Pipe Dreams

Tennessee Gas Pipeline Construction (Wawayanda State Park, West Milford NJ) (8/18/11)

Here we go again.

Just as South Jersey Gas and Gov. Christie double down on the Pinelands pipeline, another battle over a literally insane fossil fuel pipeline, see NJ Spotlight:

• New Pipeline Proposal Draws Ire of Environmentalists in NY and NJ

The only good news I can see here is the cooperation and coalition between NY and NJ activists.

But in framing the issue, it seems like – again – the activists and the media are missing the proverbial 800 pound iceberg in the room.

All the science tells us that we are approaching – or may have already crossed – tipping points in the climate crisis, triggering runaway warming that would end industrial civilization and agriculture as we know it.

That crisis has to be front and center focus of the debate and the strategic objective.

The policy implication of that science is that we have to leave fossil fuels in the ground, stop investing in fossil infrastructure, and radically ramp up government mandates and make massive financial investments in energy conservation, efficiency, and renewables.

A rational response to the climate crisis would require a complete reorientation of our values, lifestyle, and economy.

We must honestly confront that reality, not pipe dreams.

In the recent context of the release of the US National Climate Assessment and the terrifying news on irreversible melting of the west antarctic ice sheet, folks need to go back and re-read Bill McKibben’s “Terrifying New Math” 

The environmentalists and media have to start educating the public along these lines of crisis and catastrophe.

Environmentalists must reorient the losing project by project infrastructure battles to attack the sources of the problem: extraction of the fossil fuels for corporate profit.

Once it leaves the ground, it will be burned.

If “free market” capitalism and corporations are allowed to continue to control government and policy, we are doomed.