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photo : Nancie Bataglia |
| Bill McKibben lives in Middlebury, Vermont, with his wife, writer Sue Halpern, daughter Sophie and their loyal, working canine, Pransky. |
Vermont Woman:
Bill, you were among the first to write about climate change for a general audience, and you've written many books since then—and yet carbon emissions continue to rise. Canada, which had been one the 33 nations that signed the Kyoto Protocol (unlike the U. S.), not only failed to meet commitments, it rejected the agreement's extension when it discovered tar sands and a new way to make money. China and India are now leading the U.S. in burning fossil fuels, trying to follow in our footsteps of energy consumption to grow their economies and "make money." What can Vermont women do to help nations—especially the U.S.—develop smarter energy sources?
Bill McKibben:
You can put pressure on the fossil fuel industry. As long as they're capable of developing coal and gas and oil they will—there's too much money, and as the CEO of Exxon said a couple of weeks ago, 'my philosophy is to make money.' Worse, they're able to use that money to subvert our political process to make sure nothing ever changes. That's why we're pressing for universities, churches, cities to divest their fossil fuel stocks. Please put pressure on the governor and legislature to make sure our state does the right thing—and if you're an alumna of a college, there's a good chance there's a similar battle underway there, which you can do much to help promote, beginning with a letter to the college president.
VW:
Most Vermont women are struggling to pay for gas to get to their jobs to "make money," and enough heating oil to make it through the winter without freezing the pipes. You've said that organizing around climate change has been like "building a movement against ourselves." We're all guilty. So what can we personally do besides change our light bulbs?
BM:
Organize. Truth be told, if you can't afford a solar panel for the roof, that's okay. Our job is to work together to make sure that they become affordable. One-by-one we can't solve global warming. Together, maybe.
VW:
Is "divestiture" a movement that "most women" can be involved in, given women's lower economic status? What should we understand about investments in oil, and why these matter?
BM:
If it's wrong to wreck the climate, it's wrong to profit from the wreckage. Young women are leading these fights on campuses across the nation. Please join in.
VW:
None of the oil executives, and few of their engineers are women. In what way does the game of "making money" play out as a male "king-of-the-mountain" scenario? Does single-minded measurement of success, "money-first," conflict with most women's more grounded lives? (I mean grounded by human care.) When have you seen this as a gendered conflict? How would you describe this difference?
BM:
I think your larger point is correct, but I also have a sinking feeling that if there was a woman CEO at Exxon not much would change—probably because they'd make sure that only 'their kind' of woman ever made the leap. So I think the job is to change the system, not the faces. That said, once the system changes, I have no doubt more women will rise to the fore.
VW:
What do you think of Vermont's recent adoption of the Genuine Progress Indicators (GPI)? Will it help our state make wiser energy decisions? Has it helped Maryland?
BM:
What you measure is what you work on. Think of our (dumb) obsession with SAT scores—since we measure them, we teach to them.
VW:
Is there a way to "make money" by growing greener energy? Are women among those who are making money by getting greener? Anyone we should know about in Vermont?
BM:
Sure. Jan Blittersdorf who runs NRG Systems, the wonderful wind energy firm in Hinesburg (and owner of what may be the planet's greenest factory). And Dori Wolfe, who with her husband Jeff has built Gro-Solar into a real force from their Strafford base.
VW:
We have a number of women here in Vermont speaking out for 350vt.org. Kathy Bluhm of Burlington has been in our pages, and tries to find ways to engage people with comedy, and even a game, (Vermontivate). Rebecca Jones of Brattleboro, an MD and dermatologist has written about our need to develop public transit, and get out of our cars to fight obesity. And environmentalist Mikayla McDonald has testified at Vermont's statehouse about climate change. Where do you think women like these (and others you might know) might make a difference?
Are many women involved in this climate movement worldwide? Who are the most remarkable women you've met? What surprised you about them and why?
