Green Civil Disobedience

See You in Jail: It’s Not Symbolism When You Live in D.C.

Posted by Mike Tidwell on 26 Feb 2009

Why I’m joining 2,000 people for a global warming mass arrest on Monday

On Monday I’m going to get arrested just two blocks from the U.S.
capitol building. I’ll peacefully block the entrance to an energy plant
that burns raw coal to partially power Congress. My motivation is
global warming. My colleagues in civil disobedience will include the
poet Wendell Berry, Country western singer Kathy Mattea, and Yale
University dean Gus Speth.

Up to two thousand other people from across the country will risk
arrest, too. We’ll all be demanding strong federal action to phase out
coal combustion and other fossil fuels nationwide that threaten our
vulnerable climate.

This mass arrest might seem symbolic and radical to many Americans.
Symbolic because it’s purposefully organized amid the iconic images of
Washington, D.C. And radical because, well, isn’t getting locked up
kind of out there? And isn’t global warming kind of vague and distant?

But I live five subway stops from the U.S. Capitol. My home is right
here. There’s nothing symbolic – for me — about trying to keep the
tidal Potomac River out of my living room and off the national Mall
where my son takes school trips. There’s nothing symbolic about
fighting for homeowner’s insurance in=2
0a region where Allstate and other
insurers have already begun to pull out due to bigger Atlantic
hurricanes. And what’s vague about the local plant species like
deadnettles and Bluebells that now bloom 4-6 weeks earlier in D.C.-area
gardens thanks to dramatic warming.

For citizens like me who live amid the symbolic trappings of D.C., we
stand as proof that climate change is everywhere, right now, and no one
is immune, not even the citizens and leaders of the world’s most
powerful city. (No wonder nearly 1 in ten protestors on March 2nd will
be members of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network).

And radical? Actually civil disobedience is no more radical than our
belief that extreme energy changes are possible now – not just in
far-off China or liberal Oregon, but in the city of Washington, D.C.
itself. Like a growing number of Metro D.C. residents, my home in
Takoma Park is completely solarized. I heat my home with locally grown,
organically fertilized corn that saves me money. And beginning this
summer in much of Maryland, energy from wind farms will be cheaper than
coal-fired electricity from Pepco, the state’s mega-utility. Meanwhile,
as a region, the D.C. area uses twice as much electricity per capita as
Californians or residents of New York State. Clearly, there is
low-hanging “efficiency fruit” everywhere you look in the nation’s
capital. Washington could cut its power=2
0use in half and still have
every comfort and abundance: bright lights for the Kennedy Center,
heating and cooling for the museums, fast computers for every hall of
Congress. No tradeoffs.

We just need national legislation to move things along as fast as the
climate is changing, which is to say right now! Congress must pass – in
2009 – a cap on carbon pollution that matches the goals of Japan and
the European nations under the current international climate talks.
Then Obama must go to Copenhagen, Denmark in December to negotiate a
strong successor to the Kyoto protocol.

Otherwise, Washington, D.C. is screwed. Not just in a political and
diplomatic sense. But screwed as an actual place. On its last day in
office, the Bush Administration released a study showing the U.S.
Atlantic coast would soon see sea-level rise much worse than previously
estimated. Another study in the journal Science this month showed that
ice reduction in Antarctica is actually leading to planetary
gravitational changes that will further cause the Atlantic to bulge and
swell, leading to still more rise. Who knew? University of Maryland
professor Court Stephenson already believes a billion-dollar flood gate
on the Potomac River just south of D.C. is the only thing that can save
Washington from future mega-storms. No wonder in nearby New York city,
mayor Michael Bloomburg is already planning to move to higher ground
the pumps that
keep the New York subway dry.

But adaptation measures will never protect us without a simultaneous
turn to clean energy. Which is why I’m getting arrested March 2nd with
thousands of others two blocks from the Capitol. President Obama and
Congress have already done a lot for the climate in the last six weeks
alone, and I hear the voice of those who say, “Why push so hard now?”

But I’m reminded of the labor leaders who visited Franklin D. Roosevelt
in the 1930s. After hours of talks they persuaded the President to
support a pro-union proposition. But FDR then surprised them. “Okay
you’ve convinced me,” he said. “Now go out and pressure me.” That’s
kind of the weird way politics works. Obama and Congress need this
pressure to help them keep doing what, for the most part, they already
want to do.

All politics is local, as they say, so in the end I’m just looking
after my street corner. My corner just happens to be in the D.C. area.
I have a son here, and the scientists have spoken: there’s nowhere to
hide from global warming. Nowhere. So I want an end to coal combustion
in my region. I want to live surrounded by wind mills, not flood
levees. For this, I’ll even get arrested, knowing all along that the
reverse is true too: If the actual citizens of Washington, D.C. are
safe from global warming, then everyone else i
n the world is safe too.

(Mike Tidwell is director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network)