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Once again Big Oil has been forced to rely on brutal militarized force to bludgeon, bully, beat and intimidate peaceful water protectors fighting the Dakota Access Pipeline. But in the face of such violence and intimidation, the growing movement against new fossil fuels will not be intimidated, it will only grow.
Yesterday, a federal judge refused to issue a temporary injunction against construction of the highly controversial Dakota Access Pipeline. The latest setback for the First Nations fighting the pipeline means that it could be “operational in as little as 30 days”, according to a lawyer for the company building it, Energy Transfer Partners.
The Mayor of New York, Bill de Blasio, has confirmed that he is “very interested” is using the city’s pension funds to put pressure on the banks that are helping to fund the highly controversial Dakota Access pipeline.
Early yesterday, work restarted on the highly controversial Dakota Access pipeline, less than a day after the Trump Administration granted a final easement to allow the project to go ahead over the disputed land near the Standing Rock reservation.
Hundreds of current and former staff at the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are urging Congress to reject current Oklahoma Attorney General, Scott Pruitt, from becoming the head of the Agency.
Yesterday the trial opened of Ken Ward, a climate activist and co-founder of the Climate Disobedience Center, who risks spending 30 years in prison for shutting down a pipeline carrying tar sands crude last October.
As the Trump Administration yesterday descended into a farce of “alternative facts” to try and argue that there had been historic numbers at the new President’s inauguration, it is quite clear "alternative" and blatently bogus facts will be used on energy and climate too.
If those attempting to build the Dakota Access pipeline hoped that the protests against the pipeline and those funding it would fizzle out in 2017, they would have watched in despair at the events which unfolded at the US Bank Stadium in Minneapolis on Sunday.
As people head home for the Christmas vacation to be with their loved ones, spare a thought for the one thousand or so water protectors that are braving bitterly freezing cold temperatures and blizzards in North Dakota to continue what has become the iconic protest of 2016 against the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Over the last few months, as the news of the Standing Rock protests have spread across the globe, people have realised that the protest was never just about a pipeline, it was always about so, so much more. It was about the right to protect clean air and water; it was the right to protect ancient burial sites; it was the right to fight for a future for our children and grand-children. It was a belief that we can live in a world without oil. But it was also a battle against oppression and colonisation against First Nations that has being going on for centuries and where the wounds run old, raw and deep.
