It's Actually Quite Difficult Being Green

Here is a draft of a statement my friend Esther made at a benefit for the "Green Scare" defendants. (If you don't know who they are, follow the links in the first comment under "It's Not Easy Being Green" below.)

The current consensus in the scientific community is that most of the observable warming of the planet in the last fifty years is a result of human activity, like the burning of fossil fuels and land clearing. I recently read an article in the New York Times explaining that polar bears are drowning because the Arctic ice shelf is melting. The bears now have to swim much greater distances to find food and, as a result, drown to death from exhaustion and hypothermia. The humans in this region are suffering as well. Inuit mothers are now faced with an unthinkable decision. It has been found that the pollution levels in their breast-milk are so staggeringly high that health officials recommend that they no longer breast-feed their babies. Industrial compounds, flame retardants and PCBs, concentrate in these women's bodies because they maintain a traditional diet of fish and Arctic mammals. Do they abandon their traditional diets and therefore their traditional lives? Do they no longer breast-feed their babies because their bodies are so polluted with chemicals?

Just before the time the Operation Backfire indictments were handed down, the headlines were full of stories about global warming. The world’s leading climatologists were presenting the world with a new idea, the tipping point. It is something like this: the earth is heating up to such an extent that we may have reached the point where enough ice has melted so that the sun’s rays are no longer reflected back into space but absorbed by the water where there once was ice. As a result, the earth begins to heat up even more rapidly, so rapidly that we may not be able to stop it at all.

So then these eco-terror indictments are handed down. These people are terrorists because they burned things down, not to gather insurance money, not because they were mad at their ex-wives, but because they are very concerned about the
environment. The average sentence for arson is around five to seven years. What the government wants to do is add 20 years to the sentences in the form of a "terrorism enhancement" because of the ideas behind the crimes.

I want to affirm that the health of the planet, and the animals and humans that live here, is more important than profit. The health of the earth’s ecosystems, the health of the forests, the air we breathe and the water we drink, is more important than profit. This health is seriously threatened by human activity. Scientists, environmentalists, everyday people -- anyone paying any attention whatsoever realizes this, and yet we as a species remain on a dangerous trajectory. And we are dealing with a system that seems to leave no recourse. People have held signs, people have locked themselves to bulldozers, people have given power point presentations, people have written letters, written articles. And yet we as a species remain on this trajectory. The scientific community has been clear about this for years and years and nothing is changing. It gets worse and worse every year. What is an ethical response to this?

I am not here to talk about tactics or to make judgments. What matters is this: The state is sending a message, and that message is the following: If you commit a crime because you are concerned about the environment, then you will be locked up for a long, long time. This is a threat to anyone who cares about old-growth forests, clean air, polar bears or the continuation of our species. This is part of an ongoing effort to silence those who speak out. We must not be silenced!

It is imperative that we be here for these folks as they bear the brunt of state repression. We must support them now, we must support them through their sentencing and through their time in prison. And we must be there when they get out. If there is a benefit in five years for these folks, we must be there. We need to raise funds for these folks, we need to write them letters while they are in jail. We need to remember them. They are going to be in there for us, let’s be out here
for them.

And most of all we must fight the forces that threaten the health of our planet, and that steal away the lives of these beautiful people. We will fight back! We will not be silenced!