Keep it in the ground
By Sarah Frazer
Marginalised communities the world over have long pushed back against the expansion of fossil fuel. A recent encouraging example of this is the response to the proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline. This would have disproportionately harmed Indigenous, Black, and low wealth communities from West Virginia to North Carolina.[1] The company constructing the pipeline, Duke Energy, generates 90% of the electricity in North Carolina and holds an energy monopoly, which assisted in forcing hands to give licensing to the project. The pipeline would carry 1.5 billion cubic feet of fracked natural gas and would have generated 67 million metric tons of methane a year – the equivalent of 20 coal plants. The construction of the pipeline itself would have required the removal of miles of mountaintop and bedrock, the destruction of forests, wildlife and habitats, and contaminated water. The activists used a series of tools to prevent the pipeline, including direct action to prevent construction, protests, rallies, lobbying and litigation. They spoke at Congress and took over the streets surrounding the Supreme Court, and, following a series of protests by the local community, primarily made up of Black and Native American people, the pipeline was cancelled in July of 2020.
What has become clear from the sixth IPCC report and evident from events around the world is that the climate crisis is rapidly becoming a present, rather than a future event and that we need an immediate response to prevent climate catastrophe.[2] We are already witnessing unprecedented changes to climate patterns across the globe, with catastrophic consequences – including the rapid extinction of species, natural disasters, wildfires, famines, droughts, and the rising of sea levels. What is also becoming clear is that the accountability for the climate crisis and responsibility of change is being placed squarely on the shoulders of ordinary people, while fossil fuels are continuing to be exploited by multinational corporations and investment funds licenced by governments.
Article originally published in Rupture magazine, issue 6 which you can purchase here:
In 2015 at COP21, the Paris Agreement, an international treaty on climate change with a goal to limit global warming to two degrees Celcius, with the aim of keeping it below 1.5°C, was adopted by 196 Parties and entered into force the following year. In order to meet these goals, there is a need for a swift and dramatic reduction in the use of fossil fuels. Fatih Birol, the International Energy Agency’s executive director, stated “if governments are serious about the climate crisis, there can be no new investments in oil, gas and coal, from now – this year”.[3] While governments are pledging to make the necessary commitments to achieve net-zero emissions, few governments intend to halt fossil fuel exploration.
Rather, governments are continuing to licence new expansion and exploration for fossil fuels, such as the UK licensing new oil and gas fields in the North Sea, China building coal-fired power plants, and oil companies still investing in new out-put. Capitalism’s toxic relationship with the earth through its extractive economy is putting the world at risk. Companies such as Shell, BP, ExxonMobile, Texaco’s etc., influence over governments is resulting in the sacrificing of land and communities with toxic consequences, and the near exhaustion of global carbon budgets with current fossil fuel projects.
How did we get here?
The Kyoto Protocol was negotiated in 1990, an international treaty which committed states to reduce greenhouse gases. However, by 2010 emissions were 31 per cent higher than 1990, meaning that the more we learned about the dangers of fossil fuels, the more we burned.[4] The question is, how did we get here? To understand this, an examination of how the capitalist economy has developed such a reliance on fossil fuels is necessary. The climate crisis has developed from intensive and extensive waves of capital accumulation. The industrialisation of the planet under capitalism has led to fossil fuels being the dominant source of energy to power economic expansion and political domination. Andreas Malm, in “Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming” demonstrates how the switch from waterpower to steam power was driven by conflict between labour and capital, as well as cheap raw materials made available through extractive colonialism and slavery.[5] Prior to the industrial revolution, capital was accumulated through the extension of the working day beyond what was necessary for workers to produce the equivalent of the value of their wages, i.e., through the production of absolute surplus-value.
With the onset of the industrial revolution, there was a move towards the use of steam, which led to the curtailment of the necessary labour-time of workers. The system would now be based on accumulation from relative surplus value, as such, the production process was “sped up at will” as a result of steam. This was opposed to waterpower, which was outside of the capitalists control.[6] Malm argues that the shift to the coal powered steam engine took place as it ultimately enabled capitalists to better exploit labour and nature, through giving better access to control over the workers.
