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US Climate Activists Lead by Example
The organisers of the Capitol Climate Action last week had made it quite clear that they were prepared to be arrested, with a decent number visibly determined to be taken into custody. But most of the 2,000 people leaving the largest civil disobedience demonstration on climate in US history were left wondering what else the Washington DC police might let them get away with. No arrests, no fines, no nothing.
Seasoned activists Vandana Shiva, Robert Kennedy, and the father of American environmentalism, Wendell Berry, were all out in sub-zero temperatures to protest outside the coal plant that directly delivers energy to Congress. Numbers were significantly smaller than expected, but this had more to do with the largest snowstorm in Washington in years, rather than a lack of commitment to ending coal's stranglehold over US energy policy. Indeed, it was difficult to feel disappointed when the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, had already declared ambitions to convert the Capitol power plant to burn natural gas by the end of the year. Added to this that the plant was forced to shut down on the day of the march, activists could enjoy the sweet taste of success (as well as the hot soup and snacks shared on the march).
A large portion of protesters came from the mountains of Appalachia, where violent mountaintop removal to ease access to coal deposits has broken communities and reduced miner employment. On Thursday, five people were arrested in West Virginia after protesting against the practice that they claim poses massive health risks for the children at the school below the extraction site. Elsewhere this week, plans for a coal plant in Marshalltown, Iowa were abandoned after a strong campaign by local groups to block the plans. All these actions are part of a nationwide campaign called 'Power Past Coal' taking place in the first 100 days of Obama's term as president, finding coverage all over national media and international press such as Time magazine.
Of course, not all the country supports the efforts to move to clean, renewable energy. At the action in DC, a handful of 'coal supporters' standing on a street corner carried signs stating 'I Heart Coal', goading the peaceful protesters and creating the need for a line of marshals to separate the two groups. Protesters speculated whether they had been paid, although no evidence has been brought forward.
For
British climate activists, it is both emboldening to see Americans
leading the charge for a forever-renewable energy economy, and a
reminder of our own battles that need winning. With the Kingsnorth decision expected in June, the urgency of our actions grows with every passing day.
Casper ter Kuile is the co-director of the UK Youth Climate Coalition.
17 Comments so far
Show AllI thought that the article was going to refer to personal lifestyle choices - using Greyhound or Amtrak instead of flying when travelling, minimal or no car use, and other choices.
I suspect that Wendell Berry commutes about at least 20-30 miles each way to the U. of KY from his farm each day. McKibben does even more driving.
---USAn---
Wendell Berry is a tobacco farmer, a merchant of death who profits from misery, and addiction. Not one to let his abysmal personal greed speak for itself, he argues before Congress for tobacco subsidies. That activity and lifestyle is a significant part of how Berry "leads by example." That he is incidentally a talented fiction writer with a public profile is no reason to go overboard and bestow upon him a new and completely unwarranted honor.
If you type into Google "father of American environmentalism, Wendell Berry," you'll get as many hits as if you type in "Casper ter Kuile, the king of British bollocks." Zero
Wendell Berry was a tobacco farmer many years ago, not any longer. Calling him a "merchant of death who profits from misery, and addiction," Jesus H. Christ only reveals how little he knows about Berry. He's been one of the leading voices for 40 years on sustainable, organic agriculture and a proponent of family farming, arguing against the agribusiness monopolies for many years, which he still does. He doesn't advocate for more tobacco farming and he's keenly aware of how much of Kentucky's economy has depended for decades on both tobacco and coal (also bourbon and horse farming and racing), and how deeply that state has suffered economically from the sharp decrease in those industries' production.
Show evidence for Berry lobbying Washington for tobacco subsidies, because I don't believe it. He knows tobacco is as harmful as coal and wouldn't plead for its subsidization any more than he would for coal.
While Wendell Berry may be aware of the inherent contradiction in promoting environmentalism on one hand and tobacco growing and usage on the other, he finds less need than his acolytes to downplay it. As a fifth generation tobacco farmer, he started tobacco farming himself in 1965 and 33 years later in 1998, at the age of 64, he wrote "Why We Need the Tobacco Program," to combat bills introduced in the US Congress to end the quotas and price supports (subsidies) for tobacco growers. More on that in a moment.
