Photo by Dave Parrish Photography
Co-written by Caroline Hansley with Sierra Club and Jessica Sims with Appalachian Voices
July 5th marked one year since we heard some of the best news we’d had in the climate fight in a long time: After years of delays, the $8 billion fracked gas Atlantic Coast Pipeline (ACP) was officially canceled.
The biggest, dirtiest utilities in the country—Duke Energy and Dominion Resources—that were behind this environmental injustice had been stopped, after everyone said they couldn’t be. It’s hard to describe the feelings that came up for us after having fought this pipeline for so long—pure joy, gratitude, exhaustion, and shock were some. Then, inevitably, we thought about what happens next, and where the momentum of this movement will take us.
As organizers, we’ve always said that what really stopped this pipeline was the power of thousands of inspiring, dedicated community members and frontline activists from West Virginia, Virginia, and North Carolina coming together. Black and Indigenous leaders, social justice and environmental groups, scientists, health professionals, geologists, elected officials, lawyers, and other amazing people fighting the Mountain Valley Pipeline who joined in solidarity to help stop the ACP.
Reverend William Barber II said it best: “Today’s victory against the Atlantic Coast Pipeline is testament to the power that exists in frontline communities across our nation. The courageous leadership of impacted community members who refused to bow in the face of overwhelming odds is an inspiration to all Americans.”
Since then, we’ve seen a growing number of investors pulling out of dirty ,dangerous projects. Earlier this year, Annova LNG ditched its plans to build a fracked gas terminal in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas. In June alone, two major victories came: 1) After 13 years, the builders of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline officially announced it will never be built and 2) in the Pacific Northwest, the world’s largest fracked-gas-to-methanol refinery terminated its lease with the Port of Kalama. The ACP’s cancellation should also serve as a clear signal to utilities and investors in other unneeded oil and gas projects like the Mountain Valley Pipeline, Trans Mountain Pipeline and Line 3, that they should walk away from these risky investments.
The achievement would not have been possible without the citizen leadership of Tribal members and Black activists along the pipeline route, especially the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina and residents of Union Hill, Virginia—a historically Black community that was founded by freedmen after the Civil War. Sierra Club and Appalachian Voices organizers worked alongside these leaders and a broad coalition of farmers, landowners, faith-based groups, students, and others to show the project’s stakeholders and investors that pipelines have no place in their communities or on a warming planet.
This unrelenting pressure, along with ballooning costs and numerous legal filings, ultimately sunk the project. In addition to the victory on the ground, this allied movement the larger narrative around pipelines and other fossil fuel projects. We made it clear that racial injustice is deeply intertwined with environmental destruction—and that to solve either, we must fight both.