This has now led to a situation where the system is entirely reliant on fossil fuels, meaning that while nations pledge to make transformative economic and social changes through the setting of, and adherence to, carbon budgets unless the capitalist system changes, little can be done to halt the climate crisis.
The Carbon Budget
A carbon budget is the cumulative amount of carbon emissions permitted over a period of time to keep well below the temperature increase of 2°C, or within the temperature threshold of 1.5°C above pre-industrialisation levels – the max increase set by the Paris Agreement. The only way to remain within the carbon budget is to reduce emissions as fast as possible to zero as soon as possible to stabilise the global mean temperature at the level targeted by international efforts. The IPCC, in their recent 2021 6th assessment report, states that the carbon budget will run out in only nine years for average carbon production countries, and countries with high carbon production to run out in only three years.[7]
The problem with carbon budgeting is in relation to “net” zero, rather than aiming for zero emissions. “Net” zero emissions allow a loophole for governments to continue licensing fossil fuel expansion, once companies pledge to offset emission through investment in “green” projects. The continued expansion of fossil fuel burning energy infrastructure means that there are already committed future carbon emissions. This does not even take into consideration the existing infrastructure, with the carbon budget suggesting that existing infrastructure already pushes us beyond our carbon emission limits. The global carbon budgets associated with the limit of 1.5°C will be exhausted with current fossil fuel projects, meaning existing in-operation fossil fuel infrastructures will need to be retired before their resources are fully exploited.
It is clear that there is an ever-growing need to keep carbon in the ground, and that resistance will not be coming from those at the top.
Points of Resistance
Governments are bowing to the pressures of multinational corporations, allowing the climate crisis to worsen and sacrificing biodiversity, human health and increasing structural racism. Despite this, the movement to keep fossil fuels in the ground is growing. It is the minority and working class communities, who are being forcibly evicted from their lands, having their lands and waterways poisoned, and losing their incomes, who are leading the way in the fight back against the big polluters.
““Indigenous resistance has resulted in stopping or delaying up to one-quarter of the annual US and Canadian emissions.””
In the US, Canada and the Amazon, Indigenous peoples have developed effective campaigns against the continued expansion of fossil fuels through a blended approach of direct action, political lobbying, and divestment. The results have been a number of victories against various multinational corporations. Indigenous resistance has resulted in stopping or delaying up to one-quarter of the annual US and Canadian emissions. The struggle of Indigenous peoples to protect the land is inevitably linked to the struggle to resist state acts of violence and colonisation, further fuelled by the extractive economic system. Additionally, to prevent further extraction and expansion of the fossil fuel industry, the Indigenous resistance to carbon groups operates under a framework which seeks to protect the land, build collective power, confront white supremacy, and challenge the tenets of capitalism and Eurocentric materialism.[8]
Turning attention to the Global South, the Lamu Coal Plant in Kenya is a further example of continuing fossil fuel infrastructure development. Owned by Amu Coal, a consortium of both Kenyan and Chinese energy and investment firms,[9] it is set to be the first coal-fired power plant in Kenya and is located a UNESCO heritage site predominantly inhabited by Swahili people whose main source of income comes from the fishing industry. A coal plant in the heart of their community would have a direct impact on their ability to feed themselves, and the emissions from the power plant would have a disastrous impact on the local environment, as well as the global climate Resistance to the Lamu coal plant is growing, and efforts to prevent the start of construction are increasing. In 2016, both Lamu residents and activists protested against the plant, despite confrontation from both national police and military. Alongside the protests, environmental organisations have been opposing the plant. In June 2019, Kenyan judges ruled that the National Environmental Agency had failed to do a thorough environmental assessment and have suspended construction of the Luma coal plant. Local activists hope that further struggle and environmental awareness will have the plant shelved indefinitely.[10]
In Ireland in 2003, the Corrib Enterprise Oil consortium, led by Royal Dutch Shell, bought forest land from Coillte, nine kilometres inland, in order to construct a refinery to exploit one trillion cubic feet of natural gas located 80km off the coast of Co. Mayo. In 2005, the work began, and so too did the local fightback against the refinery and the pipeline, and a new campaign ‘Shell to Sea’ was launched. Locals were met with fierce opposition and violence by the Gardai and Shell private security. In June 2005, five men were imprisoned for defying compulsory purchase orders, while in 2009, local man Willie Corduff was attacked by men in balaclavas after he had prevented a Shell truck’s access to the area. Large rallies and pickets were held across Ireland, with continuous blockades of the construction site.[11] Legal challenges failed and the government, including the Green Party, pushed through both the sell-off of the gas and the plans for the refinery with some minor concessions. Despite this defeat, an entire population were politicised and thrust into an environmental movement.
