The Real Eco Terrorists

Want to Be a Felon? Try Protecting the Planet.

Uncredited drone-based AP photo of the Kansas oil spill last year.

Trans Canada’s (TC Energy) gross profit for 2022 was $7.22 billion. Its Keystone pipeline has leaked at least 22 times in its history, highlighted by 588,000 gallons in Kansas in 2022, 380,000 gallons in North Dakota in 2019, and 407,000 gallons in South Dakota in 2017. Pictured is the Kansas event.

Profits for the 2022 oil and gas industry are being announced. As the Arctic and Greenland ice sheets melt, and tens of millions are already displaced by the #ClimateEmergency, total earnings for the five largest oil companies in the world come to nearly $200 billion.

Exxon, the largest US oil producer, made $56 billion in 2022, or $6.3 million an hour. Shell announced profits of nearly $40 billion, double the previous year, and the most for one year of its 115 years existence. Chevron, the second-largest oil company in the US, doubled its profits from 2021, posting an all-time record of $36.5 billion. France’s TotalEnergies also doubled its returns, at $36.2 billion.

Similarly, British oil giant BP announced record profits, nearly $28 billion, more than double 2021 and the largest in its 114-year history. BP also announced it was scaling back its climate goals to cut emissions, and plans to increase oil and gas production over the next seven years rather than adhere to previous targets.

Alaska’s biggest crude oil producer ConocoPhillips, reported $18.7 billion of profit in 2022, and the Biden administration is intent on approving the $8 billion Willow Project, drilling in the National Petroleum Reserve of Alaska, that would produce 600 million barrels of oil over 30 years, with a peak of 180,000 barrels a day. Alaska is also a state where at least 31 indigenous communities face losing their villages and cultures from rising seas and melting permafrost.

When the 2022 profits for all publicly traded oil and gas companies are in, the numbers are expected to exceed $400 billion. 2023 is projected to be less lucrative, according to OilPrice.com. “This year, earnings at ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, Shell, and TotalEnergies are set to be around a quarter lower than the combined profits for 2022, but they will still be a whopping $150 billion for 2023.” Whopping, I assume, is still pretty good.

Spanish multinational Repsol spilled 6,000 gallons of crude, devastating 21 beaches in January 2022, when a tanker unloading crude at its refinery was rocked by waves.

For some reason, governments felt a need to support this fragile industry with a record $1 trillion in subsidies last year.

Lesson: endangering human survival and the diversity of life on earth that sustains us with carbon and methane emissions, and oil spills pays handsomely.

Meanwhile, those with the courage to call out legalized ecological criminality are increasingly being jailed. Roger Hallam, founder of Extinction Rebellion and leader of Just Stop Oil, has languished in Victorian-era Wandsworth prison since last November, for attempting a peaceful protest on the M25 motorway circling London. It never got under way, as he and the handful of protesters were quickly arrested. Disturbingly, I have been unable to find information on Hallam’s legal status four months after he was incarcerated. However, I have little doubt the British government wishes to make a high-profile example of him. Chancellor Rishi Sunak, a recipient of £141,000 of oil industry money in 2022 backs increasing oil production. People like Hallam are a problem.

Peaceful acts of environmental civil disobedience common in Europe have begun to migrate to the US. As protests increase, current events and our history of power suppressing civil rights are instructive. In fact, many states are quietly changing laws from misdemeanors to felonies, such as trespassing near gas and oil pipelines. Additionally, climate protesters are frequently being charged with domestic terrorism. Details of this assault on our civil liberties can be found at the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law. This map tracks such efforts state-by-state, in detail.

Let’s revisit the First Amendment of the Constitution, to remind us of our theoretically inalienable rights.

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

These words, primary to a free society, are effectively under attack. By redefining misdemeanors to felonies, threatening longer jail sentences, absurdly increasing fines, and threatening to withhold federal funds to non-profits for the actions of individuals, it is possible to undermine the First Amendment. These elements are at play in Atlanta, Georgia, with the first killing of an environmental protester in the US.

