Arnie the eco-warrior
2011-03-23 07:52
Andreas Späth
Arnold
“I’ll be back” Schwarzenegger has been inciting Americans to rise up in revolt
to overthrow the dirty industry that is holding back a clean, renewable energy
future. And no, I’m not talking about his latest Hollywood
blockbuster.
After expressing his admiration for the popular
rebellions against dictators in North Africa and the Middle
East at a recent US Department of Energy summit, the former
Governator of California encouraged similar actions against American oil and
gas barons: “we want to overturn the old energy order”.
Given the very broad definition of what qualifies as
eco-terrorism under legislation like the US Patriot Act and given that the FBI
has identified greens as the “number one domestic terror threat”, you’d think
that Arnie would, at the very least, have been subjected to some form of
official knuckle-rapping. He got away scot-free.
If ordinary citizens act on Schwarzenegger’s advice,
they’re unlikely to be so lucky. The case of Tim DeChristopher proves my point.
In 2008, DeChristopher attended a demonstration outside
an oil and gas lease auction organised by the US Bureau of Land Management. A
last minute fire-sale by the outgoing administration of George W Bush, the
auction was to distribute oil and gas drilling rights on remote patches of
public land at bargain-basement prices.
By happy coincidence DeChristopher found himself
inside the auction rather than demonstrating against it from the outside. On
the spur of the moment, he decided to monkey-wrench proceedings by “participating”
in the auction. He entered outlandishly large offers, drove up prices, out-bid
oil and gas companies and ended up “buying” drilling rights to 22 500
acres of land in 13 parcels for some $1.7 million before he was stopped by a
federal agent. By then he’d effectively scuttled the entire auction.
I consider DeChristopher’s action a brilliantly creative
example of peaceful civil disobedience. The US legal system considers it a
crime, even though the entire auction was subsequently declared illegitimate by
the Obama administration. On the 3rd of March 2011, DeChristopher
was convicted of two felony counts in a Salt Lake City court and now faces up
to 10 years in prison and fines of as much as $750 000. I agree with noted
climate activist and author Bill McKibben, who tweeted “The government should
give him a medal, not a sentence”.
DeChristopher’s criminalisation is neither unusual nor
unexpected, of course. So-called democratic governments around the world have
been conducting a low-level war against people prepared to act non-violently in
defence of the environment for years. Militant groups of animal rights
activists bore the initial brunt, but in recent times even your average garden
variety eco-organisation is being targeted.
Like the FBI, the UK’s National Public Order
Intelligence Unit, a private company largely funded by government, but
accountable to no one in particular, has recently been revealed to maintain
lists of “extremists” and employ undercover surveillance officers to infiltrate
green organisations. Major companies are getting in on the act, too. Scottish
Resources, E.ON and Scottish Power, three of the UK’s biggest energy companies,
as well as Monsanto, one the world’s largest peddlers of genetically modified seeds,
have employed private security outfits to conduct covert intelligence-gathering
and monitoring operations against eco-activists.
Closer to home, the local nuclear industry is said to
cultivate a watch-list of prominent anti nuke-activists and last December 14
Earthlife Africa members were arrested and charged with “illegal gathering” and
“public indecency” for picketing outside a public hearing of the government’s
flawed IRP2 electricity master plan.
Is it just me or are these symptoms of a world in
which what’s right and what’s wrong has been turned upside down? Bradley
Manning, the suspected WikiLeaks whistleblower, is potentially facing the death
penalty for exposing government wrongdoings ranging from misdemeanours to war
crimes. Bankers involved in precipitating a devastating global financial
disaster get bailed-out instead of jailed. Not a single BP bigwig gets charged
with negligent ecocide in the Gulf of Mexico.
I’m with Arnie on this one. We need to support people
like Tim DeChristopher and stand up to those who threaten life on our planet
for the sake of short-term material gains and financial profits. Call me an
eco-terrorist if you like.
Andreas manages Lobby Books, the
independent book shop at Idasa’s
Cape Town Democracy Centre.
Follow him on Twitter: @Andreas_Spath.
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