BM:
Women make up at least half the climate movement worldwide. Beyond those Vermont luminaries, think of people like May Boeve, ex-director of 350.org. My old friend Winona LaDuke, the native activist who runs Honor the Earth. Melina Laboucan-Massimo, who has done as much as anyone to make the tar sands prominent. The great Naomi Klein, or Terry Tempest Williams, or Sally Bingham (who founded Interfaith Power and Light). Sandra Steingraber, a key head of the anti-fracking movement. Henia Belalia of Peaceful Uprising, or Phaedra Elis-Lamkins of Green for All, or the great Lisa Jackson who just stepped down as head of EPA. Jane Kleeb of Bold Nebraska, or Crystal Lameman, a great native leader, or Yudith Nieto of Tarsands Blockade, or Maria Gunnoe of the mountaintop removal movement. I could go on like this for pages, and this is just North America—the same is true around the world.
VW:
Angela Merkl who is a fairly conservative prime minister was at Copenhagen when those U.N. Climate Change talks failed so miserably. And yet Germany is the single country way out ahead on energy issues. As you say in SET ITAL Rolling Stone, END ITAL that cloudy country produced nearly half its energy with solar power. How did they do it? Why, do you think? Has Merkl shown leadership? What other explanations for Germany's political will and their growing technical expertise are there?
BM:
The Germans have a parliamentary system, and at key moments the Green Party has held the balance of power, which they've used to leverage real change. Many women were key in the formation of that party, and probably more vital to Germany's success than Merkel, but she's certainly kept up the fight.
VW:
You say the University of Delaware study published by Journal of Power Sources in January holds out hope for the U.S. Does it provide a plan for getting to a sustainable future? What in it gives you hope?
BM:
It shows quite clearly that we can provide all the power we need from renewables. Our problem's not technology, it's political will.
VW:
Rex Tillerson, CEO at Exxon, now admits there is global warming. You and Al Gore didn't make it all up. But Tillerson calls climate change an "engineering problem." Likewise, the Chamber of Commerce that helped elect so many climate-change deniers, says that humans will adapt, no problem. Obama barely mentioned climate in his second inaugural speech, and our taxes still subsidize corporations that are now eager to drill in areas once too frozen to exploit, perhaps hoping for Arctic beachfront property. How do you answer these dismissals?
BM:
The fossil fuel industry is still powerful enough to control the debate. So we better stand up to them. Otherwise nothing will happen.
VW:
Sorry to draw this parallel, but the domestic violence movement developed a "power and control" diagram that somehow reminds me of the oil companies' strategies: A violent partner will minimize and deny his damages; blame her for wrong-doing; intimidate her with threats; use economic control, preventing her freedom; act like he's the king of the roost, the master of the universe. Are "we the people" in a violent relationship with oil?
BM:
Oil, and the money it makes, is power, pure and simple. These guys are the 1 percent of the 1 percent. They're willing to override all common sense to get a few more years of profit. In that sense, they're crazy radicals, and we're deeply conservative—all we want is a working planet, like the one we were born on.
VW:
Melina Laboucan-Massimo recently came to Montpelier and gave a presentation on what is happening to the lands of indigenous people in Alberta. The devastation of this region from tar sands oil is shocking. You will be joining her in a "healing walk." What do you expect will happen? Have you done similar things elsewhere, drawing on spiritual sources to make this change? Does Arkansas and the Kalamazoo River need a healing walk? (see sidebar, There Goes the Neighborhood, Tar Sands and You.)
BM:
The healing walk will give us the healing we need to go back and fight. That's the point, I think—without the fight, we'll lose.
VW:
If individual actions alone cannot make the significant policy changes that need to happen to turn us toward more sustainable national practices—like keeping the tar sands safely underground—what do you think will work, given your experience this past decade?
BM:
I think we'll need a broad mix of tactics, from civil disobedience to divestment. Mostly I think we need to keep growing the movement. The first earth day in 1970 had 20 million Americans out in the street, and that was enough to win great environmental victories for the next few years. We better do the same.
