Earlier this month, The Guardian had a good story about the grassroots backlash to the Keystone XL pipeline: Texas activists ready to fight over $7bn oil pipeline in the home of black gold.
I was reminded of this article after reading Lefty Coaster's important diary, 25 Mayors speak out against Keystone Tar Sands Oil Pipeline, today. More Americans need to make protecting our environment our national priority. This passage from The Guardian story is poignant to how environmental issues touch our lives and provides an example of how many Americans frame (and dismiss) environmental issues.
The anger spread to Tea Party conservatives, the local chapter of Hawks – which stands for Handguns Are Worth Keeping Sacred – and even those who owed their fortunes to oil. "I had nothing against it at first," said Eleanor Fairchild. Her late husband headed international exploration for Hunt oil, and she has an abandoned pipeline on her 300 acres of land, which is wooded with oak, pine and sweetgum trees and fed by its own springs.
"It was later I found out about the pollution and I got involved with this environmental stuff. They don't tell you it is not a regular pipeline, or that the pipeline is so thin, or that the grit going down there is going to wear out the pipeline."
Fairchild said she got angry when TransCanada's lawyers told her she had no choice but to agree on their terms.
I believe Fairchild's mistake was one too many Americans seem to make — she believed what a corporation told her. Talking about pollution, risks, cutting corners to increase profits, or destroying the commons doesn't help businesses make money or increase shareholder value, so they have no incentive to be forthcoming about these topics with the public (or even their own management, employees, or investors).
Corporations downplay or lie about the environmental risks and consequences of their plans and products. They spend big money on buying the media narrative and politicians to warp the public's perspective on environmental impacts of their business plans. Legislation or regulations that try to curb or limit pollution are actively campaigned against and thwarted by corporate lobbyists, or sabotaged by corporate-controlled members of congress.
Any laws that manage to get passed that could hold polluters accountable are fought by corporations in court with armies of lawyers backed by giant war chests of flush with cash. Such as with Chevron's contamination in the Amazon rainforest in Ecuador, which they described "illegitimate and unenforceable" judgment. Or with Prince William Sound and now 21 years after the Exxon Valdez, "no trend suggesting healthy recovery has occurred". Or with the gag order being placed by the government on scientists unexplained dolphin deaths along the Gulf Coast possibly linked to the BP oil disaster of last year.
The problem many people have is understanding that they may be impacted no matter where on our planet the pollution, contamination, or destruction is done. Climate change, for example, is global, but a lot of people struggle to understand how it even relates to and impacts their day-to-day lives.
Each day we are polluting, contaminating, destroying, ruining, fouling our neighbors' backyards; from lakes dying in Minnesota from winter road salt, to building new harbors along the West Coast to ship coal by the billions of tons to China, to oiled-soaked rockhopper penguins in the South Atlantic, to sea ice in the Arctic at its smallest extent ever due to global warming, to extending a pipeline, like with Keystone XL, to deliver tar sand oil from Canada. The environmental destruction is coming faster than ever.
With nearly 7 billion people living on Earth, pollution, contamination, and destruction is happening to somebody's 'backyard'. Somebody's air, water, soil, or cherished piece of land full of "oak, pine and sweetgum trees and fed by its own springs" is being threatened.
I believe most Americans care about their environment, but only when some issue impacts them personally do they think environmental issues are a priority. Maybe it was her husband's connection to the oil industry was why Fairchild believed that a pipeline on her land wouldn't be a danergous hazard? Or, maybe she just believed what the company told her. But, whatever opened her eyes now, I'm glad it happened.
Now when can rest of the anti-"environmental stuff" Americans have their awakening? Does each American need a pipeline, oil well, or coal-burning power plant in his or her backyard before he or she finally gets it?
If you want to get involved with any of the environmental concerns touched about in this essay, here is a 2006 Guide to Environmental Non-Profits to help "distinguish groups doing good from ones that just sound good" from Mother Jones, the 4-star environmental organizations from Charity Navigator, and the top rated environment groups from Charity Watch. Speak up and defend our backyards. Also, do not underestimate the impact a written letter to your senators or representative can make. I feel more letters supporting environmental protections might help make a difference.