The Atlanta Public Training Center “Cop City,” a Civil Liberties Test

On January 18, 26-year-old Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, was shot to death by Georgia state troopers during a peaceful protest protecting a forest conservation area near Atlanta, the South River Forest (SRF). Conflict has come to a head over a police training complex, referred to as “Cop City” by opponents, which would occupy about 25 percent of the area. Adding to an already seething atmosphere is the murder of Tyre Nichols in Memphis on January 7, by five police officers. He was beaten to the point he was unrecognizable, then died three days later.

The autopsy of Manuel revealed thirteen bullets from multiple firearms penetrated his body. State troopers claim Manuel opened fire and that they found a gun in his tent. A document was posted online of a gun purchase he allegedly made in 2020. However, there is no body cam footage from the troopers who shot him, including one who was injured and hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries. Body cam footage was provided by the Atlanta Police Department (APD) however, as they simultaneously combed the woods searching protester’s tents. In this footage Axon_Body_3_Video_ 2023-01-18_0845_X6039A7V9.mp4, four initial gunshots can be heard at 18:13 of the video (09:01:21 on the body cam recording) followed by a rapid barrage of gunfire. At 28:14 (09:11:21) another single shot echoes through the woods. From a different body cam 39-3.mp4 at 21:13 (9:04:25) a policeman can be heard muttering, “You fucked up your own officer.”

Manuel, 26-years-old and weighing 125 pounds, was remembered at a press conference in Decatur. His brother, Paez, recounted counseling Manuel to “get a life and have a family”, and that they would “agree to disagree” about Manuel’s involvement in projects such as defending the forest, or helping to rebuild houses after Hurricane Nicole swept through Florida. “I would say, ‘Manuel, you cannot worry about the whole world. You’re not Greta Thunberg.’ I was wrong,” he added.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) which also took part in the sweep, is investigating. I don’t find it unreasonable to wonder about a conflict of interests. Many residents are clamoring for an independent investigation.

The shooting of Terán, is believed to be the first environmental defender killed in the US. Nineteen such forest defenders have been charged with felonies under Georgia’s domestic terrorism laws since December. The acts of “terror” by nine of those facing charges, include trespassing, constructing a campsite, and sitting in trees.

The Atlanta Public Safety Training Center is a proposed $90 million complex. It would include a shooting range, a track to practice high-speed driving, and a burn building for firefighters. A mock village would feature a home, a convenience store, and nightclub to rehearse raids. It is said it will improve police morale.

The facility would occupy 85 acres of the 350 acres of the SRF. It’s significant area, as one of the largest urban forests in the US, and an important public resource, and refuge for wildlife. The South River is a headwater of South Georgia’s largest fresh water system, the Ocmulgee and Altamaha River Basins. The SRF area is small, compared to the 544 square mile South River watershed.

Underlying the protests is the outrage of the death of Tyre. Nichols, unarmed, was a 29-year-old black man and father of a four-year-old boy who died in a routine traffic stop, initiated by an unmarked police car and a cop dressed in a black hoodie.

The interaction began with a traffic stop for alleged "reckless driving,” police initially said.

However, the internal police documents say Haley exited his unmarked vehicle and "forced (Nichols) out of his vehicle while using loud profanity and wearing a black sweatshirt hoodie over (his) head." Haley "never told the driver the purpose of the vehicle stop or that he was under arrest," the documents state.

In the following moments, Haley pepper-sprayed Nichols directly in the eyes and kicked him on the ground, the documents say.

After Nichols fled the scene, the officers caught up to him at a second location near his family home and punched and beat him as he lay restrained on the ground, the video shows.

On Saturday, January 21, Tyre was on the mind of protesters, as was Manuel, gunned down just three days earlier. Six were arrested for protesting Cop City in downtown Atlanta. The protesters broke windows, including those of the Atlanta Police Foundation, and set a police car on fire. Three businesses were damaged. Charges included multiple misdemeanors and felonies, including domestic terrorism. I do not condone some of these acts, as they are counterproductive. I do understand them, however. How many young black men have we seen murdered by police? How many are locked away with prejudice? Law and justice often aren’t the same. Often we have been shown peaceful protest alone doesn’t result in change.