VW:
350.org's most recent film, Do the Math, and also your most recent article for Rolling Stone, cites all the gigatons of carbon emissions expected, and all the computations that spell disaster in the coming years. And yet, frankly, I do not find those arguments so much compelling, as overwhelming and abstract. How do you make numbers more comprehensible to people who have little time to calculate, and even less interest? What story gets attention?
BM:
Oddly, those numbers seemed to work pretty well. It was apparently one of the most widely shared pieces in Rolling Stone history, with millions of views. And then we used them to spearhead a tour of the U.S. that sold out 24 big venues in 26 nights last fall. And now 340 colleges are fighting for divestment. No one story does it for everyone, so this is why we need lots of people (like you) hard at work!
VW:
What got my attention was your saying it this way: ""We'll blow through our 565-gigaton allowance in 16 years, around the time today's preschoolers will be graduating from high school." Could you describe the world you believe your daughter Sophie will inherit if we don't stop pumping all this carbon into the air? What could life be like for her after you're gone? Or for my granddaughter who is 8?
BM:
It'll be bad. If one degree melts the Arctic and powers storms like Irene, five degrees will put us in a kind of permanent emergency drill.
VW:
Your wife, writer Susan Halpern, says she believes ice cream still holds the secret to world peace. I laughed when I read that, realizing that in the world you describe, ice cream may be pretty hard to come by. She's marvelous, and so is her book about your family dog Pransky and their shared work at nursing homes. She shows how busy your life is—and yet how important family is to you both, too. How do you balance a personal life with your work? What keeps you going?
BM:
Sophie, I think. And all the other great young people around the world that are ready to fight.
| There Goes the Neighborhood: Tar Sands and You |
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by Rickey Gard Diamond
Deb Miller and Susan Connolly of Michigan are newly made environmental activists. They live on the banks of the Kalamazoo River, where the most-costly-inland-oil-spill-ever dumped 880,000 gallons of oil in 2010. Until then, neither woman had known that under their river was an oil pipeline, much less that the pipe was cracked. Enbridge Energy Company knew; they had discovered their pipeline's crack in 2005, and did nothing. They later testified that all the standards in place for their industry had been met.
What made the Kalamazoo River a new lab test, and Miller and Connolly and their neighbors all lab rats was the nature of this oil. It was not your typical oil spill, which despoils U.S. land and water about 280 times a year. It was bigger; it made headlines. Half our 250 million miles of oil pipelines were built before 1970, and officials continue to call it an "essentially safe" system. But tar sands oil is more corrosive on pipes. Its greater weight is accompanied by chemicals to help it flow, when tar sands only want to sink and stick.
Its weight and stickiness complicates cleanup. Crude will float to the surface of water and, with all that practice in the Gulf of Mexico, skimming procedures have been refined. But tar sands oil sticks and sinks in riverbeds and wetlands. That's what they learned in Kalamazoo. |
| Still in the Dark
On April 3, 2013, Miller and Connolly told Rachel Maddow that although they live on the banks of the river, although they had been forced from their homes at first by toxic fumes and horrors, three years later, back home, they still did not know what steps Enbridge Energy was taking to meet new federal demands for further cleanup. Tar sands sludge just wouldn't go away. They were unsure of the safety of their homes, which were now impossible to sell.
Enbridge men in toxic suits would show up, but no one talked to the neighbors. Enbridge men in suits were soon due at a community meeting, but neither woman had much hope for learning much from Enbridge. Few people in their county even knew about the spill and cleanup, they said.
I would have found this account hard to believe, if I had not recently been to southwestern Michigan myself. Kalamazoo was the biggest town in the region where I grew up. My oldest daughter went to the university there, and Marshall, Michigan, where the biggest part of the region's river spill happened, was a tourist mecca. Its Victorian-era homes built during boom-times were rooted in a history of selling quack health-potions, until the newly created Food & Drug Administration began to regulate them in 1906.
