning in court.
The primary organization which did these actions and has led this direct action resistance is Appalachians Against Pipelines. AAP is famous for a 932-day tree sit in Montgomery County, Va. between 2018 and 2021 on the planned pipeline right of way.
I’ve been involved with the no new fossil fuel infrastructure movement since about 2012. One of the noteworthy things I’ve observed about it is that this issue crosses political lines. There are a lot of conservative white landowners, people facing eminent domain proceedings to take their land for the benefit of corporate profit-making and climate destroying oil and gas companies, who have joined with radicals, progressives and people of color to fight together against these arrogant, destructive entities. In the process, people have had their lives changed. By joining together in righteous campaigns for justice, everyone has seen that we have common enemies and that we can only win against these corporatists by forging unity in action.
If, or as, Trump and the MAGA’s role out their plan to accelerate climate disruption by expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure, the powerful alliance needed to fight these projects, one by one, on the ground, can contribute a lot to generating the powerful movement of movements to ultimately stop these 21st century fascists and put our country on a very different, life-affirming, justice-creating, urgently needed path.
Ted Glick has been a progressive activist and organizer since 1968. He is the author of the recently published books, Burglar for Peace and 21st Century Revolution, both available at https://pmpress.org . More info can be found at https://tedglick.com.
