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I spent the last few
days traveling across the country to North Dakota to join others in supporting
a gentle man who tried to help everyone. For that he was convicted of several
crimes and will be heading to a North Dakota prison.
Michael Foster was born and raised in Texas, in an oil
family. His crime in North Dakota was turning off the Keystone pipeline in a
symbolic but real call to all of us to do what we can to stop global climate
chaos.
That North Dakota
valve turn was one of five similar actions last October--two women, three men,
five valves on lines in Washington state, Montana, North Dakota, and Minnesota,
all done in resonance with the Break Free from Fossil Fuels campaign.
We see the buck-naked
consequences of paying no attention to our oil consumption; Harvey drowns
Houston, fires rip through the West, every hurricane is more intense than it
otherwise would be, droughts last longer, lakes are drying up, the seas are
rising and surging, and with fracking even earthquakes are no longer a pure act
of God. Most previously natural disasters are now unnatural disasters, made
worse by our hand more than the hand of God or Mother Nature.
The Trump regime is
doing worse than nothing; they are exacerbating the problem by rolling back the tepid regulations the Obama administration brought to bear. Trump yanks the US out of a world agreement to fix this, the Paris
Accords. He gets Rick "Never-met-an-oil-well-I-didn't-like" Perry as
his Secretary of Energy and Scott
"That-pollution-smells-like-money-to-me" Pruitt to run the
Environmental Protection Agency--into the ground. Trump promises to bring back
dirty coal. It is Satanic, frankly, with zero regard for the children of the
world, for the generations. He's old without any discernible conscience. Who
will confront him?
I attended Michael's
trial as much as possible, although I couldn't be in the room in the beginning
because I was scheduled as an expert witness and we were sequestered until we
testified--or until the judge disallowed us...which she did.
Michael was facing 23
years in prison on four charges. Three of us were there to provide expert
testimony in three topic areas to help the judge and jury understand why
Michael should be acquitted. Two of us were there to speak to different aspects
of nonviolence and one was on hand to speak about the urgency of a rapid change
in our general habits but a specific exam of the dirty tar sands oil that flows
through the Keystone pipeline. Climatologist James Hansen is 76 years old and is the one who announced that "global warming has
arrived" in 1988 when he worked as a scientist at the Goddard Space
Center. Every single prediction he made then has come to pass. He is arguably
the world's top scientist in that area--certainly the most famous. He’s Trump’s
age, only with a long-view conscience and integrity.
The court could not be
bothered to listen to this eminent scientist, someone who could have helped the
judge and jury become at least familiar with the emergency that we see
unfolding all over nowadays, made much worse by the dirtiest sort of fossil fuel--tar sands oil.
The contempt for
anyone coming to North Dakota to "tell us how to live" (the prosecutor's
attack on Michael, who is now from Seattle) was palpable. The judge allowed the
prosecution's expert witness, demonstrating some spectacular inconsistency and
hypocrisy. As one who woke up a few times this summer to unbreathable air and
everything in my town covered in forest fire ash, I say to North Dakotans, you
need to fix this. We will do our part but you need to do yours. Most of us know
at least one or two people in Houston, or in the Santa Rosa area, or in Miami
or Puerto Rico. Are we Americans who value all other Americans or are we not?
But the prosecutors
were dismissive. Hell, Foster only faces 23 years, why give him a chance to
reason with jury members? Let's not confuse them with the facts.
The trial in tiny
Cavalier, North Dakota, in remote Pembina County, was heartbreaking.
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