Coal Protest for a Sustainable Future

Climate Justice March, Washington, D.C., March 2, 2009

I returned last night from Washington, D.C., where I had been part of an historic protest at the coal burning Capitol Power Plant in the heart of the city. For many months a coalition of environmental groups had been planning this large, non-violent, civil disobedient action. The reason for the necessity of the protest is simple. Coal is the worst of the greenhouse gases. If we keep building more coal fired power plants and do not shut down the existing ones, there is no hope of controlling climate change. One of the groups behind the action is 350.org. Bill McKibben, author and activist (and one of my portraits) founded this organization & named it 350 because that is the threshold number of parts per million (ppm) of carbon in our atmosphere beyond which a stable climate is not possible.
Today the number stands at 387 ppm. That means we have to rapidly and radically reduce the burning of fossil fuels. This needs to be done in concert with massive conservation and efficiency efforts.
One of the leaders of the protest was the eminent NASA climate scientist James Hansen.
His presence at the protest and his willingness to be arrested in the civil disobedient action --- blocking the Power Plant’s gates --- was significant. Hansen said, “If there are young people sticking their necks out, how can the old geezers who caused their problem hang back?” The young people were the thousands of college students organized by Power Shift 2009, which is a national movement to engage young people in taking personal responsibility for their own sustainable future. ( www.powershift2009.org)
The week before the protest, over 12,000 students came to Washington to participate in workshops and hear lectures about the climate and coal. One of the issues being stressed was that there is no such thing as “clean coal.” Every part of the process from mining to burning coal is dangerous to the environment. And there is no technology now --- nor is there likely to be --- that will make coal cleaner. The morning before the protest, thousands of young people went in to Congress to lobby their Congressmen & women and Senators about the importance of immediate action on the climate.

Many of the people at the march came from Appalachia --- four are in my portraits: Judy Bonds of Coal River Mountain Watch, Larry Gibson from Kayford Mountain, Teri Blanton of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, and Erik Reece author of Lost Mountain. For them the size and visibility of this event was particularly moving. They have felt that for years they have been crying in the wilderness about the horrors of Mountaintop Removal and the destruction of the forests and the culture of Appalachia.

Another leader was the great Kentucky writer, author, & farmer Wendell Berry. Speaking the night before at a large rally at George Washington University, Mr. Berry made the point that all of us in this culture are complicit in the worsening climate problem. He said, “If I were to get here guilt free, I would have had to walk.” And then he said, “When government defaults on its responsibility, the people have to take it up.”

Bill McKibben made a point about some people calling the climate activists “radicals.”
He asked, “What’s radical? Isn’t it radical to blow up the oldest mountains in the world?
Isn’t it conservative to want to save them. Is it radical to want to save the planet for future generations? Isn’t it conservative to want to save the Earth?” He also made the point that the world will have to stop burning coal by the year 2030 or we will never get the climate stabilized.

Gus Speth, dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and author of the book Bridge at the Edge of the World said that this year 2009 is the hinge or pivot year that will determine our future. We have to act now.

So, the marchers began forming up about 12 noon on Monday the 1st of March in the Spirit of Justice Park just a few blocks from the coal plant. It was snowing and a cold wind was whipping. But spirits were very high. An hour before the march began, young people were bellowing chants like:

We are the youth
The mighty, mighty youth
Everywhere we go
People want to know
Who we are
And what we stand for.
We want justice!
Environmental justice!

And:

Clean coal
Hell no!
That’s a myth
It’s got to go!

A little after 1 o’clock we formed up with a contingent of Native Americans leading. They had come from all over the U.S. to protest the degradation and pollution of tribal lands by coal mining. Next came the leaders arm in arm ( reminiscent of the leaders of the March on Selma in 1965): Berry, McKibben, Terry Tempest Williams, Brooke Williams, Speth, Mike Tidwell of Chesapeake Climate Action Network, author Janisse Ray, and folk singer/activist Kathy Mattea. It was hard to tell how many people were there. Maybe 2,500? 4,000? The disciplined but boisterous crowd set off to march the 10 or twelve blocks around the plant. The students had color coded themselves with red, blue, green and yellow standards. The strategy was to have one of the color groups drop out of the march at each of the plant’s gates to block it. We would be inviting arrest in the best tradition of civil disobedience. Within an hour we had made the complete circuit & blocked all the gates. At the final gate at small stage was set up for speakers & performers. Amongst them was Robert Kennedy, Jr., who talked about how the coal companies were criminal conspiracies because or all the harm they did to the environment & to people’s health: The American Lung association says that 24,000 Americans die prematurely each year because of coal pollution, 550,000 suffer asthma attacks, 38,000 heart attacks, and there are 12,000 hospital admissions attributed to coal fired plants. Leaders from Greenpeace, the Rainforest Action Network, and several also spoke.

The protest didn’t end as we had thought. The police refused to arrest so many people.
We succeeded in closing the plant, but they were willing to let us stay until we froze rather than clog their jails & let us make more news. So at about 5 pm. The march disbanded but with a great sense of having achieved its goal of moving the discussion about climate change from the universities to the streets, from letter writing to direct action. This is necessary because there is no longer time for delay. The leaders felt that the combination of students, scientists, workers, miners, academics, artists, and many other concerned people had coalesced to produce a movement that will not retreat. We must have green technology, green jobs, green energy, new efficiencies, and world treaties to make it all possible. The struggle to get there will be long, but, as in this march, it can be joyous. Visit www.350.org to find out how you can participate.