Injunctions, arrests, SLAPP suits, intimidation of journalists. At Standing Rock where tribes and allies are blocking the Dakota Access pipeline, at Muskrat Falls where First Nations are trying to stop the spread of methylmercury into the food chain from a flooded reservoir, at Lelu Island where First Nations are standing up for salmon, at Site C dam in BC, at Parliament Hill where young people and students came to tell the Prime Minister: “Climate leaders don’t build pipelines.”
But right now it looks as if the power structure (governments acting for corporations) is going to play hardball – not gracefully moving into technological and cultural change, but going down swinging at those who want to change the way humans treat the planet.
At the same time, Earth Mother herself is tossing the first warm-up pitches in her own game of hardball. With CO at over 400 parts per million in the atmosphere for several months now, there is no going back on climate change – for centuries. By then the planet will be ravaged – the forests replaced, if at all, with sterile plantations, topsoil in the rising oceans, drought and floods, etc., etc. This together with the almost inevitable devastation of war and more war, which we are seeing already in parts of the world.
No wonder the young, to whom the future belongs, are furious. No wonder the First Nations are desperately trying to fulfill their mission of saving place for future generations of all life. This is an emergency far greater than any ideological threat, and we all need to step up and take our turn at the plate.
