A low point but not an endpoint

Some thoughts on organizing--and two more chapters!

We have a couple of hurdles to clear.

Normally these end-of-the-week posts go out just to paid subscribers, and they appear on Fridays. But since it’s Christmas week, it’s coming out early, and it’s going to everyone on the mailing list because it’s fun to play Santa.

[And speaking of gifts, what says Christmas like a subscription to a newsletter filled with sad news about the decline of our home planet? ]

You may not need cheering up, but I do. It’s been a difficult few weeks: the Joe Manchin variant of the carbon virus torpedoed hopes for a year-end package of half a trillion dollars for renewable energy (not to mention the chances for lifting millions of kids out of poverty, making insulin affordable, and so on.) Negotiations are back underway, but I fear that Eric Levitz may be right that Manchin’s backers are mostly worried that those green energy tax credits will actually work. As the president of the West Virginia Coal Association pointed out,

“The credits that were in the bill would have resulted in an almost total displacement of coal generation within a relatively short period of time. Those provisions were more onerous and more likely to displace coal-fired generation than the clean energy standard” that Manchin had already removed from the bill.

If Manchin can’t be brought back on board—and also if he can—the focus will eventually swing from DC to Wall Street. Build Back Better is the last climate bill Congress will consider for a while, but the pressure on banks, asset managers, and insurance companies has just begun to rise. They’ve spent the last year working on variations of ‘net zero by 2050’ that fool no one (trust in bankers is not especially high to begin with…), but the basic demand will become crystal clear: stop lending to the fossil fuel industry. How do we know it’s a good idea? Well, for one thing ALEC, the network of right-wing legislators, is pushing model legislation in many states to make it illegal. (We are definitely going to be pushing banks at Third Act because most of the money they hold belongs to people of a certain age. If you want to be part of this fight, sign up, and if you have some dollars to donate so we can hire some staff do it here).

But it’s also going to be the year when we turn to execution—to the daunting but do-able task of starting to actually convert en masse to electricity for heating and cooking. New York City joined about 50 California jurisdictions earlier today, in banning gas connections for new construction. This matters—among other things, it will be a school for construction workers about how to use these new technologies. And it will be popular. You know all those companies that have been making promises about slashing their carbon emissions? One of the easiest ways to do it is to make the landlord cut theirs: the Economist reported in their forecast for 2022 that corporate tenants are already willing to pay up to 11% more to “occupy top-performing buidings.” Landlords who “fail to greenify their portfolios in time face a brutal leasing market.”

All of this is a way of saying: when you shift the zeitgeist, which movements have done, you begin to shift reality. Congress is a lagging indicator, because there the fossil fuel industry can use its only real asset—corrupt cash—to hold on past its sell-by date. But that gets harder and harder the further in we get.

In other notes:

+The British pension scheme Nest has ditched Exxon because they have not demonstrated "clear progress in preparing for the low carbon economy.” You don’t say.

+A Scottish company has deployed new software in a New York State test project, and it seems to have allowed the existing grid to handle six times more renewable energy without any new poles and wires. “The FICS solution works in the same way as traffic lights and speed controls on public roads,” a spokesman explained. “You can avoid building lots more roads and still achieve the maximum throughput of vehicles if you regulate the flow of traffic with smarter approaches like dynamic use of extra lanes, dynamic speed limits and traffic lights. That’s how the saving in grid infrastructure investment works – making the most out of existing infrastructure by monitoring traffic flows and deciding when to apply the different controls.

+The clever and indefatigable Jigar Shah, now head of the federal Department of Energy’s Loans Programs Office, has a remarkable scheme for getting more energy-efficient electric appliances in the hands of consumers, especially low-income ones. “We’re thinking we can turn water heaters, refrigerators, thermostats, electric vehicles and batteries into virtual power plants” to balance the increasingly variable and weather-dependent supply of clean electricity, Shah told Canary Media.  “To make sure that networks of these devices are ready to help balance out the grid, his office is interested in offering loan guarantees to companies that would make grid-responsive, energy-efficient appliances and equipment available to a broader class of customers than can access them today. And to make sure they’re available to households of all income levels, he’d like the companies that LPO supports with its federal loan guarantees to offer financing to low-income buyers at much lower interest rates than what they’re able to get today.”

+The fight against Enbridge’s Line 5 beneath the Great Lakes continues. Longtime opponent Barbara Stamris reminds us, “it’s the planet, stupid.” Meanwhile, as Julia Rock points out in Jacobin, the company has come up with a novel argument for why it needs to raise its rates: climate change means the pipelines have only a couple of decades of life left before regulators shut them down, so they should be able to recoup their costs earlier with higher prices. This is the equivalent of murdering your parents and then demanding survivor’s benefits, so doubtless it will be approved by our regulatory system.

