Protests Erupt in the US and Bolivia Targeting ‘Progressive’ Presidents Who Are Failing to Protect the Environment



A Pipeline for Climate Poison and a Road through the Rainforest




Morales and other backers of the highway argue that it will be the "vein" necessary to connect and develop the country. The marchers warn that the road will inevitably lead to destruction of their lands. One Bolivian study estimated that within two decades of the road being complete 65% of the vast Delaware-sized forest will be gone, the result of logging and agriculture. A good deal of the existing incursions on the forest come from coca leaf growers, a key Morales ally, moving into TIPNIS to cultivate.

"Why in Bolivia does our government want to destroy our territory, our habitat?" said one of the marchers, Ernesto Noe. "It wants to destroy our environment and our communities. That is why we are going to La Paz." Noe, one of the oldest of the marchers, was a key leader in August 1990, of an indigenous "March for Territory and Dignity" that covered the same route and was a milestone in the nation's indigenous rights movement.

In Washington the protest against the pipeline received two replies. One came in the cool language of bureaucracy, the release of a State Department Environmental Impact Statement (the department is one of several federal agencies that has to review the pipeline project) declaring that Keystone does not pose sufficient environmental hazards to be stopped. The second reply, far more blunt, came from the National Park Police, which arrested more than 1,250 pipeline protesters over the two weeks of daily actions, including Ms. Romer and well-known climate campaigner Bill McKibben, both of whom spent two days and nights in a primitive Washington jail cell.

In Bolivia, President Morales responded to the protests in the rugged language of local politics. In a public declaration aimed at opponents of the highway he warned, "Whether you like it or not, we are going to build this road." He later denounced the march as being secretly engineered by the U.S. Embassy to destabilize his government, a claim heatedly denied by the peasant marchers. Morales also revealed that Bolivian officials are monitoring the telephone records of march leaders for suspicious calls.

What the Protests Tell us About the Challenges Facing Climate Activism
The resonance between these two so-different protests offers some important, universal lessons about the challenges facing climate activism.

One is this – electing seemingly sympathetic politicians isn't enough.

Both Obama and Morales have been eloquent in their rhetoric on climate change. Speaking about the climate crisis in the glow of his election victory in November 2008 Mr. Obama declared, "Now is the time to confront this challenge once and for all. Delay is no longer an option. Denial is no longer an acceptable response."

Morales has been even more forceful, proclaiming at last year's Cancun climate summit, "The planet is mortally wounded. We feel its convulsions. If we don't do something, we'll be responsible for genocide."

But even if their twin intentions are authentic, both Presidents have backtracked profoundly under the harsh political pressures of governing. Environmentalists in the U.S. and indigenous groups in Bolivia both rested a good deal following the election of new leaders publicly sympathetic to their causes. Now both are newly mobilized and not afraid to call it as they see it.

A second lesson – think globally, fight locally.

For a decade many environmental activists have focused their climate efforts on the doomed goal of getting the world's governments to bind themselves to some form of enforceable planetary speed limit on the growth of carbon emissions and atmospheric temperature. It was a surrender of national sovereignty that was never to be.

The fights in Washington and Bolivia are taking on the climate crisis where we will most need to wage the fight, at the national and local level, policy-by-policy, project-by-project. Shifting our best efforts from global summitry to decisions closer to home also links the climate debate to more immediate concerns like oil spills and forest destruction that might draw broader support.

Those taking to the streets in these two battles have already accomplished a good deal. They have used brave direct action to do what sometimes only direct action can do, force an issue onto the public agenda. The indigenous march is now front-page news across Bolivia every day, gathering moral weight and larger numbers as it winds its way to the capital, building increasing political pressure on President Morales. The White House protests, particularly the arrests, have now put a bright green spotlight on Mr. Obama's choice. The New York Times report on the State Department finding was accompanied by a photo of the environmentalists at the President's gate.

But a final lesson that emerges from both actions is about the difficult politics of stiff economic headwinds.

If President Obama approves the Tar Sands pipeline his explanation will find solid political support across a wide swath of the country: In the world as it is the U.S. can't afford to say 'no' to a reliable source of energy from a reliable source or a project that might generate real jobs. In the face of a second recession or something close to it, economics trumps environment (and don't worry, we'll build in safeguards).

If Morales continues to press his highway through the rainforest, he will find strong support in Bolivia for parallel reasons. In the face of deep, historic poverty (Bolivia still sits as the most impoverished nation in South America) most people are willing to gamble on anything that might offer "movimiento economico."

Altering the entrenched political chemistry that drives both projects and others like them will require something more, a clear and real alternative on the economics. In Bolivia, how can millions be lifted out of poverty without destroying the environment as a down payment? In the U.S., how can the conversion to clean energy and a greener future become a viable way out of the current economic crisis? And just as important as crafting the plan will be winning a broad public belief in it. Absent that, the political headwinds in the opposite direction will not cease.

These two brave defences of the planet, underway in two very different places, are each inspiring examples of how we begin. How we convert that into strategies for winning is still unwritten.

Jim Shultz is executive director of the Democracy Center. Maria Eugenia Flores Castro contributed to this report from Bolivia. 

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