[CenterfortheWorkingPoor] Climate Change and the Crisis for the Poor: Why I am going to Jail.

[Paul Engler]

In a few days, Sam Pullen and I will be
going to jail in Washington
 DC. We are participating in a
civil disobedience designed to pressure the government to change from coal to
renewable energy. But when I mention to supporters of the Center that we are
taking part in an action to combat global climate change, some people are
confused. “Aren’t you an organization for the working poor?” they ask. Of all
the organizations sponsoring the action – there are over a hundred, in addition
to a long list of prominent authors, scientist, and celebrities that are
endorsing the protest -- it seems that we are one of the only ones regarded as a
labor group for the poor. Yet this is exactly why I feel called to risk arrest in
trying shut down a massively polluting coal power plant in the heart of our
nation’s capital. Simply put: confronting environmental problems is no longer
just about preserving parks, wetlands, and endangered species. It is about facing
life and death issues that affect the poor more than anyone.

 

 

We need your help. We still need your
support to pay for our basic expenses to visit Washington DC,
and get arrested. Please If you can donate at this link

https://secure.groundspring.org/dn/index.php?aid=2975

And strengthen our call.  

 

 

Before the global economic depression
fully hit, the world witnessed one of the largest simultaneous protests ever
undertaken by the poor. “Riots from Haiti
to Bangladesh to Egypt” broke
out, wrote CNN. Time magazine noted, “From Mexico to Pakistan, protests
have turned violent. Rioters tore through three cities in the West African
nation of Burkina Faso last month, burning government buildings and looting
stores.” In Cameroon massive protest left 20 people dead. “Similar protests
exploded in Senegal and Mauritania
late last year,” Time reported.

           


Unfortunately, there was no, well-coordinated
international grassroots organization that was channeling this discontent. On
the contrary, the protests were prompted by global markets; they were an
expression of one of the greatest hunger pains in global history. The problems that
environmentalist predicted would result from our dependency on oil, combined
with climate change and global population growth, created a dramatic increase
in global food prices that left millions of the poorest around the world
hungry. Although we have been avoiding the solution, it is ultimately inevitable.
We need a dramatic shift to renewable energy. Indeed, we cannot avoid this
shift any longer without grave consequences for the world’s most vulnerable
populations.

 

When I am able to find an
adequate stretch of time for spiritual reflection, I go to a monastery settled amid
avocado orchards in the mountains south of Los Angeles. A few months ago, I had a moment
of awakening there. I have visited for years and seen the monks mindfully
maintain the trees, and I seen the arduous work of immigrant farm workers who play
Ranchero music on boom boxes as they picked the harvest when it came due. A few
months ago, after meditating for hours, I slowly walked to the orchards for a
designated afternoon work period. I was assigned by the abbot to help the monks
mindfully chainsaw all the trees into piles of sticks. It took this very
physical and visceral experience of destruction in a very isolated and peaceful
place to awaken to what I already should have appreciated: California is in the middle of the worst
drought in its recorded history. Next year, the state will not be able to provide
cheap water to all the farmers south of Los
  Angeles. Thousands of field will remain dry and fallow.
Many of the fruit groves that the counties south of Los Angeles are know for will be cut down. Farm
laborers will have an even more difficult time surviving. Los Angeles is voting next week to ration
water. Rationing is already happening in Mexico
  City, where they will soon turn off the water for three
days a month. It is not hard for experts to demonstrate a global pattern. Unprecedented
droughts sweeping the world are proof of what climate change scientists have predicted
again and again, like biblical prophets: Global warming means more droughts, hurricanes, floods, and fires. This is just the
beginning.

Recently, author and
editor Tom Englehardt wrote a wonderful piece on the drought epidemic. He
explained: “[C]entral China
is experiencing the worst drought in half a century.
Temperatures have been unseasonably high and rainfall, in some areas, 80% below
normal; more than half the
country's provinces have been affected by drought, leaving millions of Chinese
and their livestock without adequate access to water….. Globe-jumping to the
Middle East, Iraq,
which makes the news these days mainly for spectacular suicide bombings or
the politics of American withdrawal, turns out to be another country in severe
drought. Americans may think of Iraq
as largely desert, but (as we were all taught in high school) the lands between
the Tigris and Euphrates
 Rivers, the ‘fertile
crescent,’ are considered the homeland of agriculture, not to speak of human
civilization. Well, not so fertile these
days, it seems. The worst drought in at least a decade and possibly a farming lifetime
is expected to reduce wheat production by at least half; while the country's
vast marshlands, once believed to be the location of the Garden of Eden, have
been turned into endless expanses of
baked mud.”

Tom continues:
“Leaping continents, in Latin America, Argentina is experiencing ‘the most
intense, prolonged and expensive drought in the past 50 years,’ according to Hugo Luis Biolcati,
the president of the Argentine Rural Society. One of the world's largest grain
exporters, it has already lost five billion dollars to the drought. Its
soybeans -- the country is the third largest producer
of them -- are wilting in the fields; its corn -- Argentina is the world's
second largest producer -- and wheat crops are in trouble; and its famed
grass-fed herds of cattle are dying -- 1.5 million head
of them since October with no end in sight.”

To me, Tom’s article, like the
dried avocado trees at the monastery, made clear that we, as a society, need a
wake up call. The crisis is already here, we just do not feel it—at least those
of us sheltered by middle class comforts. The poor do feel it. They are the
ones who go hungry during droughts and who are left abandoned in hurricanes. Just
ask those trapped by Katrina, or those who lived in the large trailer park that
became perhaps the greatest casualty of the forest fires that swept California last year.

The solution to climate change is a
shift to renewable energy, away from fossil fuels like coal, which is the
largest supplier of carbon dioxide on the planet. Many steps need to be taken,
including making bold investments in solar energy. However, many who profit
from coal and oil and are resisting these changes. They are investing millions
of dollars in political contributions and PR campaigns. There must be a force,
an organized demand, to oppose them. I am getting arrested to demand that we
start to phase out coal power immediately. The Capitol Power Plant in Washington DC
is actually owned by the federal government and supplies heat specifically for
the Capitol complex. It is a perfect symbol of our nation’s dependency on coal.


 

In my experience organizing, I know
that one of the profound moments in people waking up to the seriousness of an
issue is when they see someone non-violently sacrifice him- or herself for a
cause. In Washington, we expect over ten thousand people to rally at it gates.
When hundreds of people risk arrest to shut down the power plant for a day, I
know we our statement will be felt. Already the powerful are taking notice. Just
three days before the announced protest--after years of local activists calling
for the end of burning coal at the Capitol Power Plant--Nancy Pelosi and Henry
Reid declared that they officially supported this demand. Now, I hope the rest
of the world will take notice—not only of our modest sacrifice, but of the much
louder call of the world’s poor.

 

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