Police chief Darin Schierbaum said, "It doesn't take a rocket scientist or an attorney to tell you that breaking windows or setting fires is not protesting, that is terrorism." Schierbaum, has an annual salary of $240,890 according to The Kansas City Star. By the way chief, it actually, it does take attorneys to determine the merit of the charges. That is called due process.

Similarly, just five weeks before, on December 13, five people were arrested and charged with offenses that included domestic terrorism after allegedly throwing rocks and bottles at police at the training center site. The complete list of charges can be found on the GBI website.

Too often, police are judge, jury, and executioner. Too often, laws are used to protect the interests of the wealthy and powerful. When legitimate grievances aren’t addressed, these are the results. The laws that are supposed to protect us can also be used for repression.

Following these events, on January 26 Governor Brian Kemp declared a state of emergency and ordered 1,000 National Guard troops deployed, a further intimidation of our fundamental right to assemble.

Aside from the obvious moral questions asked here and the loss of human lives, my interest in Atlanta is driven by my concern for the #ClimateEmergency, and how abuses of law enforcement apply. The Civil Rights movement taught us to expect violent repression from authorities when fighting for human rights. An inhabitable planet is a human right. Cop City is yet another test of power vs. people. In 2021 alone, 38 million were displaced by wildfires, droughts, vanished shorelines, monsoons, devastated harvests, heavier, slower hurricanes, and the associated ruin of people’s lives. The crisis at the Mexican border is now driven by climate change, not just fleeing from the usual drug cartels and impoverishment. It’s now as well a result of the poorest indigenous people in South and Central America, facing starvation on their drought-stricken land as a result of climate change. This was caused by industrialization. Yet the oil barons keep drilling, and we continue to level the Amazon rain forest for cow pasture, and soy animal feed because we like hamburgers. A new world is emerging which will be defined by massive climate migration. The chaos and violence that will result is unthinkable.

I believe most Americans don’t realize it’s happening here, too. They believe if they continue to pitch into the recycling bin and drive an EV, life will continue as usual. This is not the case. All that we enjoy has been harvested from the earth. All we depend on for mere survival is failing. This myopia is a failure (or conspiracy) of the corporate-owned media underreporting and under emphasizing the most critical story of our lifetime. The worst of the media outlets simply lie. No country is immune. Three million Americans have been displaced over the last ten years as a result of our planet growing more extreme. That number will grow, dramatically. Pay attention to the western states. The Colorado River is drying up. Lake Powell, the nation’s second-largest reservoir, has dropped to a new record low since it was filled in the 1960s. It is just 22% full this February. 40 million people in seven states and part of Mexico depend on Powell’s water supplies and power generation from the Glen Canyon Dam, which holds it back. Powell, straddling the border of Utah and Arizona, feeds Lake Mead, the nation’s largest reservoir. According to Brad Udall, a water and climate scientist at Colorado State University, Lake Mead supplies 90% of the water to Las Vegas, 50% to Phoenix, 100% to Tucson, and 25% to Los Angeles. If these reservoirs fail, it will drive a national disaster akin to the dust bowl years.

Lake Powell bathtub ring at Glen Canyon Dam. The reservoir is just 22% full this February.

As of 2020 California agriculture alone was a $54 billion industry that generated at least $100 billion in related economic activity. California’s total economy in 2020 was $3.4 trillion, the fifth-largest economy in the world. California now pumps groundwater in desperation to sustain its agriculture. As a result, the ground is collapsing into sinkholes. It’s unsustainable. If California and the basin states fail, the repercussions will shake the world. The danger of civil unrest in our own country from tens of millions losing their lives, livelihoods, and homes will be real. If these events to come to pass, will our governments and police react justly, or will they uphold the system that has brought us to the edge of disaster?

If you consider me paranoid or a conspiracy theorist, consider this. The billionaires running the show know the score. They're building bunkers.