And now a couple more chapters of The Other Cheek, the epic nonviolent yarn that’s been unfolding across several continents but this week is confined to Colorado. If you’re confused, earlier chapters are stored in the archive. Merry Christmas to all who celebrate it, and a peaceful week to everyone!

The next morning the whole school convened in Mandela Hall so the professors could critique the charrette. Most of the students were sitting gingerly, muscles still sore from the previous day’s climb. Cass had spent an early hour hitting yoga poses, trying to squeeze the knots out of her spine and her calves. Then she’d eaten breakfast with the faculty, listening as they worked out a plan for the session now underway.

“Instead of going group by group and listening to your plans, we’re going to do something a little different today,” Maria said as she surveyed the students arrayed around her. “By the way Yasmin, we’re very glad to see you back in one piece.” The young woman blushed under her headscarf and gave a little wave.

“Broadly speaking your ideas for how to slow down the oil trains broke down into two camps. One set of groups came up with traditional activist ideas: for instance, painting a red line around the part of town that could catch fire if train cars began exploding, in hopes that it would spur the local government to act. The second set of groups took what you might call a more libertarian approach, trying to persuade consumers to boycott gas and send a signal that way. The faculty has its own sense of what will work best, but maybe we’re wrong. In any event, we thought it best to let you find out for yourselves. So, an experiment.”

“Later this afternoon,” continued Tony, “I’m taking half of you in one team back to Colorado Springs. We’re going to paint that line and call a press conference.”

“And I’ll take the other half,” said Mark. “We’ll go to gas stations, hand out flyers, and see if we can talk drivers into boycotting.”

“You’ve got until lunch time to do the mapping, to write and print literature, and anything else you think will be useful,” said Maria. “Feel free to ask any of us for help. Now, go: you’ll find your name on one of two lists at the back of the room.”

Allie saw she’d been listed first on the sheet of people who’d try talking people into change; most of the other names were people who had joined her Ayn Rand study session, or that she’d talked to on the trail yesterday. Boys, by and large, which she knew meant she’d have to take charge. “Jukk,” she said. “We need a list of all the gas stations in town. Aadit, let’s you and me write up a leaflet to explain to people the problem. Natalya, can you get some numbers for us on how many people have been hurt in these explosions? Shen, can you make some signs—we need something big enough that drivers will see it as they pull in.” In minutes all 25 people in what she was thinking of as her group were mobilized, working hard.

“Probably best if we don’t actually paint the line on people’s houses, or, like, stores,” said Cass. “It’s water-based paint, but people would probably still get annoyed. So let’s stick to roads and sidewalks.” She was with half a dozen students, dispatched by Tony to the east side of Colorado Springs. They were in a Wendy’s parking lot, which their GPS mapping showed was precisely a mile from the railroad tracks that ran through the center of town; Memory took the long handled roller, ran it through the paint tray, and began painting the wide red line across the asphalt, a line that crossed into the parking lot for a Carls Jr., and then a parking lot for a Hardees and then a parking lot for a TGIF. They were moving fast enough that by the time the assistant manager from the KFC noticed what they were up to, they were already in the parking lot of the Advance America outlet next door.

“This is a restaurant?” said Anand.

“No, a payday loan place. You can get an advance on your next pay-check for a huge amount of interest.”

“A gombeen man?” said Flora, who was from Dublin. “That’s legal?”

“We call them ‘usurers’ in Malawi,” said Memory. “They’re bad men.”

“Bad men here too. It’s a huge business,” said Cass. “Look—there’s a Check City on that corner. And that TitleMax over there takes your car if you can’t pay back your loan on time.”

They made it three blocks, to the parking lot of a Sonic, before a squad car pulled up alongside, and a policeman leaned out to ask what they were doing.

“Painting a line to show how far the blast zone goes from the oil trains in the downtown rail yard,” said Cass, handing him a flyer. “Trains like those killed 47 people in a big explosion in a city in Canada a couple of years ago.”

“But do you have a permit for painting a line?” he said.

“Do we need one?” asked Cass.

“Let me find out,” he said, reaching for his radio. “It seems like graffiti to me, and we’ve got an anti-graffiti ordinance.”

“But it might be free speech,” said Memory. “Do you know that song about the alabaster cities? We don’t want any tears.”

