Last week I wrote a little bit about the political scene where I live, about the interesting coalitions and fluid communities of those affecting change in their worlds. The post wasn’t mostly about that, just a wee bit, but I have been thinking deeply about it since. In light of the current Presidential race, I have also been musing on deep entrenchments, on divides that seem insurmountable, and whose interests are really served by these systems. I’ve been pondering the damage of purity tests and conformity covenants and how they are affecting our political discourse, our search for a common civic life.
I live near the state Capitol and we have a part time legislature here in Colorado. The lawmakers are only in session from early January to early May. So a lot needs to occur quickly while it’s all happening concurrently. This timing makes the Fall an interesting period of coalition building and information gathering. The flurry they are immersed in now is palpable in my neighborhood; the atmospheric political speech isn’t all NOV2020. Or even mostly.
I took a sabbatical in January, and am not yet back to work full time. I have been catching up of what’s going on with the crafting of laws and the volleying of influence, and noting where the quiet and effective work is being done. I have been eyeing the committee schedule for likely testimony opportunities, and reflecting back on my impressions and insights from previous years’ experience.
I am feeling grateful for testimony from those on the opposing side from me. Generally, I have been for things, and these other folks against them. Occasionally that is reversed. Regardless, it is from these opposing witnesses, from those folks begging the legislature to keep the status quo just a little bit longer, that I learn the most.
It was from them that I learned farmers lease their water rights to oil and gas interests in order to pay their mortgages, thus remaining farmers. No one else is offering. It was from them that I learned the fossil fuel industry has fed its workforce a diet of persecution stories and anger sprinkled liberally through with denial. I learned that this denial isn’t real, and fear and anxiety crept into most testimonials. It was nearly tangible. It was from them that I learned they already know their industry is dying, and that some of them are fine with that, but that they are all uncertain what the future holds.
And it was from them that I learned about the vast diversity of industries and workforces that anticipate major shifts in their near futures due to both climate change in fact and climate regulation in action. Coalition members, testimony givers, and lobbyists all shared some knowledge that change is imminent, and represented a broad spectrum: railroad unions and trucking interests, farmers and ranchers, faith-based organizations, and indigenous and native communities were all speaking out in new ways.
One of the unmentioned truths of life in Colorado is that we are an oil and gas state, regardless of the image we like project of being environmentally aware. Significant changes to the fossil fuel industry WILL ripple impacts throughout the state. That is no hyperbole. Truckers who haul gas, rail workers moving coal, field workers tending pipelines and wells –all will experience loss as their jobs disappear. Entire towns’ economies will falter if dependent on oil and gas for survival. But all of it WILL disappear –all these jobs will shift by necessity. As well they must, for our (ab)use of fossil fuels is why the world is on fire.
The oil and gas industry likes to say that they built the Denver skyline. And in part, that is true. But thousands were displaced by this development. The oil and gas industry likes to say it employs a significant part of the state’s workforce, but these are the men who die in refinery fires and the women who daily breathe toxic fumes in extraction fields. And yet… even the oil and gas industry is a part of the picture. I am planning on at least a couple of these companies to be around to clean up the messes and manage the ongoing waste issues. As we move towards hemp fuel and plastics, wind and solar power generation, and geothermal heating –all possible here as WELL as the fossil based production –everything will change.
As things have been going, the backlash against these changes could be huge, the propaganda virulent and fear based, the divisions fed by those who intend to fight the movement towards fossil independence. We intend to change how we power our lives, for what we have been doing is toxic, unsustainable, exploitative and has in truth only benefited few. Fossil fuel industry subsidies and profits reveal a picture I won’t paint here, but one I find obscene. We intend to be a place of generative, sustainable work, a region that builds industries to support Earth and all beings.
By deeply listening to each other, we learn. We grow. We adapt. By being present and remaining around the table, by building bigger and different tables, more are heard. HOW to do that? And where is this working? Happening now? My initial responses to those questions are for next week. Tune in. The answers are intimately entangled with the building of these tables, with the coalitions and alliances.