When I asked another family member, who owns a local newspaper and loves to fly fish, for the latest on the 2010 Kalamazoo spill and cleanup, he shook his head. It was seldom in the county's main newspapers. He'd heard nothing about the Environmental Protection Agency's latest cleanup demands on Enbridge and wasn't all that curious. To understand this, you have to remember that Michigan is the auto state, and oil is its lifeblood.
A Corporate Neighbor
Nevertheless it astonished me to later learn that Enbridge is busy expanding in Michigan. Unlike Vermont, Michigan has no Act 250 to slow down tar-sands. (See below). After another Michigan spill in Sterling, Enbridge undertook a public relations campaign. Full-page letters addressed "To Our Neighbors" were appearing weekly, Sarah Alvarez reported on Michigan Public Radio in late 2012.
One such "neighbor," Stacy Bradley, lives in the town of Stockbridge, where Enbridge is using an easement for their pipeline; it's a strip of land with power lines that the electric company, Consumers Energy, controls. Bradley told Alvarez: "They've planned the pipeline to be right through my backyard, between the deck and where the swing set is. In order to have enough workspace, since they're coming so close to the [power]line, all the trees will be completely clear cut."
The Bradleys pay Consumers Energy to plant their gardens on that land, and would rather have the trees than promised compensation. But Stacey isn't bothered only by the construction: "It's crude oil, so we're really worried that something is going to happen to our adjacent wetlands, and our well, about ten feet off where the pipeline is going to be."
Just 10 feet away from the Bradley's well, and a pipeline running through wetlands after what happened in Marshall and in Sterling? Dear neighbors, read the PR letters earnest declarations, do not worry. Be assured Enbridge will operate within "industry standards," which appear to be as badly in need of reform as the quack-medicine business a century ago.
Meanwhile, Stacey Bradley, too, has begun meeting with a group of concerned locals. Another reluctant environmentalist had been born—the hard way.
Meet Vermont's Neighborly Oil Company
Tar Sands oil wants to be Vermont's neighbor, too. Portland Pipe Line Corporation now carries oil in a northwest direction from South Portland, Maine, up to Montreal. PPL's "interest has been piqued," wrote reporter Andrew Stein in Vermont Digger on May 20, by a recent application of Enbridge Oil to the Canadian National Energy Board.
Enbridge seeks to reverse the flow of oil along a stretch of pipeline it operates between Ontario and Montreal. Should PPL also reverse the course of its pipeline, it too could profit from carrying tar sands from Alberta, Canada, southeast across Vermont to Portland.
No known contracts for this now exist, but PPL's CEO has frequently and publicly supported tar sands being piped to Portland, Maine. The idea is supported by Canadian oil-interests, which is why Canadian officials track public feelings here.
When environmentally-minded Vermonters at 29 town meetings voted resolutions last March to ban Canadian tar sands in Vermont, Canada's official consul sent letters, reminding towns of U.S./Canadians' "depth of energy interdependence." Vermont Digger quoted the letter, "The fact is that oil sands crude has been safely transported across North America for over 30 years."
Apparently he hadn't heard about the Kalamazoo River. Northeast Kingdom organizers and several environmental groups had, however. They requested that Act 250 land-use permits be required for the Montreal-Portland pipeline, since PPL Corp. was preparing to reverse the flow to pump tar sands oil. Locals argued this was "a substantial change to a pre-existing development" that had been permitted. The District 7 Environmental Commission in St. Johnsbury confirmed in April that Act 250 would be required.
Portland Pipe Line immediately declared that the Commission did so "wrongly." PPL's attorney claims the Commission decision, though informed by the Kalamazoo River experience and, most recently, an Arkansas suburb, was "misleading" and "incorrect." Similar to Enbridge, which always operates within the high standards of the industry, PPL apparently knows what is "correct" for its Vermont neighbors.
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