In an essay on tobacco production in his 1993 book, "Sex, Economy, Freedom, & Community," Wendell Berry lists the benefits of tobacco work, saying it is a very “sociable crop,” and calls upon the entire community for help in the setting, cutting, stripping, and harvesting of tobacco. Then he writes, "Tobacco smoke is fragrant, and smoking is at its best convivial, ceremonious and pleasant." He says he is often criticized for being pro-tobacco because he doesn't discourage people from contaminating their lungs with tobacco smoke. His response to that is that we breathe air all day long that is just as filled with pollutants and contamination. Aside from his last remark being either bizarrely ignorant or else a transparent and self-serving lie without a comparable recantation in the public record, there is no mention here of the victims of the product he has profited from, and clearly no concern.
In a December 2001 article for the Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society, writer Allan Carlson quotes Wendell Berry as being in support of the US government Tobacco Allotment Program, saying "In my part of the country, it has insured the survival of small farmers for more than half a century." Perhaps Carlson simply forgot to include Berry's hand wringing concerns over the destroyed lives. Or perhaps in his desire to tout his "pleasant, sociable, convivial," and lucrative product, it was Berry himself who overlooked the caveat.
see the full article at: http://209.85.173.132/search?q=cache:Ji6lAKxC5ZwJ:www.profam.org/pub/fia/fia_1512.htm+Wendell+Berry+tobacco+subsidy+congress&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=12&gl=us&client=safari
Why We need the Tobacco Program - Government's Price Support for a Rural Industry, October 1998, for The Progressive, by Wendell Berry. In this treatise, Berry prefers using "price supports" to "subsidies" for the tobacco "staple crop." Readers can decide for themselves why "subsidies" wouldn't be an accurate term.
for the full text of the article go to:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1295/is_n10_v62/ai_21200693/pg_2
for the
REVIEW OF THE BURLEY TOBACCO PROGRAM HEARING BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON SPECIALTY CROPS AND NATURAL RESOURCES OF THE COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE, HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, ONE HUNDRED THIRD CONGRESS FIRST SESSION, OCTOBER 29, 1993
go to the following URL:
http://209.85.173.132/search?q=cache:w0HZMXgqPSAJ:www.archive.org/stream/reviewofburleyto00unit/reviewofburleyto00unit_djvu.txt+wendell+berry+tobacco+burley+cooperative+congress&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us&client=safari
Mckibben and Berry are both committed humans fighting, writing and acting for the good of this planet, especially as people in DC last week who were taking the bold actions of being arrested at the gates of the DC coal plant, one of the 100's of plants cranking out superheated turbine steam and tons of carbon into our world's atmosphere.
They, whether they be a small farmer who used to raise tobacco, or an environmental activist that carpools down to DC from the Northeast, are not the problem. Inefficient coal production, who's dirty by nature, and is dumping tons of carbon into a world's increasingly warming atmosphere is the problem.
Let's read both of these leaders' writings and follow their examples at the coal
plants in our locales.
Wendell Berry no longer teaches at the University of Kentucky and so does not commute daily. As for tobacco farming, yes he once raised tobacco--as did just about every other farmer in his area. However, Berry no longer raises the crop and neither does Mary Berry Smith (Wendell's daughter). In fact Mary and Chuck Smith, who once milked dairy cows, have converted their dairy barn into an art gallery, their tobacco acres into a vineyard, and along with other improvements, now offer a wonderful arts experience on their farm--to include good food and good wine. Their old tobacco barn? It now functions as the "banquet hall" for their celebrations. In other words, the Smiths are contributors to a local economy. And, I suspect Wendell and his wife, Tanya, couldn't be prouder of their daughter and son-in-law.
P.S.--Previous comments complain about Berry's past actions--actions which he has either modified or quit altogether. Perhaps coal companies could learn a lesson from Berry's examples. But then, perhaps not, because coal companies are, to use Wendell's words, "in pursuit of the objective."
