Covering Massive Direct Action Protest Event to Keep Fossil Fuel in the Ground!

In two weeks I will be covering the massive protest and civil disobedience action being called Break Free from fossil fuel. Break Free is a global wave of mass actions targeting the world’s most dangerous fossil fuel projects, in order to keep coal, oil and gas in the ground and accelerate the just transition to 100% renewable energy.

Here in the Pacific Northwest, the Shell and Tesoro refineries at March Point near Anacortes, WA are the largest source of carbon pollution in the Northwest and refine 47% of all the gas and diesel consumed in the region.

The plan is to blockade all entrances to March Point by land and water with hundreds of folks doing nonviolent sit-ins, blockades, and kayaktivism, with some willing to risk arrest.

I will be covering this event on assignment for Issue Magazine because these protests against the status quo system usually receive very little media coverage.

In fact a recent report by Media Matters found that even during critical periods following news that 2015 had been the hottest year on record CNN spent nearly five times as much time airing fossil fuel industry advertisements than it did airing coverage of climate change. The network spent 23.5 minutes on ads from the American Petroleum Institute, compared to five minutes spent on news coverage on climate change. Just imagine the ration with more conservative news outlets like FOX?

This has the potential to be the largest protest action for moving beyond fossil fuels in history. I look forward to taking part and helping to tell this story.

Any of you interested in participating can find information here. If you are interested in participating in the Pacific Northwest action specifically find information here.

And please stay tuned for my Issue Magazine article in June.

Cylvia Hayes

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Birds and Bees by Cylvia Hayes

Note:  This article was first published in Issue Magazine, April 2016

Do you think that humans are more important than bugs? Before you scoff consider that we are at risk of losing flowers, fruit trees and much of the global food supply because we are wiping out bugs. We are losing our pollinators. Bees, butterflies, bats and numerous pollinating bird species are all in decline in the U.S. and globally.

According to an important study by the United Nations, 2 out of 5 species of invertebrate pollinators, such as bees and butterflies, are headed toward extinction. Of vertebrate pollinators, such as hummingbirds and bats, 1 in 6 species are facing extinction.

This is no trivial matter. It has enormous environmental, economic and food security implications. There are approximately 20,000 species of pollinators on the planet and they are key to hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of crops each year — from fruits and vegetables to coffee and chocolate.

There are many reasons for these declines although not all are well known. At the top of the list is pesticide use, including the sprays and various poisons people use in our backyards. Another factor is that industrialized agriculture has switched to growing huge monoculture crops that have eradicated plant diversity and wild flowers that pollinators use as food. Paving over paradise has led to massive destruction in habitat in urban settings. Finally, global warming appears to be adding to the pressures by reducing habitat, especially for some species of native bees.

Both the cultivated European honeybee and indigenous native pollinators are struggling. The latter is particularly serious. While honeybees aid in pollination the native species are much more effective. Scientists studied pollination in dozens of crops in every populated continent and found wild pollinators were twice as effective as honeybees in producing seeds and fruit on crops such as coffee, onions, almonds, tomatoes and strawberries.

In 2013 one of the biggest recorded single event bee die-offs took place in Wilsonville Oregon. A landscaping company had sprayed a neonicotinoid pesticide on linden trees in a Target Store parking lot. The trees were in bloom, which attracted bees. At least 25,000 mostly native bumblebees died as a result. In an attempt to reduce further bee kills, workers wrapped protective netting around 55 trees. Visiting the site was disturbing. Looking at the plastic-covered, chemical-soaked trees poking out of an asphalt parking lot left me with a deep sadness and sense of bearing witness to apocalypse.

Although native pollinators may be more efficient, cultivated honeybee hives are critical to large-scale food production and aid with native pollination. And honeybees are facing serious challenges of their own. A variety of factors including an invasive varroa mite are hammering honeybee populations. According to the USDA, just over 40% of commercial honeybee colonies collapsed in the 2015 survey, which was down slightly from the 45% loss of two years earlier!