“As long as we’re at Sonic, let’s have raspberry lime rickeys while we wait,” said Cass, reaching in her pocket for $20 and handing it to Anand. “It’s a cultural specialty of Americans. You’ll like it.”

The patrolman’s call to police headquarters brought, ten minutes later, another squad car, this one with a sergeant. He stepped from his vehicle, and took off his cap. “So this same thing was going on down around Colorado College too, about an hour ago,” he said to Cass. “I assume they’re friends of yours?”

“Yes sir,” she replied.

“Well, I told them they had to stop painting. You can’t just have stripes all over town. But we came up with another idea. He reached into the back seat of his car and took out a huge roll of crime scene tape. “Most places it’s yellow, but we use red, so it will match your line. Run it from phone pole to phone pole, okay? Don’t string it across the streets. And you’ll come back tonight and take it down and recycle it?”

“Yes sir,” said Cass. “And thank you.”

“If a train explodes, who do you think will get to go deal with it?” he said. “Thank you.”

And as he was speaking another car showed up, and a young woman jumped out, camera bag dangling from her shoulder. “Sergeant Harrison,” she said. “Heard you on the scanner, and thought I’d see what was up.”

“Well, I was just leaving, but I bet these people can tell you,” he said. “This is Sandy, from the Gazette.”

“So what’s with the line?” she said, pulling a Canon from the bag and taking a picture of Memory lifting the roller like the pitchfork in American Gothic.

“Have you ever heard the phrase ‘bomb trains?” Anand asked. “Here’s a picture of Lac Megantic, a town in Quebec . . .”

***

“Can I ask you a question,” Allie said to a young man in a Colorado Rockies cap, who was climbing down from his Toyota Tundra pickup at a Shell station a block off Interstate 25 on the northern edge of town.

He looked her over. “You can if you tell me why you have a gun on your boot,” he said.

She looked down at the holster. “Oh—an accessory?” she said. “And, like self-defense?”

“It looks hot,” he said. “I wish my girlfriend had one of those. All she’s got is a tattoo on her butt. Of a butterfly. You got any tattoos?”

“Don’t do that yet,” Allie said quickly, as the man started to put his credit card into the pump.

“Why not?” he said.

“Have you heard of bomb trains?” she said.

“Bomb what?” he said.

“Bomb trains, sir,” said Aadit, who emerged from the other side of the pump with a posterboard map of the city, laminated. He had a marker in one hand. “You can see that we’re presently here, one quarter of a mile from the train yard. There are trains there carrying highly flammable crude oil, and if they exploded all the houses in this neighborhood might catch on fire.”

“Oh, well, I don’t live here,” said the man. “I live in Nederland, up above Boulder. It’s where they have the Frozen Dead Guy festival, like for this dude who got himself frozen? Like, suspended animation?”

“But what about all the people who do live here?” said Allie.

“They could all be flaming dead guys,” said Aadit.

“Well then they should move,” said the man. “Either that or suck it up.”

“But if you don’t buy gasoline, then they won’t be shipping it here on trains,” said Allie.

“Why me?” said the man. “What about all those other people?” he said, pointing to the sixteen pumps at the station, almost all of them busy.

“What about them?” said Allie. “It’s your moral choice. You’re an individual, which is the highest form of life in the universe. Don’t let everyone else tell you what to do.”

“Well, you’re telling me what to do,” said the man, who stuck his card in the pump. “How often do these trains explode anyway? Like, all the time?”

“Well, there was one in Canada,” Aadit began.

“Canada?” he said.

“Canada,” said Aadit.

“Well, Canada is like a different country. What does that have to do with here. Anyway, if I don’t get gas, how do I get home? You going to call my girlfriend and tell her I’m staying with you because I got no gas?”

“You could take a train,” said Aadit.

“What train?” said the man.

“You could take a bus,” said Allie.

“You ever taken a bus around here?” he said. “Because I have, and buses are for poor people. I mean, they come like every hour, and they stop like every block. I mean, are you serious? Am I being punked? Is that what’s going on here? Is there a camera?” The man peered into the pump, and then stared at Allie looking for a microphone. “That’s what this is, right? I’m being punked.” He started waving at the pump. “Hi Mom,” he said.

By this point the man’s tank was full—14 gallons—and the pump clicked off. “I’ve got some tattoos too,” the man said to Allie, turning his back on Aadit. “You want to see them?”

“Not in any way,” she said, bending over slightly.

“Stay away from that gun,” he said, laughing. “You’re hot, girl.” He climbed back in the cab and honked as he drove off.

