This year has been challenging, to say the least. In the twenty years that I’ve been fighting to protect people and the planet, there has never been as much at stake. This is the time when we most urgently need to act to avert the worst impacts of climate change and keep fossil fuels in the ground. Yet Trump and too many members of Congress seem to be doing everything they can to line the pockets of their polluter allies, ignoring public outcry for clean air, clean water, and land protected from oil and gas drilling and pipelines.
Yet this overreach has been met with a groundswell of public resistance. People are speaking up in record numbers -- our Beyond Dirty Fuels team activated Sierra Club members and supporters to take more than 1.3 million actions with us to fight back against dirty fossil fuel projects in 2017. We generated more than 93,000 mobile actions like calls to Congress, the White House, and other decision-makers, and secured more than 7,200 RSVPs to attend physical events. People are picking up their phones, raising their voices, and marching in the streets, and our movement is only getting stronger.
In the first year of Donald Trump’s presidency, we’ve seen an unprecedented assault on our environment, yet these attempts have been met with creative strategies and unshakable resolve. Even in these dark times, we are finding ways to win.
Here’s what I mean:
One of Trump’s first acts in office was to sign an executive order reversing the Obama administration’s rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline. Through legal advocacy and grassroots organizing in Nebraska, we helped secure the Nebraska Public Service Commission’s rejection of TransCanada’s preferred route for Keystone XL through the state, a major setback for the project. We took the Trump administration to court over its approval of Keystone XL, and our case is continuing to move forward in spite of attempts by the administration and TransCanada to have it thrown out.
The Trump administration is attempting to roll back safeguards that reduce methane pollution from new oil and gas operations and those on public lands. Yet earlier in the year, a diverse and powerful coalition of grassroots activists, labor partners, hunters and anglers, Native American community leaders, faith leaders, and business partners helped defeat an attempt by Republicans in the Senate to roll back the Obama-era methane regulations. Through legal action, we successfully defeated attempts by both Scott Pruitt’s EPA and Ryan Zinke’s Department of Interior to delay enforcement of key regulations limiting dangerous methane pollution.
Under Ryan Zinke, the Department of Interior is expected to release a new draft five-year plan for offshore drilling that would expand drilling off our coasts, including in areas of the Arctic and Atlantic oceans that were permanently protected by President Obama. We’re fighting back against Donald Trump’s unlawful attempt to expand offshore drilling in areas of the Arctic and Atlantic oceans that President Obama permanently protected under his authority designated by Section 12a of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act.
Under new appointees to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, there are endless attempts to fast-track fracked gas pipelines to accelerate a buildout of the dirty, dangerous gas industry. But through local organizing, media attention, and in the courts, we are slowing down the pipelines. The Sierra Club scored a decision from the courts in the case of the Sabal Trail pipeline in Florida that the climate impacts of burning fracked gas must be considered in environmental reviews before the pipelines are permitted. That has implications for all gas pipelines. The proposed Atlantic Coast fracked gas pipeline in West Virginia, Virginia, and North Carolina was once thought to be inevitable, but is now more than a year behind schedule. In New York, the Department of Environmental Conservation refused to grant the Constitution pipeline a needed water permit and their decision was upheld in the courts, affirming states’ authority to protect their water quality.
In spite of setbacks, I feel hopeful about our work and what’s to come. Through creative and aggressive campaigns, the Beyond Dirty Fuels team has found ways to score wins and defend our progress this year. For example:
In partnership with our chapters in Minnesota and Michigan, we worked to drive opposition to Enbridge’s Midwest pipeline buildout and protect the Great Lakes from toxic tar sands.
Working with the Washington chapter and local coalition, we’ve laid the groundwork for a rejection of the Tesoro Savage oil train terminal, the largest proposed terminal in North America -- the state’s Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council (EFSEC) unanimously recommended that Governor Jay Inslee reject the project, and we expect him to do so early next year.
We’ve developed a map and tracker of fracked gas pipelines to support communities all over the country in their local fights and brought national attention and media stories to this growing threat. Our work has been noticed: the Trump-appointed FERC chair recently said we were slowing down pipeline approvals!
We’ve laid the groundwork for more success in 2018 -- regardless of who’s in the White House.
I am inspired by folks in rural West Virginia, North Carolina, and Virginia telling their stories of fighting the proposed Atlantic Coast fracked gas pipeline in the “The Land I Trust” series, by the Gwich’in people relentless in their resolve to make sure drilling never takes place in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, by the coalition of tribes, farmers, and ranchers working together to give Keystone XL the boot, the communities on the frontlines of impact on climate change leading the People’s Climate March, and the Lummi Nation’s 2017 Totem Pole Journey, during which they traveled 5,294 miles across the country to demonstrate solidarity among tribes, faith leaders, environmental groups, and others in the fight against proposed fossil fuel projects in the Pacific Northwest. As hurricanes have brought national attention to the heart of America's fossil fuel infrastructure in the Gulf of Mexico region, ongoing recovery efforts are reshaping the toxic industrry in Houston and across the Gulf region and beginning the transformation to a more just and clean energy economy. From coast to coast, there are stories of the resistance that is growing stronger by the day.
Finally, as we continue to target local and national elected officials and decision makers, we opened a new front in our fight against oil and gas this summer with the launch of a new campaign to hold financial institutions accountable for their investments in dirty fossil fuel projects: We joined the “Divest The Globe” days of action, the largest ever coordinated protest against banks’ investments in fossil fuels. Sierra Club members and supporters sent 157,000+ letters to Wells Fargo calling on them to pull their support for TransCanada and Keystone XL, and more than 20,000 people pledged to pull their own money out of Wells Fargo and other big banks that fund fossil fuels.
Recently, I joined with hundreds of others at the People vs. Oil & Gas Summit in Pittsburgh to share stories, make connections, and plot the course ahead of us. It reminded me that even in times when we face losses in protections for people and places that we care deeply about, the power of the people working together cannot be underestimated. I am proud of the Sierra Club’s accomplishments and the vital leadership role Beyond Dirty Fuels played this year in the movement to keep fossil fuels in the ground. Our movement is alive and well and we will only be stronger in the year to come. Onwards, my friends.