Growing awareness of the demise of our pollinators has led to a growing movement of hobby and urban beekeeping. In 2012 I joined the buzz, when I had honeybee hives installed at the Oregon Governor’s residence known as Mahonia Hall. The Willamette Valley Bee Keepers Association approached me with the idea and took care of the basic maintenance. I, with the help of my First Lady assistant, created a “brand” called Mahonia Gold, Political Pollen. It was delicious and a highly sought after little gift.

Shortly after that I installed a hive at my personal home in Bend, Oregon.  It was something of a neighborhood affair since my good friends, Jason and Marla Jo Hardy, also got a hive. As with so many things in my life, they have been incredibly helpful me care for the new addition. We were immediately hooked. I put a little stool next to the hive and also had a little Plexiglas window installed so that I could peek into the hive’s inner workings.  Throughout the summer I watched them do their work in my yard and my flowers, veggies, raspberries and strawberries thrived.

But sadly, like so many others, my first colony didn’t make it through the winter and one of the Hardy’s colonies failed as well. It was like losing a beloved pet and disturbing in its ramifications. We started over.

Just about a month ago, here in Bend, we had a bout of relatively warm weather and I checked our neighborhood hives to find the bees alive and abuzz. They made it through the winter. When I posted this happy news on Facebook many of my fellow bee enthusiasts reported that their hives had not survived.

I recently attended a “Bee Academy” in Tumalo Oregon to learn how to best care for my colony of pollinators. For anyone interested in keeping bees and supporting pollinators (and getting some delicious honey in the process) there are many resources to help get started. For a general starting point to find resources in your area check out the Pollinator Resource Center at Xerces Society (http://www.xerces.org/pollinator-resource-center/).

And for general rules of thumb for protecting pollinators and therefore our food supply think about the following:

• Avoid using pesticides in your own yards and gardens. There are many safe, healthier alternatives.
• Fill your gardens with plants that attract and nourish bees, butterflies and hummingbirds.
• Support local and state bans on neonicotinoid pesticides that are particularly destructive to pollinator species.
• Buy organic food whenever you can and demand it more, and more affordably, when you can’t find it.

Pollination is needed for approximately three-quarters of global food crops. It’s really insects, not humans, who have the ability to protect global food security. The next time you think about swatting that buzzing insect think about how important she might be.

Cylvia Hayes

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The Price and Pricelessness of Caring by Cylvia Hayes

Once you walk through certain doors you can never return. Once you open your eyes or heart to certain things the course of your life is changed forever.

This happened to me in my early twenties. I had just taken the plunge to become a first generation college graduate and was attending courses at the nearest community college. One of the early classes was about environmental issues and in it I learned that we were hemorrhaging species from our planet due to human impacts like pollution, deforestation, destruction of habitat, etc. From the time I was a little girl I have felt an awe and love for the myriad of creatures we share this planet with. Knowing we were destroying them lit a fire in me that has guided my work and my life ever since.

There have been many, many times when part of me wished I didn’t know what was happening, wished I could stay ignorant. Sometimes I am brought to tears by the latest report of a species vanishing or a pristine wild place being torn apart. The worse part is knowing that I contribute to the damage by driving, flying and consuming certain products.

Allowing ourselves to know and care about something much bigger than we are is risky. It opens us to hurt and often leaves us feeling small and insignificant. But it also opens us up to magic.

I wouldn’t trade my love for our beautiful blue planet for anything because even though the caring comes at a price it also is a priceless gift. I am tremendously grateful that my calling found me early in life. I believe meaningful work is one of the most important requirements for happiness. The sadness of knowledge is easily outweighed by the sense of purpose, the richness of knowing I am using my life to try to make a difference. That is my True North, and in my darkest times it has always been something that has helped me pull through, stand up and keep moving.

