Calling All Climate Activists: "Go Out and Get Yourself in Some Holy Trouble"
Wednesday, 19 October 2016 00:00
By Valerie Schloredt, YES! Magazine | Interview
A handful of climate activists turned off the flow of Canadian tar sands oil through pipelines in Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana, and Washington on Tuesday, Oct. 11. Five who cut chains and turned pipeline valves and five more supporters were arrested. They face a range of charges, including criminal trespass, sabotage, burglary, and criminal mischief.
That morning in Seattle, Jay O'Hara was working the phones, calling the pipeline companies 15 minutes in advance to warn them of the shutdown. It was not his first experience of a bold climate action involving personal risk. In 2013, O'Hara and his friend Ken Ward anchored their small boat, the "Henry David T," in the path of a 40,000-ton barge taking coal to a plant in Massachusetts in what has famously been called the "lobster-boat blockade." A district attorney subsequently dropped the most serious charges against the pair, recognizing that their civil disobedience was motivated by the necessity to halt global warming.
Necessity was also behind last Tuesday's pipeline shutdown by activist group Climate Direct Action, O'Hara said, pointing to research that shows we cannot remain under the Paris agreement's global warming limit of 2 degrees Celsius if we burn the fossil fuel reserves we already have.
The success of the lobster-boat blockade and his work on climate action, from lobbying in DC to working with transformational student groups and making a pipeline pilgrimage, has made O'Hara stand out as one of the young leaders of the climate movement. However, he wouldn't use that description himself; he expresses discomfort with ego-driven action or scenarios where he's treated as a hero.
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Valerie Schloredt: I'm talking to you as an atheist, but one who feels affinity for the people of faith at this conference who are acting out of deep conviction, who are acting authentically.
Jay O'Hara: Depending on whose god you're talking about, I'm an atheist. I don't know whether there is something out there. All I know is that I experience something.
What I love about Quakerism is that the words you use to describe it don't matter.
From the beginning, Quakerism was universalistic. Early Quakers in the 1650s could meet people who were Muslim or who were Native American, and find the same motivating spirit underlying their actions, and be like, "Oh that, we call it Jesus, but whatevs."
There is a thing, whether it comes in the form of a whisper, or a nudge, or a curiosity, or an inclination, that is internal rather than external, that is generative rather than consumptive.
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/38050-calling-all-climate-activists-go-out-and-get-yourself-in-some-holy-trouble
