Below is a personal letter I am sending to the White House regarding President Obama's decision to grant a permit for the Keystone XL pipeline.
Dear President Obama,
When you began winning states in the Democratic primary, I changed party affiliation from Green to Democrat to vote for you. When you spoke of harnessing the wind, sun, and tides for our energy future, I believed that we were finally going to have the sensible policy humanity needs to avert the looming climate crisis. At your inauguration, I found my place in the sea of millions to witness the historic moment when a mixed race man would ascend to the highest seat of power in our government. When you said that this moment was not only yours, but one for all of us to reflect and make the change for America we wanted to see, I took it to heart.
As I walked up Massachusetts Avenue back to my girlfriend’s townhouse, I was overwhelmed. For the first time, I cried tears of joy. The inspiration that had been poured into me made me believe that if I worked just as hard in the trenches at the bottom of America as you worked at the top, we might be able to build infrastructure and cultural identity to a low carbon consuming America. Although I did not tell you, I made a promise that day that I would do all I could to usher in that reality.
Since March 20, 2010, I have been on a slow journey across America studying people and their relationship with the land in their community. Since co-founding Pick Up America with a fellow Marylander, our team of hardy volunteers has removed over 122,000 pounds of litter over 1,200 miles of road all the way from the Atlantic coast of Maryland to Columbia, Missouri. We have taken on the seemingly impossible task of “walking across America and picking up trash” to shed light on alternatives to a carbon intensive, wasteful resource system. Meanwhile, we're helping to create and connect a culture in America capable of healing the land and individuals from the omnipresent scars of colonialism and unregulated corporate capitalism.
Along my journey, I have witnessed a dying landscape and people suffering because of it. I have discovered an America where the status quo has economically incentivized the destruction of ageless landscapes for coal, natural gas, and oil extraction -- one where people believe happiness is obtained from momentary consumption; one where many people disvalue their land because their leaders, the government, and employers treat the land as only something to move or move over for profit. Right now, we are living in an America where we have forgotten that one of the keys to happiness is living peacefully in a community that has healthy ecosystem functions and services -- a place where communities grant consent to how the resources of the land they inhabit is extracted, distributed, consumed, or disposed of.
The comments we’ve made on permits and rule promulgations have not brought sensible policy to resource management. The votes I have cast for you and other elected officials have not stopped mountain top removal. The lobbying I have done on my elected officials to implement a carbon tax and spur zero waste as a guiding principle for our society seems to have fallen on deaf ears. As our government has gone so far to not only compromise our citizens' relationship to the land, but to also economically incentivize the destruction of that relationship, the canyons of my soul stir me to stand up for the relationship I know to be sacred for humanity.
On August 26, I will return home to Maryland and Washington, D.C., to keep good on my promise to do all I can to create a low-carbon consuming culture that values the land as one of the key components to a healthy community. On August 28, I will sit on the sidewalk in front of your home to protest your decision to allow the building of an oil pipeline from the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, to our oil refineries on the Gulf Coast. This pipeline will not only economically incentivize the destruction of even more invaluable land and peoples' relationship with it, but it will also justify the unloading of the second largest carbon pool into the atmosphere. While I sit in front of your house,
I will meditate on a leadership that understands this:
The ability of humanity to live comfortably with our environment is more important than the ability of corporations to extract resources and sell us stuff that will pile up in a landfill.
Instead of spending the $7 billion dollars that this pipeline will cost, I propose that you encourage our big banks and the Koch brothers to jumpstart a zero waste industry in America that preserves our resources, keeps communities clean, and builds a new job sector in working class America. With policies that incentivize the recovery of materials and an infrastructure that supports resource collection and redistribution back to the manufacturing sector, we might preserve enough land energy to make up for the oil this pipeline will bring. If you work to inspire from the top, I promise I will do all I can to inspire from the ditches at the bottom.
I know that you are trying to lead a country that is in cultural, political, environmental, and economic crisis. I respect you for stepping up to the task. Equally so, I hope you can respect those who are about to sit down on your sidewalk. This pipeline literally draws the "line in the sand" for those who understand that our civilization is surpassing the carrying capacity of our environment. We have now reached the critical point where we cannot drill, mine, or blast our civilization to a higher carrying capacity. Our rate of extraction and consumption is compromising the critical life support systems of our entire planet and that is why we must inspire, redesign and begin investing in alternatives.
At this critical point, we must reevaluate and create more efficient resource systems that make the most out of every resource we have already mined and extracted. At this critical moment, infinite growth for the sake of momentary profit for an entrenched elite must end. Infinite growth on an intricately evolved planet is like cancer to the body.
Although I will leave Maryland and Washington, D.C., again to continue my journey, I will return to meet you half way on the personal promise you inspired within me. I hope that you will meet me half way, and lead our nation toward a clean energy future -- one without destruction in our communities. A future where we can live on Planet Earth comfortably and peacefully.
With Peace, Love and Positive Vibrations,
Davey Rogner
Campaign Director
Pick Up America
Davey@pickupamerica.org
Twitter: @PickUpDavey
Meteor Blades and PDNC organized this blogathon for August 14-19 before he took a "leave of absence" from Daily Kos last week. For now, this will be the last of many projects, blogathons, and diary series that the two of them have done over the years on environmental, climate change, human rights, and political issues.
In honor and respect for our dear friend and project partner, this blogathon is dedicated to Meteor Blades by our blogathon team of PDNC, rb137 and JekyllnHyde.
"Stop Tar Sands" Blogathon: How You Can Help
Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse has coordinated this blogathon with Bill McKibben, who is one of the organizers for a civil disobedience action in DC from August 20th to September 3rd to urge President Obama to not give a presidential permit for the proposed tar sands XL pipeline from Alberta down to Texas. This civil disobedience action is modeled on one that the group Transafrica used outside the Washington Embassy in the 1980s: Nelson Mandela said it played a key role in raising awareness about apartheid. The plan is for a new group of people each day of the two weeks to trespass on the sidewalk in front of the White House.
This is not a protest of President Obama. As Bill McKibben noted, the protest is designed to show President Obama the "depth of support for turning down this boondoggle" as it will be the "biggest civil disobedience protest in the environmental movement for many many years."
We know what the future will look like with the XL pipeline.
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