There are so many good causes and so many brave people who take the risk of caring, stepping through doors they will never be able to close again and all are inspirational. But today, in honor of Earth Day, I wanted to share these feelings and give a shout out to all my fellow environmentalists who suffer the pain of opening their eyes and minds to the damage we are causing to this small, miraculous planet and are ridiculed for caring, called “Tree-Huggers” (as if that’s a bad thing) and yet continue to move forward with purpose.

Remember, though much remains to be done, we’ve had some huge successes when we’ve focused our collective minds and hearts. We came together and put a global ban on chemicals that were eating a hole in the ozone layer and now it is beginning to heal. Due to recovery efforts once-endangered gray wolves, bald eagles, and brown pelicans are now growing in numbers. Just last year the Oregon Chub became the first fish species to have recovered enough to be taken off the endangered species list. Nature heals when we give it a chance.

I hope all of you who open yourselves up to the potential pain of caring about and working on great causes that are far bigger than you find joy, satisfaction and hope and happiness in your decision to care and to love. Thank you for your courage.

As Dr. Suess’ pointed out in The Lorax, “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, Nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”

Happy Earth Day!

Cylvia Hayes

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An Explosive Issue by Cylvia Hayes

This article was first published in Issue Magazine, March 2016

Ticking time bombs are rumbling through the Pacific Northwest. Nearly overnight the railways of the west have become primary transport routes for trains filled with highly flammable crude oil. Studies report a 5000-percent increase in oil by rail in North America since 2008. With this rapid increase in traffic has come an enormous uptick in derailments, spills and explosions. It is likely a matter of when, not if, one of these trains spews crude into the Deschutes or Columbia Rivers or explodes in someone’s neighborhood.

I first became concerned about oil trains in 2011. As a long-time energy and climate expert and at that time the first lady of Oregon I began researching the logistics and dynamics of oil by rail as well as the options available to states to regulate oil trains. My findings were troubling.

How We Got Here:

The reason for the massive expansion in oil train traffic is due to breakthroughs in drilling technology that make it possible to extract crude and natural gas from shale deposits that were previously inaccessible. Through horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (commonly known as fracking) highly pressurized fluids are forced deep underground to crack rock and allow trapped gas and oil to be pumped to the surface.

The rapid increase in production outpaced the infrastructure for transporting the crude. Lacking sufficient pipeline capacity to handle the enormous uptick in supply, the oil industry’s default option has been to ship the crude by rail in miles’ long chains of black tanker cars.

Prior to 2008 very few crude oil tank cars passed through the Pacific Northwest. Today, it’s estimated that 25 trains a week travel to refineries in Washington State. Each train consists of approximately 100 cars carrying 700 gallons of oil a piece for a total of 30,000 gallons per train. That’s three quarters of a million gallons each week, yet only a fraction of what’s being planned.

Until recently the oil coming through the Northwest has been destined for domestic markets. However, in December 2015, the U.S. Congress removed a forty-year ban on exporting oil. This means, the Pacific Northwest, given its proximity to Asia via shipping channels, stands squarely between the most voracious energy markets in the world and huge North American fossil fuel deposits including Powder River Basin coal, Bakken shale oil and the Alberta tar sands.

Oil Train Derailments and Explosions:

The massive expansion of oil by rail has led to numerous crashes and spills. According to records from the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration 2014 saw a six-fold increase in “unintentional releases” from railroad tankers compared to the average number of spills between 1975 and 2012. In 2013 the 1.4 million gallons of oil spilled in train incidents was more than the total for all oil by rail spills since record keeping began in 1975. These incidents are especially dangerous because most of the crude coming from fracking is far more volatile and flammable than conventional crude sources.

The most sensational and tragic incident occurred in July 2013 when 47 people were killed in an oil train inferno in Lac Megantic, Quebec. Other spills sparked a fireball in Virginia, contaminated groundwater in Colorado and poured across acres of ground in Montana. Based on railroad industry data, more than 25 million Americans live within a one-mile blast and evacuation zone of a potential oil train fire.

Moving Forward from Here: 

Despite the clear risks associated with oil by rail there are currently plans for massive expansion throughout the Northwest.