Yes, I lived in Bluegrass Country for a few years and those those tobacco patches were the only thing that keep a lot of farmer's families fed...
Wendell Berry is more know for his writings on small farmers, and rural culture and bio-regionalism than environmental issues.
But my point is, it is individual lifestyle choices of the US middle class - long commutes and shopping trips from exurbia in SUV's , central AC, 8000 sq ft homes, big screen plasma TV's, that creates the demand for all those coal mines and oil wells.
There is much information in response to a commenter below regarding Wendell Berry's tobacco immersion. But you indicate that Wendell's daughter, Mary Berry Smith no longer grows tobacco. Please supply evidence that is more recent than the April 15, 2007 interview with her and her father by the American Friends Service Committee which introduces her without any protestation as being a farmer who lives near her father on a traditional cattle and tobacco farm.
for the reference see:
http://209.85.173.132/search?q=cache:NpeBSO_29gUJ:www.afsc.org/ht/displa...
Many years ago I read Wendell Berry's "Memory of Old Jack" and realized that people who lived in Kentucky were not the "hicks" and "rednecks" I had been taught to believe they were. Some years later I discovered that my paternal side had grown up in Kentucky and Indiana parallel to Abe Lincoln, living the hard scrabble life of the early 1800s on land not really conducive to agriculture. The genaeological lore says that in southern Indiana in the early 1800s a man married to one of my relatives killed six deer in one day and "was a mighty hunter before the Lord." After some Treaty of Paris around 1811 the Whites living south of the Ohio River were permitted to come north into southern Indiana, and my extended paternal family from Kentucky, Virginia, and South Carolina did just that. This was a peaceful transition by all accounts, with the Miami Indians mixing in the small towns with the Whites. That was Localism. Enabled by Treaties. There is a granite monument in fine detail to such a Treaty---of Greenville, Ohio---in Greenville, showing the most famous people who caused the Settlements of ohio.
Take advantage of what remains of cheap gas to actually do Planned Tourism, to study your own history. You may be surprised.
It is actually true that the Present is a product of the Past and is not easy to understand in the absence of a knowledge of history. Study your Family and you will be studying History. If my father knew where he came from he never spoke of it. He was too busy trying to transcend his roots in post-war America. Wendell Berry chose a different path: he dug in. Each to his own...
Apologies for one more point here. Kentucky was NOT part of the Confederacy. I do not pretend to understand why unless it was the history of Henry Clay. After all, it was south of the Mason-Dixon line and had slaves. I lived in and around Louisville for a few years and visited the libraries there and they take this stuff seriously.
One more point. Burning coal is bad not merely because of CO2 but also because of the heavy metals including mercury it spews upon the land and water. See Harvey Wasserman's "Solartopia." For at least the beginnings of a long term plan for survival.
Every day we are being made to fear. Fear not.
What's next?
-30-
JHC,
Besides having visited the Berrys and the Smiths on the Smith farm in 2004--a visit I can assure you attests to what I wrote in my earlier comment--I've also included here (at the end of this message) a link to the Web site for Mary and Chuck Smith's farm. At the top of the site's home page, click the "Farm" link, and you will read a history of their operation. THEY NO LONGER RAISE TOBACCO, and haven't for at least a decade. I can't know, and neither can you, why Mary wouldn't have corrected her introduction regarding the American Friends Service Committee interview. My guess, though, would be politeness.
http://www.smithberrywinery.net/
Too polite to gently correct a damning introduction by the Quakers? That's rich, Mary. I'm sure there will be no second guessers on that one.
JHC,
Ah, a familiar response. When confronted with facts, resort to name calling and then change the subject.
I have never known a Quaker to be offended by the term "Quaker, in fact in the city where I live, the American Friends Service refer to their meeting place as "the Quaker House." Aside from that silly assertion, I didn't change the subject. I responded directly to the novelty of your proffered guess as to why a reformed tobacco farmer who's moved on to beef and booze wouldn't care to clear the record ten years after the fact when being introduced in the present as a tobacco farmer. In any case, I suppose your guess is as good as mine. From the facts that are available, my guess is that yours is nonsense.
