Here To many of us who have been fighting for environmental justice and for human rights to come before corporate greed and need, this is a dark time.
Much ink is being spilled recounting the efforts Donald Trump -- and his newly befriended zealots on the right wing and in fossil fuel industries -- are making to turn back time in America, but some words must be put down here as well.
We have a chance to take the high road. To avoid violence. To choose different energy sources that do not produce destruction and problems during extraction; that do not produce pollution, and property and human rights problems during transportation; that do not create pollution and health problems for humans at the burning and end-use stage of their energy life cycles.
Wind and solar pose few if any of those problems. And their source and end-use are as clean and endless as the wind and the sun.
But greedy people maintain the levers of power in their continuing investment in fossil fuels: owners and investors in tar sands and oil field property (now mostly multi-billion dollar companies), owners and investors in refineries and pipeline companies. The 'black snake' collectively as Native Americans often refer to it. It is a destructive and vile thing.
Greedy investors--including mainstream banks like Wells Fargo and Bank of America and 15 others--are putting the pedal to the metal here.
Trump and his administration have waved the start flag at the stalled process in North Dakota.
And innocent people, places and things are getting squashed: tribal leaders whose land was taken away where this pipeline is now scheduled to go, water rights and quality for local people, citizens concerned with their plight, citizens concerned with the expansion of the finite and destructive black snake--all are getting squashed.
And innocent people, places and things are getting squashed: tribal leaders whose land was taken away where this pipeline is now scheduled to go, water rights and quality for local people, citizens concerned with their plight, citizens concerned with the expansion of the finite and destructive black snake--all are getting squashed.
The burning tee-pees are symbols of all of that.
There is elegance and simple morality in these people.
There is the cold disdain of the military industrial fist, hammering away again.
Thank you again Donald Trump and Wells Fargo et. al., for showing us a way that many... should we say most?.... good people do not want to go.
Thank you for showing us the opposite of the way we want things to work for our children and their planet.
Thank you for showing us the opposite of the way we want things to work for our children and their planet.
No comments:
Post a Comment