Lock yourself to your love. Sounds sweet, yeah? How about locked to your love to block the gate to a construction site at the crack of dawn, assuming you’ll be cut out and arrested hours later?
For well over a decade, anyone following the news has known that climate change is a matter of profound urgency. Scientists and oil company executives have known it since at least 1959. In 1977, an Exxon scientist wrote that “man has a time window of five to ten years before the need for hard decisions regarding changes in energy strategies might become critical.”
When I came to 350 Seattle and began focusing on the relationship between trade and climate in the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), I noticed that trade agreements themselves are intersectional; they involve not just climate, but also worker rights, immigrant rights, food sovereignty, and, of course, the abuse of corporate power.
When Harvey first formed in the Caribbean, we tried to stay abreast of every development–knowing how badly frontline communities were being hit, and how long and difficult the recovery would likely be.
I knew something was wrong when I could smell the ocean. And every step I took on “dry” ground made crickets jump out of the way. As the river waters rose rapidly, overtaking the nearby hay field and destroying all the bridges into the town, I started to get nervous. I’d never seen waters rise so fast.
As May 8th turned into May 9th, I sat in a holding cell watching police officers shuffle papers and stride slowly through the booking facility of King County Jail.
On October 11, 2016, my husband Ben was among those supporting the 5 activists who shut down all five tar sands pipelines into the US in an action called #ShutItDown. Theirs was an unprecedented act of climate direct action, and the biggest coordinated move on U.S. energy infrastructure ever undertaken by environmental protesters. Ben faces up to 5 years in prison (the people who actually turned the valves face up to 21 years). We’re in the waiting period, with ears ready for trial dates and lots of time for reflecting…
Sitting in the Pacific Building in the morning on March 9th, I learned an important lesson: high-powered decision-making is incredibly dreary. The halls of power (at least in Seattle) are lined with drywall and floored with shabby office carpet. Windowless conference rooms are stocked with the same drab plastic tables you would find in any corporate office. This seemed intentional—and a bit ironic, given that the people in this room could have a serious impact on climate change.
Millie always asks me to talk about our name for a minute, so excuse me if you’ve heard this before. Our group is called 350 because this is a number that’s essential to life on this planet. Throughout human history, we’ve had about 280 parts per million of carbon in our atmosphere. As we’ve used radically more fossil fuels in the last hundred years, that number has climbed and climbed. And scientists know that in order to have a stable climate, we have to be below 350 parts per million—maybe even lower.
“If the climate were a bank, it would be saved by now.”
