A thick haze covers the White House as hundreds of people, including myself, stand on President Joe Biden’s front steps, masked to protect our lungs from Canadian wildfire smoke and holding signs calling out the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) in West Virginia as more fuel for future wildfires.
On June 8, protesters from around the country gathered, many risking arrest by sitting and standing on the sidewalk next to the White House fence, to draw attention to President Biden’s latest climate betrayal. Demonstrators carried a large blue banner reading: “Biden’s Climate Embarrassment” — complete with the Biden-Harris signature campaign “E.”
The protest backdrop was the continent’s latest climate catastrophe. Wildfires in Canada resulted in air quality in the northeastern United States reaching “Code Purple” — a step worse than “Code Red.” These wildfires are fueled by the climate emergency, caused by historic and continued burning of fossil fuels.
A week before, the movement to stop the MVP was struck a devastating blow. Congress fast-tracked the Biden-endorsed, fracked gas MVP in its debt ceiling bill. The pipeline is a climate nightmare. If it were to be completed and put into service, the greenhouse gas emissions may be equivalent to 19 million passenger vehicles, 23 coal plants, and account for at least 1 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions from the U.S. energy sector. Additionally, it could leak methane, which is a potent accelerator of climate change, and thus of wildfires.
After nearly 10 years of fighting the pipeline, this is devastating news for our movement. It’s also a sign of power. We’ve built a diverse movement across three impacted states and beyond to expose this pipeline’s hundreds of water quality violations, reckless periods of active construction and billion-dollar budget increases. We’ve ensured blocks to legislative short cuts, submitted scientific evidence against the MVP that has led to key court decisions that protect our planet, and witnessed investor tantrums.
Coal baron and West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin had to go to the highest rung of power to outjump us because we had him cornered at every angle. Manchin has attempted to shortcut agency and court pipeline review through a half dozen “dirty deals.” The most recent deal was shrouded in rumors of insider trading. Early this year, Manchin’s top aide joined a top oil and gas lobbying group.
Many attributed the fast tracking of MVP to President Biden’s promise to Senator Manchin that he’d support the pipeline in exchange for Manchin’s vote on the Inflation Reduction Act. During the second half of last year, our movement defeated Manchin and West Virginia Rep. Shelley Capito’s attempts to fast track the pipeline more than five times.
But this year they got the golden ticket every beleaguered fossil fuel corporation dreams of: a recommendation letter from the presidential administration to the regulatory agency in charge. Equitrans, one of the companies behind MVP, said that Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm’s letter of support to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission was critical to its approval.
The pipeline has been flailing for nearly a decade and is barely halfway complete, thanks to strategic opposition by hundreds of thousands of people around the country. The movement to stop the MVP has been so influential that the pipeline’s advocates had to appeal to the highest rung of power to get it approved.
This unprecedented step is significant not only because the pipeline has nothing to do with the debt ceiling, but because it opens up the possibility for corporations to buy votes in Congress to get what they want by manipulating must-pass legislation.
We are in the fight for our lives. Despite a deadly global climate crisis, the fossil fuel industry will “overbuild until the end of time,” as Energy Transfer Partners CEO Kelcy Warren, of Dakota Access Pipeline infamy, once said. It’s the people vs. fossil fuels, and President Biden has chosen fossil fuels. But the people are stronger and more organized than ever.
President Biden won election in large part due to his commitment to address the climate crisis. But from Alaska, to the Gulf, to Appalachia, he has sacrificed communities for his own political gain. This has particularly enraged young people, who will bear the brunt of the climate crisis. It has also mobilized elders around the country, many of whom believe in risking their safety in order to secure climate action.
The movement we are building does not condone sacrifice zones. We will continue to fight to stop the MVP alongside Appalachians on the frontlines. The construction ahead of MVP is some of the hardest and most dangerous yet; with barely half of the pipeline completed. We will protect our communities from the company’s reckless activities — which resulted in one of the worst climate disasters of 2022. We will expose their activities to the banks and insurers behind the project and continue to demand the cancellation of the unnecessary pipeline.
Beyond that, we must demand Biden declare a climate emergency and stop all new fossil fuel projects.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
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