According to Eric de Place, Policy Director, for Sightline Institute, “There is currently enough built capacity to handle 300,000 to 400,000 barrels of oil per day. What we know is the industry wants to build the capacity to handle over one million barrels of oil per day, which is way more than we can consume in this region.”

There are approximately a dozen proposed fossil fuel export projects in the Northwest. The Tesoro Savage’s Vancouver project with a capacity of 360,000 barrels per day, is the largest proposal of its kind in North America. According to some calculations this facility alone could increase oil train traffic through the region five-fold.

Last year the federal government did take some steps to increase the safety of oil trains. This incudes a scheduled phase out of older tank cars with newer models that have stronger shells, valves and protective shields to withstand a collision or derailment. The new regulations also require that tank cars on long trains be equipped with an advanced braking system to cut the time and distance needed to stop.

The Inconvenient Bigger Picture

Preventing a massive oil spill in the iconic Columbia or Deschutes rivers or ensuring that neighborhoods don’t blow up in raging firestorms are worthy goals in and of themselves. However, even if rail transport of oil becomes safe there is still a terrible threat.  Research using detailed data and well-established economic models, shows that in order to avoid overshooting the 2 degree Celsius rise in Earth’s temperature that would bring cataclysmic consequences we have to keep a lot of the remaining fossil fuel in the ground, unburned.

Research published in the journal Nature builds on these findings by not only explaining how much fossil fuel would need to be left unburned but also showing regional variations. The study reports that meeting the 2C target would require keeping 82% of today’s coal reserves in the ground. In major coal producing nations like the US, Australia and Russia, more than 90% of remaining coal reserves would need to remain underground. For natural gas 50% of global reserves must remain unburned. And, a third of all remaining oil must be left belowground. The study suggests that keeping the necessary reserves of fossil fuels in the ground through the most economically viable scenarios would require leaving Canada’s tar sands oil virtually untouched.

This means the oil and coal trains plowing through the Pacific Northwest are carrying fossil fuels from the very places that most need to remain un-mined to prevent catastrophic levels of global climate change. Infrastructure isn’t a sexy topic but it is one that is crucial to our futures. Just like the baseball stadium in Field of Dreams, if we build it they will come. In this case, they will be more trains carrying more of the fossil fuel that needs to remain in the ground.

Our Crossroads

The Pacific Northwest, for many good reasons, claims to be a leader in clean energy and climate change action. However that claim is incompatible with allowing our region to become the Gulf Coast of oil train exports. A growing movement is stepping up to this dichotomy.

In British Columbia, Washington and Oregon Native American Tribes, environmental groups, firefighters unions, sports fishers, doctors and public health advocates have all joined the effort to stop the advancement of oil train infrastructure. Sightline Institute has begun calling the region the Thin Green Line. Approximately 20 organizations have formed a coalition called Stand Up to Oil.

There is evidence that this opposition is causing change. Both the Portland and Seattle City Councils recently passed resolutions opposing and restricting oil train transport through the cities. These actions are largely symbolic because, due to interstate commerce laws, cities and even states have little regulatory control over railways. However, the combination of citizen and governmental actions combined with artificially low oil prices is having an effect. Port Westward, the major oil export facility in Oregon has switched back to exporting cleaner ethanol and a facility in Gray’s Harbor Washington has decided to stay with ethanol rather than expanding to crude oil exports.

In the volatile world of fossil fuel extraction, export and addiction the next several years will be a defining era for the Thin Green Line of the Pacific Northwest. This is a time for vigilance and action.

Cylvia Hayes

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Of Sows and Selves

Early on in my public shaming ordeal, when the frenzied media were spewing lies and misinformation was spreading like a virus, I began regularly attending services at a Buddhist dharma center near my home.  One day the teacher shared a poem that moved me deeply. It is titled, Saint Francis and the Sow, by Galway Kinnell.

