Suzuki Predicts Pipelines Will Be Attacked

 

It's a matter of life or death to David Suzuki. The government has a choice, end these climate killing pipelines or see them destroyed.

"We think dinosaurs were losers because they suddenly disappeared, but they ruled the planet for 190 million years. We've been here, as I say, for 200 thousand."

After the speech, which called for action from the government on climate change, he spoke to CHEK News, and said: "There are going to be pipelines blown up if our leaders don't pay attention to what's going on."

The environmentalist's warning echoes a recent opinion piece in The Guardian making the moral case for destroying fossil fuel infrastructure.

Parts of the earth are becoming unliveable. Facts like that, however, are in no real need of repetition. By now everyone knows, at some level of their consciousness, what is at stake. And still our governments allow fossil fuel companies to expand their installations for taking oil and gas and coal out of the ground. They cannot even bring themselves to stop showering such companies with trillions of dollars of subsidies.

Overall, the production of fossil fuels needs to be brought down to zero as fast as humanely possible, but in the real world, producers are planning to increase extraction as if there is no tomorrow. One recent paper shows that the bulk of all known reserves must be left in the ground for there to be at least a slim chance of avoiding more than 1.5C degrees of warming; to be more exact, by 2050, some 90% of all the coal would have to remain untouched, 60% of the oil, 60% of the gas, 99% of the unconventional oil.

But these are, the researchers stress, likely to be underestimates, since the modelling is based on a 50% chance of meeting the 1.5C degrees target and does not include feedback mechanisms. If the chance is raised to 70 or 80% and the recursive loops of a climate system breakdown – notably forest fires – were accounted for, even more would have to stay underground: nearly all fossil fuels, starting about tomorrow. By its very nature, fossil capital cannot countenance such a limit. Compulsively, uninhibitedly, it instead digs around for more and more to extract and then some more.

...We are deep into the catastrophe; the hour is late, but the escalation has only just begun. We don’t know what exactly will work. The one thing we can be certain of is this: we are in a death spiral, we have to break out of it, and we must try something more. The days of gentle protest may be long over.

I think the moral case for non-violent destruction of fossil fuel infrastructure is more than made out. If there was ever a time for civil disobedience surely this is it.