“This is not going well,” said Aadit.

“Well, that one lady did leave, when we showed her the pictures from Quebec,” said Allie.

“I—well, she actually went over there,” said Aadit, pointing to the Quikstop across the street. “It’s in fact a penny a gallon cheaper over there. I’m surprised everyone doesn’t go over there.”

An older man—in his 70s, Allie thought—pulled into the pump at the wheel of a Town Car.

“Have you heard about bomb trains?” Aadit asked, pulling out his posterboard.

“What?” he said. “Who would want to bomb a train? Is this some kind of antifa nonsense?”

“No sir,” said Allie. “We’re—we’re working to help the neighborhood. To protect it from explosions.”

“Is this some kind of school project?” the man said. “This isn’t a carwash, is it? Because I don’t want kids washing my car and scratching it up. I can give you a dollar, but don’t be washing my car.”

“No sir,” said Allie. “We were hoping you might not buy any gas.”

“Well, if I don’t buy any gas, then how the hell am I going to drive my car?” he asked. “I do Lyft, you know. I’m retired, but I like to drive. And Lyft—it’s like Uber? I can do my own hours. You have a clean driver’s license? Because I get a bonus if I sign up more drivers. But you gotta have a clean record. No wrecks in the last two years.”

“No wrecks ever,” said Aadit.

“Well that’s perfect,” said the man. “Here’s my card. Now, when you call to sign up, you give them my name. And now here’s the dollar for that carwash. It’s good to see you kids doing the right thing, not out there sticking people up. I saw on the news there was a carjacking in Amorosa yesterday. You believe that? In the middle of the day.”

“I just got a text from Jukk,” said Aadit, looking at his phone as the man pulled away. “I don’t think he’s having much luck either. He was saying maybe we should meet at . . . Long John Silver? It seems to be a restaurant. But it doesn’t do very well on Yelp, actually.”

As he was talking, a police car rolled into the Shell station. The driver climbed out, and walked toward them. “Sergeant Harrison, ma’am,” he said. “You have a permit for that, I take it?” he said, pointing at her boot.

“Yes sir I do,” she said. “From Texas.”

“Well, good. We don’t see many pink ones, to tell you the truth. Anyway, I came by because the manager says you’re harassing customers?”

“Not harassing,” said Aadit. “Informing. About bomb trains. Do you know that in Quebec . . .”

“I sure do,” he said. “I know all about it, and I think you should take some of this red tape here and run it down that street, and that way you won’t have to be holding up things at the gas station. It’s not Mr. Esquivel’s fault anyway, and he’s got a business to run.”

“In some sense it’s just a question of mathematics,” said Professor Kinnison that night after dinner, as the school gathered in the small auditorium to go over the day’s experiment.

They’d watched the evening news account of the red line being painted around town—it was the third story on Action8 FastCastAt7, after a carjacking in Amorosa and an angry man who had driven his car through the plate glass window of the TitleMax building and left it there with a note saying “You want my car, you can have it.”

“Here’s what I mean” the professor continued. “Most people are apathetic. They’re involved in their own lives, and that’s it. Good organizing—really good organizing—might be able to get three or four percent of people engaged in a political fight. The biggest demonstration ever in American history was the first Earth Day in 1970, and historians estimate 20 million came out in the streets in some way—about ten percent of the population. So three percent is good. The question is, what are you going to do with that three percent.

“If you persuade them not to buy gas for a day, or a week, or even forever, that doesn’t make much of a difference. A little, but not much. But three percent of people engaged in a political fight, well that’s a lot. Look, today 25 young people drew a red line around six fast-food parking lots and part of the Colorado College campus, and it ended up on the evening news, and two city councilors have already said they’re going to hold a hearing on oil trains. That’s a good day’s work, and 25 students is one tenth of one percent of the population of Colorado Springs. It’s called leverage, and it’s how a lot of activism works.”

“But we were reading about Cesar Chavez and the grape boycott in History of Activism last week,” said Aadit. “That worked. I mean, in the 1970s, but still. It worked. The farmworkers got to have a union.”

“Indeed it did,” said Maria. “But think about why. For one thing, no one needs grapes—they’re nice, but you can eat cherries instead. So boycotting them is easy. And grapes rot in a week; if the farmer can’t sell them right away, he’s out of luck. So the farmworkers have leverage. Oil’s been sitting there for a million years already, it’ll keep another month or two. Till people have to use it, because there’s no other way that most of them have to get around.”

