![]() ![]() ![]() This West Roxbury case was set to be Boston’s moment in the spotlight, and it still deserves attention. Not to be dissuaded, Judge Driscoll went ahead and found the defendants “not responsible” for the infractions-“by reason of necessity.” That decision in itself may be unprecedented, but it hardly carries the same weight as a jury’s verdict in a criminal trialĬlimate change is getting its days in court more and more of late, all around the country, with kids suing the federal government, cities suing oil companies, and nonviolent protesters going to trial (and prison). It was highly anticipated among the climate informed-and not simply because the scenario McKibben describes is playing out in Massachusetts right now, with political, corporate, and media powers-that-be, including Red Sox/ Boston Globe owner John Henry’s pipeline-friendly editorial page, promoting the carbon lobby’s fracked-gas con.ĭemonstrators carrying out a “die-in” in the natural gas pipeline trench. On Tuesday, a climate civil-disobedience trial centered on resistance to one such fracked-gas pipeline, the West Roxbury Lateral, was all set to begin in Boston. “No one wants to hear this,” he observes, not Republicans or the oil and gas industry, not Democrats (especially the Obama alums now working in the industry)-and not journalists, who “don’t much want to hear about methane because it muddies up the simple story line.” That is, no one wants to hear that the inevitable methane leakage from fracking wells and pipelines, together with the economic displacement of renewables, all but guarantees that gas is no better for the climate than coal-i.e., that it is not a “bridge fuel.” Or about the catastrophic consequences of pretending that it is. “THE IDEA THAT natural gas combats climate change is a sleight of hand,” writes Bill McKibben in a recent essay that pulls no punches. ![]()
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