(Photo: Gil Megidish; Edited: LW / TO)
This month a group of climate activists were convicted in district courts in Mount Vernon, Washington, and Wawayanda, New York, for committing acts of civil disobedience against fossil fuel infrastructure. Each defendant (one in Washington and six in New York) had attempted to present a “climate necessity defense,” arguing that their nominally illegal actions were justified by the threat of climate catastrophe — in other words, that the real crime is continuing to pollute the atmosphere, not interfering with corporate property. The courts weren’t having it: The activists were convicted on June 7 on charges of varying seriousness, although they anticipate appealing their rulings.
The activists aren’t hanging their heads, though. Instead, they’re doubling down on their civil resistance mode of political activism. In doing so, they’re joining a growing movement of direct action climate dissidents across the country who have taken to the streets, the pipelines and the coal trains to do what the government won’t: confront an industry that poses an existential threat to human civilization.
The Washington trial began with an October 2016 protest in which Ken Ward — a long-time environmental leader who pursued conventional climate policy avenues for decades before turning to civil disobedience in recent years — entered a Kinder Morgan pipeline facility in Anacortes, Washington, and turned a valve to cut off the flow of tar sands oil entering from Canada. His action was coordinated with other “Shut It Down” activists in Montana, North Dakota and Minnesota, who were responding to a call for action from the Standing Rock encampment, and together succeeded in temporarily halting the flow of all tar sands oil into the United States. At the time of his protest (which…