A further example is the construction of the Line 3 pipeline by oil giant Enbridge.[12] The Line 3 pipeline will carry tar sands oil from Alberta to Wisconsin, through Indigenous Anishinaabe land. Canada’s approval of the pipeline is viewed as cultural erasure and further colonialism, along with the destruction of biodiverse wetlands and wild rice fields. Enbridge has a track record of “hazardous liquid incidents'', which includes the largest inland oil spill in US history, when in 1991, 7.7 million litres of oil spilled into the Prairie River in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. The construction of the pipeline negates Minnesota’s planned carbon reductions and violates the rights of Anishinaabe people by endangering the primary areas of hunting, fishing, wild rice and cultural resources. Enbridge paid for state policing during construction, with activists being subjected to state violence.[13] The construction was recently completed, and the transport of tar sands are set to begin, however, Indigenous activists are continuing resistance.[14]
These are but a few examples of fossil fuel projects, with new exploration still continuing despite the stark reality of the climate crisis. The pressure to end the exploitation and use of fossil fuels will need to come from grassroots movements rather than governments.
““The struggle of Indigenous peoples to protect the land is inevitably linked to the struggle to resist state acts of violence and colonisation, further fuelled by the extractive economic system.” ”
Struggle is the only way
The message is clear – there can be no new or continued fossil fuel exploration from now if the world is to remain within the safe limits of global warming and meet the total of zero emissions. What is also clear, is that the only way to prevent climate catastrophe is to struggle and eventually dismantle the capitalist system, as the political establishment are determined to ignore the science and keep burning fossil fuel. Keeping it in the ground is an important global demand that ecosocialists should take up everywhere. Vitally, we should stand in solidarity with affected communities leading the way in resisting the fossil fuel industry. This will involve mass demonstrations, mass strikes and unrest to break the existing state powers. This will also involve civil disobedience; the movement should focus on both the flashpoints of environmental destruction and society, in general, to bring vital attention to this crisis.
Notes
1. Donna Chavis, “The Beginning of the End of Fossil Fuels”, Friends of the Earth, October 2020, https://foe.org/blog/the-beginning-of-the-end-of-fossil-fuels/
2. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2021, https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGI_Full_Report.pdf
3. Fiona Harvey, “World needs to kick its oil habit to start green recovery”, The Guardian, 1 February 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/01/world-kick-coal-habit-start-green-recovery-iea-fatih-birol
4. Andreas Malm, Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and The Roots of Global Warming (London, 2016).
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. https://carbontracker.org/carbon-budgets-explained/
8. Somaya Jimenez, “Standing Up for The Sacred Black Hills and Native Sovereignty”, Cultural Survival, July 2020, https://www.culturalsurvival.org/news/standing-sacred-black-hills-and-native-sovereignty
9. http://medium.com/@deCOAL/extractive-infrastructure-projects-in-lamu-6552e149731
10. Abdi Latif Dahir, “China’s plan to help build Kenya’s first coal plant has been stopped – for now”, Quartz Africa, 27 June 2019, https://qz.com/africa/1653947/kenya-court-stops-china-backed-lamu-coal-plant-project/
11. http://www.shelltosea.com/booklet
12. Redpepper.org.uk/Shell-to-Sea/
13. http://www.stopline3.org/issues/#climate
14. John Woodside, “Indigenous Environmental activists square off with Enbridge to stop Line 3”, Canada’s National Observer”, 8 June 2021, https://www.nationalobserver.com/2021/06/08/news/indigenous-environmental-activists-enbridge-stop-line-3.