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interesting piece on Nebraska and the XL pipeline
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/magazine/jane-kleeb-vs-the-keystone-pipeline.html?ref=magazine&_r=0The big moral (a quote from organizer Jane Kleeb): “One thing the climate organizations don’t get is that the scientific numbers don’t move people,” she said. “People here care about their neighbors.. ."
More even than the environmental travesty of the XL Pipeline, what I hate most of all is the arrogance of the TransCanada folks. Where I live, TransCanada runs print ads, TV ads, 24/7. .just unrelenting. I hate it. But the arrogance, and shameless dishonesty of TransCanada re property rights for farmers is worst of all.
A few excerpts:
. . .what has kept the pipeline out of the ground so far, more than anything, has been Kleeb’s ability to convince mostly conservative farmers and ranchers that they are the ones being asked to bear all the risk of Canada’s energy expansion. If something goes wrong, she says, they’re the ones who are going to suffer. Kleeb didn’t need to persuade all of the people in the room to be angry — many of the state’s landowners are plenty wary of what they see as the pipeline’s risks — but she has organized them to take on TransCanada and more or less their state’s entire political power structure. Days earlier, thanks to her efforts, a state district court had thrown the construction into limbo. . . a friend of Kleeb’s at the National Wildlife Federation told her about a State Department hearing on the Keystone XL in York County. . TransCanada’s proposed line would cross the route of the huge annual migration of sandhill cranes, and federation organizers were concerned about how a spill would affect the birds. They hoped Kleeb might attend the meeting with them and join forces in opposing the plan.
Kleeb wanted to steer clear of the issue. Bold Nebraska had yet to find its feet, and she was looking for a cause to unite progressives with Nebraska’s growing independent population. Environmental campaigns had never resonated with her, and despite farmers’ appreciation for their land, she knew that conservatives in Nebraska were not sympathetic to what they saw as a lefty cause. . .Her friend pushed her, though — hadn’t her husband’s ancestors homesteaded on the edge of the Sandhills? — and in the end, Kleeb showed up at the York Community Center to find the room packed with farmers who opposed the pipeline. One by one, they took the stand to describe how they had been bullied by TransCanada’s land agents and to talk about their concerns for their land and, especially, their water supply. , , The pipeline’s route would pass through the Sandhills in north-central Nebraska and over the Ogallala Aquifer, the lifeblood of Great Plains agriculture. In much of the region, the water table is at or near the surface. At the time of the meeting, the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster was still underway, devastating fisheries in the Gulf of Mexico and leaving Nebraska farmers worried about a spill in their own backyards. . . Kleeb stood in the back, stunned. She had never thought of the potential for a large-scale environmental disaster in the middle of Nebraska. All of the press material she’d been given, all of the briefings from environmental groups — none of it had left much of an impression. But these people did. “All I could think about in that room was how they reminded me of Scott’s family, the folks I fell in love with,” she said. “Farmers and ranchers don’t think politically. I felt like I had to help.”
. . Whatever its legal rights, TransCanada badly misread popular sentiment in Nebraska. The state is Republican but deeply independent; it was the home of William Jennings Bryan and the late-1800s populist movement. Rather than rallying behind the idea of American independence from Middle Eastern oil, Nebraskans saw a foreign company coming into their state and asserting rights to land that had been in their families for generations. “The attitude when doing business here is, Treat me fairly, tell me the truth, I’ll work with you,” said David Domina. . But TransCanada came in with “corporate weaponry blazing,” Domina said. He claimed that agents lied to his clients about whether their neighbors had signed easement agreements and about how little money they would get if they didn’t.. . When the agents contacted Randy Thompson about his family’s land in Merrick County, Thompson was confused at first, and then angry. “They came out here with this great sense of entitlement,” Thompson told me, “and we were just supposed to get out of the road. They said all the neighbors had signed, and if we were smart, we’d sign now — or we’d get a lot less money. These guys just treat you like bugs they can squash.”
. . .
In late April, Kleeb held rallies on the National Mall with a group referred to as the “new C.I.A.” — the Cowboy and Indian Alliance — made up of ranchers from along the pipeline’s route and Sioux from South Dakota tribes. Kleeb stood onstage, flanked by Sioux elders waving tribal flags. She urged people to write to Obama to tell him to deny the pipeline for good. “We can’t beat TransCanada with money,” she said. “We don’t have millions to spend. But we have you.” Standing in the audience, I was struck by how insular the group seemed, hardened by a shared struggle. They talked with great feeling about what the fight against TransCanada had given them: a new community, new friends, a new purpose. When I was in Nebraska, I asked Kleeb what the point was of actions like the jack-o’-lantern carvings and the barn raising. She laughed. Part of it was for the cameras, she said, but it went deeper. “You’re asking people to be involved. They love that — it’s part of our human nature. People want to be asked to do something bigger than themselves.”
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