The bud

Stands for all things,

Even those that don’t flower,

For everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;

Though sometimes it is necessary

To reteach a thing its loveliness,

To put a hand on its brow

Of the flower

And retell it in words and touch

It is lovely

Until it flowers again, from within, of self-blessing;

As Saint Francis

Put his hand on the creased forehead

Of the sow, and told her in words and in touch

Blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow

Began remembering all down her thick length,

From the earthen snout all the way

Through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,

From the hard spininess spiked out from the spine

Down through the great broken heart

To the sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering

From the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath them:

The long, perfect loveliness of sow. 

The poem stirred something deep within, my own desire to relearn, to be told in words and touch.  I found myself thinking of it often over the next days.  Then, not long after, with the media feeding frenzy still in full force, an organization that I cared about deeply asked me resign from the board because they feared the media would turn on them due to their association with me.  

Their abandonment and willingness to throw me away cut me to the quick.  At that moment it felt as though the media assault was taking everything from me -- my reputation, my work, my relationships, my identity.   When I got off the phone with my once fellow board members, I crumbled into deep, spine racking sobs.  John held me.  It was the hardest I had ever cried in front of him.  As my tears and shudders began to ease he reached out and stroked my forehead and said, “You’re a beautiful person Cylvia.  You care so deeply about things.”  With his hand on my brow I recalled the poem and “the perfect loveliness of sow,” and I felt a flutter of the perfect loveliness of myself. 

I came across this poem again just the other day and now, with all these months of distance, I am deeply and profoundly grateful for the healing that has taken place, for the growth I am experiencing.  I can see, now, that in the process of losing so much that I was deeply attached to, I found truth and a depth of self-approval I’ve never known before.  It is a lovely gift that has taken decades to unwrap.  Right now, in this moment, as I reflect on all that has taken place these past many months, as I am thinking of the long, thick loveliness of sow, I am so deeply grateful to those who saw the loveliness in me when others would not and I, at times, could not. 

Cylvia Hayes

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The Evolution of Tessa

Tessa, my beloved, gentle-spirited 100 pound lapdog will be eight years old soon.  It amazes me how much she continues to change and evolve.  As she’s getting older her olfactory system seems to be gaining steam.   When out on a run or fast hike I now often find myself telling her, “Come on!  Less sniffing, more exercising!”  And she now stops much more often and more forcefully to “check her Pee-mails” (that’s what I call it when she sniffs each fencepost and fire hydrant that other dogs have visited). 

Recently she’s developed anther new practice.  Although she has a pet door that gives her easy access to her fenced backyard, she now, on a daily basis demands, through staring at me and barking, to go out into the front yard.  Often (probably too often) I give in and let her out to “check out the front 40 in the cul-de-sac.   She has always loved grabbing a pair of my fluffy fleece socks and having me chase her for them.  But now, her truly favorite thing seems to be getting me to chase her around to retrieve my fluffy socks out in the front cul-de-sac.   My poor neighbors have likely seen me out there in my bathrobe and bare feet more often than they’d like! 

Just a few days ago was the newest evolution.   She has never been a “ball dog” – chasing and fetching haven’t interested her much.  But the other day, she and I had just come in from the garage where I’d parked the car.  As soon as I closed the door leading from the garage into the kitchen she turned around and asked to go back into the garage.  Weird.  She’d never that before.  But she kept at it and eventually I opened the door.  She went out and stared intently at my clothes dryer.  The only possible reason I could imagine was that on top of the dryer, above her line of sight, was a tennis ball.  It had been there for longer than I could remember, probably a couple of years.   I showed it to her and she went wild – all happy and joyous, flipping it around the house. 

It fascinates me to see her mind and personality grow and change.  I think probably any well cared for sentient being goes through these types of changes in behaviors and habits.  It now has me wondering if she could speak human language what would she reveal about the changes in my own habits and patterns over these past many years?  One thing surely would be constant and that is my joy and gratitude to have been lucky enough to cross paths with this delightful creature that now seems to like tennis balls.  Who knows what’s next.

Cylvia Hayes

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