“I get it,” said Allie. “I mean, I get it practically. It was ridiculous to try and tell people not to buy gas. After the first three, I felt like an idiot. I got a headache from the gas fumes. The most useful thing I did was wash three windshields for old people. I’m sorry I convinced everyone else to try it.” She was looking down as she talked, sounding tired. “It sucked. You guys are right.”

“Come on, Allie, you can do better than that,” said Professor Kinnison. “Because we haven’t gotten to the deep stuff yet, not at all. So say what you really think.”

“What I really think?” she said, looking up all of a sudden, her voice rising. “What I really think is, who died and left you guys in charge of things? I mean, if there’s just three percent of us who want things to shift, should it? If people want a different world, shouldn’t they have to make some sacrifices for it? Who are we to tell oil companies what to do if we keep buying their oil?”

“That’s good” said Professor Kinnison. “Now you’re making a real argument. If I’m against global warming and yet I drive, what standing do I have to complain? If you read any article online about climate change and then look at the comments below, you’ll see it repeated over and over. ‘How did you activists get to that rally? Walk?’ “Al Gore has a big house.’ ‘Are you running your website on unicorn farts?’”

“We blocked a drilling rig with kayaks two summers ago,” said Linny. “Shell wanted to send it to the Arctic. It was pretty sweet—‘kayaktivists,’ they called us. But I got roughly seventeen million tweets from people saying ‘What were those kayaks made out of? Don’t you know plastic comes from oil?’”

“And what did you say?” the professor asked.

“Not a thing, actually,” she said. “My general tendency is to, um, do, not talk. I actually might have told a few of them to do some . . . gymnastically challenging things.”

“Well, my general tendency is to talk, not do” said Professor Kinnison. “That’s why I’m a professor. And here’s what I would have said. In the first place, we have no choice but live in the world we’re trying to change. I want to take a train to the rally for public transit, but if there’s not a train to take—well, that’s why we’re having the rally in the first place. To tell you not to speak out because you’re not pure enough is mostly a way to tell you not to speak out. But that’s not really the core, is it Allie?”

“Why should anyone tell anyone what to do?” she said. “I mean, I get that we need traffic laws so we don’t crash into each other. But if you don’t want to do something, don’t do it. If I want to have an abortion, I should be able to. And if I want to burn some gas, I should be able to. People should look out for themselves and stay out of other people’s business.”

“Any thoughts?” said Professor Kinnison.

“Um, my country is going to go underwater?” said Zaheena, from the Marshall Islands, who as far as anyone knew had never spoken publicly before. “Already the high tide washed away the graveyard?”

“Yeah, well, maybe it’s a bad place to live,” said Jukk, who was looking over at Allie. People started talking over each other, yelling.

“Quiet,” said Professor Kinnison. “We’re getting somewhere. If we have traffic laws, as Allie pointed out, to keep us from crashing into each other, then why don’t we have laws to keep us from, say, drowning each other? Aside from a very few pure anarchists and a very few pure libertarians, most people think we need some kind of government. The question is how much.”

“’The government that governs least governs best,’ that’s what Jefferson said,” pointed out Maria with a smile.

“Which may have been because he owned people who looked like me,” said Professor Kinnison. “On the other hand he also said all men are created equal. Which it took a Civil War and then a civil rights movement—soldiers and laws—to give meaning to.”

“I think there’s something else,” said Tony, who stood up next to his husband. “It’s not mostly that we have movements so we can change laws so we can get governments to force people to do things. We have movements so we can change how people feel so that they want to do things. Mark and I are married because there’s a law that lets us be married, yes, but the reason there’s a law is because lots of people marched and made posters and put up things on Facebook and went to jail and eventually they convinced most people that you could love whoever you wanted to.”

“Most Americans,” said Melody. “I think it would not be good if you came to Malawi, I am saddened to say.”

“Not yet,” said Tony. “But it will change. Because people will build movements. They will start small and they will get big. And then they will win. And on other things too. Dr. King used to say, ‘the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice, ’ which I think means ‘this may take a while, but we’re going to win.’ Right now Jukk speaks for most of the developed world—we don’t know enough or care enough about people like Zaheena to make our politicians change the system. But we will. That’s how it works. If we make it work.”

“Don’t blame Jukk,” said Allie. “He was just trying to—look, this is on me. I was the one that got people riled up. And I don’t know what I think.”

“I know what I think,” said Anand, who was looking at his phone. “I think we should watch Your9News at 8. They’ve got a picture of Cass on there right now. She’s drinking a raspberry lime rickey, and she’s talking about how the whole of Colorado Springs might blow up.”