JHC,
The name-calling to which I referred occurred in another of your posts: "the eco-hustling gentleman tobacco farmer." That post occurred AFTER I gave you the URL for the Smith Winery, which proved your fact about Mary Berry Smith and tobacco to be wanting. In this post, you merely switch your focus from tobacco and beef to "beef and booze." Interesting that someone who prefers the pseudonym "Christ" would refer to wine as "booze."
As for my guess, at least it originates from having met Mary Berry Smith and having talked with her at length over the course of several days. If my guess, resulting from a face-to-face assessment, is "nonsense," then your wizardly guess, based on a virtual assumption, isn't worth the cyberspace it occupies.
You just have to love the first paragraph of this British puff piece. Despite strenuous efforts to make themselves appear Gandhi/King-like, at the end of the day, the bourgeois armchair doyen, Bill McKibben and the eco-hustling gentleman tobacco farmer, Wendell Berry can't even get themselves arrested.
A partial transcript of the Late NIght Dork Tapes with Bill and Wendy follows.
"We must retire to the parlor forthwith, Wendell, and hatch a new strategy to restore our image of magnanimity."
"Very well, William, but whom shall we entreat to light our cigars at this hour?"
Yeah, we get it. You're a teetotaler about tobacco and Wendell isn't. I know for a fact he always advised smoking in MODERATION and has been perfectly aware of what abuse of tobacco often leads to and has warned against that kind of abuse for years. Also, he no longer raises tobacco, as you seem deaf to hearing about.
Do you also campaign for zero alcohol use? Do you want to prohibit all tobacco from being grown or sold? Do that with either one and you advocate for a new prohibition era, and we know how well the last one worked out. Besides, tobacco on its own isn't responsible for all the deaths from smoking cigarettes. It's the chemical additives and deliberately ramped up nicotine the tobacco companies put into cigarettes that ultimately addict and kill people. All of Big Tobacco has done this for decades, deliberately addicting people to their product. Wendell Berry never did that as a GROWER of tobacco, nor did all the other tobacco farmers in Kentucky. Now that it's been known for years what the cigarette manufacturers add to the original product, most tobacco farmers have long since switched to other crops. With smoking now about as politically and socially acceptable as pedophilia, tobacco farmers have had no choice.
Furthermore, this isn't about tobacco, it's about coal--remember? Berry and McKibben have done more to bring attention to the harmful environmental effects of coal and about a thousand other things this country is addicted to and intent on destroying itself because of, than your crusade against them because Wendell might smoke an occasional cigar (I have no idea if he does or not, and neither do you) or have a glass of wine, and McKibben might have the bourgeois audacity to have sat in an armchair once or twice, can ever hope to do. Preach self-righteous teetotalism somewhere else. We're all stocked up on this site. But I get it: You're Jesus H. Christ and therefore perfection incarnate. Round up those hypocrites, Jesus! I'm sure you'll change the world.
We are glad that you and the mouse in your pocket get it. We don't smoke cigarettes. If it gives you a charge to call us teetotalers about tobacco, we take no offense. Like most people in this country, we have had friends and family who have writhed in pain and died from it. Maybe they got it from Wendell Berry, maybe someone else did. As for tobacco being grown, we have no problem with it for personal use. As for it being grown for sale, it's an issue far more complex than "for" or "against." Suffice it to say, we reserve the right to label unrepentant promoters and, according to you, former profiteers like Wendell Berry, as the merchants of death that they are.
Nonetheless, you make a compelling case to shift pity onto the poor tobacco growers, who bare no responsibility for what people do with it. It's one that has been frequently used to defend the manufacturers of machine guns, which of course don't kill people. It's those infernal little chunks of lead that keep flying out of that finely crafted tube when someone lovingly squeezes the artfully designed trigger.
We get it, you are Ephraim, which means fruitful. As for the thousand other things this country is addicted to that you say Berry and McKibben are so effective at bringing attention to, just name 900 of them. Or gather up your mice and go hype your ascended masters of eco-salvation elsewhere. We're all stocked up on this forum.