The Magazine of The Sierra Club
Six Treats to Counter the Trump Administration’s Shameless Tricks
Happy Halloween from Sierra
There are plenty of ways for an environmentalist to fete All Hallows’ Eve. You could dress up as an extinct honeybee, an endangered monk seal, or the ghost of the Clean Power Plan. You could bob for heritage apples. Listen to the weather report by candlelight and pretend it’s a spooky story. Summon the spirits of your heroes by staring into the bathroom mirror and repeating John Muir’s or Rachel Carson’s name five times.
Or, you could savor some all-too-rare actual treats from the news cycle. We here at Sierra know they’re hard to come by these days, so we hope the following stories—detailing ways in which activists, judges, businesses, and citizens are combatting the Trump administration’s ongoing assault of awful tricks—help put you in a festive mood. We also hope you join us in fighting to keep those zombies’ polluting and planet-frying ghoulishness at bay—not just on Halloween but also after the sugar rush fades and the broomsticks reassume their normal tasks. For now, treat yourself to a tall glass of your preferred poison and bask in the spookily good news.
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If there’s anything worse than candy corn, it might be legal trickery. Last year, a Canadian logging company called Resolute Forest Products invoked federal racketeering laws in an attempt to sue Greenpeace and another environmental group, Stand.earth, for running a “criminal enterprise” through their environmental campaigns. Resolute claimed the groups were conspiring to defame the company, extort its customers, and defraud the groups’ donors. Legal and environmental experts have described this legal tactic as a new and particularly dangerous example of corporations and wealthy individuals attempting to silence opponents. Case in point? In August, Energy Transfer Partners—that’s the company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline—levied another, similar suit against Greenpeace and other environmental groups.
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Earlier this month, a California judge ruled that Resolute failed to meet numerous standards for its claims (for instance, that Greenpeace was defaming the company by calling it a “forest destroyer”). The judge noted that Resolute had taken “an overly literal approach to obviously overemphatic speech” and failed to provide enough evidence of the alleged fraud to sue the groups under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, a federal conspiracy law that went into effect in 1970 to ensnare mobsters. To sweeten the deal, the judge said the defendants were entitled to recover a portion of their attorneys’ fees, too. The ultimate treat? Legal experts are saying this decision indicates that Energy Transfer’s case against DAPL protesters will probably be thrown out, too. Talk about a vindicating legal precedent.
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Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico on September 20, killing nearly 50 people and devastating the entire island. For 40 days and counting, the majority of citizens have been without power, and many are without clean water or food. President Trump has taken heat for his handling of the response to the disaster, notably for tweeting that Washington could not keep aiding Puerto Rico “forever,” and picking fights with the San Juan mayor. In a moment the mayor called “terrible and abominable,” the 45th U.S. president, during a four-hour visit to the ravaged island earlier this month, was filmed at a supply distribution point tossing rolls of paper towels into a crowd in the manner of someone hawking merch at a sports event.
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In response, House Democrat Luis Gutiérrez, originally of Puerto Rico and now representing Illinois, brought a pack a paper towels to the House floor last week as he blasted the Trump administration’s response to the damage caused by Hurricane Maria.
And in response to the humanitarian crisis on the island, the Sierra Club shipped 1,000 solar lanterns to partner organization Casa Pueblo Puerto Rico—and has continued since then to dispatch more lamps and water filters. Club volunteers also delivered meals in Puerto Rico alongside partners from Centro Para la Conservacion del Paisaje. These and other community-led efforts are possible thanks to the more than $1.3 million contributed by almost 20,000 Sierra Club members and supporters during fundraising efforts following Hurricane Maria. Unlike Trump, our members seem well aware that when your home has been devastated, food, power and light are more than treats—they’re non-negotiable necessities.
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Taxpayers felt so tricked by the revelations that Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price had spent close to $1 million on private flights in just a few months that last month Price was forced to resign. But he’s hardly Washington’s sole big spender—EPA administrator Scott Pruitt and a number of other cabinet officials are also being scrutinized for their travel spending. In fact, two of environmentalists’ greatest foes, Pruitt and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, are now under investigation for their spending habits. Remember when Pruitt spent almost $25,000 worth of taxpayer dollars to build a private-security phone booth to conduct his questionable business dealings?
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Lest anyone try to tell you that environmentalists lack a sense of humor, the Sierra Club created a satirical campaign advertising a brand-new way to fly: Pruitt-Zinke Airlines (PZ Air). Check out the below commercial for an airline where flying is “easy-peazy—because the taxpayer foots the bill!” The friendly flight attendant goes on to explain that all items, “including piles of fossil fuel industry cash,” should be stored in the overhead compartment, and that the only way to exit the aircraft is to “resign immediately.” In the same spirit, Friends of the Earth recently flew a single-engine plane over the Texas Oil and Gas Association conference, trailing a banner reading “Pruitt, #PayItBack.” The demonstration was intended to pressure the EPA chief to return to taxpayers the $58,000 he’s spent on private chartered flights since Trump appointed him.
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Don’t you feel tricked when your bank uses your money to fund oil pipelines? The issue came to a head last year with the reveal that dozens of financial institutions (Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, and HSBC, to name a few) were providing capital for the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Since then, calls to defund the pipeline led individuals to divest millions from banks extending credit to the project. And ever since the Standing Rock Sioux tribe passed a resolution ending business with Wells Fargo in October 2016, more than a dozen cities have taken steps toward moving their money out of Wall Street, affecting dozens of billions of dollars in annual cash flow.
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The ultimate treat came last Monday, when the indigenous-led divestment campaign Mazaska Talks kicked off a global, three-day protest against major banks including Wells Fargo, Chase, and Bank of America: #DivestTheGlobe. Mazaska activists demonstrated at the annual meeting of the Equator Principles in Sao Paulo, Brazil, which drew 92 banks. (Mazaska is the Lakota term for “shiny metal,” as in money.) Organizers from groups including the Sierra Club and 350.org held simultaneous protests in dozens of cities across the U.S. and Canada, as well as Africa, Europe, and Asia. These events were designed to galvanize people to divest their households, institutions, and cities from banks that finance projects such as tar sands pipelines—including Kinder-Morgan’s Trans-Mountain, Trans-Canada’s Keystone XL, and Enbridge’s Line 3.
As was the case with the Dakota Access Pipeline, those oil and gas projects lack consent from impacted indigenous nations, in addition to posing threats to affected areas’ water quality. Many university students protested their schools’ continued use of Wells Fargo. At Reed College in Portland, Oregon, about 25 students camped out in the administration building for the full three-day event. As a result, Reed administrators vowed to discuss divestment at next month’s board meeting. And seven people were arrested in Seattle, where activists briefly shut down Bank of America, Chase, and Wells Fargo branches.
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Earlier this month, the Trump administration released a list of hard-line immigration principles that threaten to derail a congressional deal to allow thousands of young, undocumented immigrants (recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program, also known as “dreamers”) to remain in the country legally. The administration’s related wish list includes curbs on federal grants to “sanctuary cities” and of course the funding of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Among other environmental and human travesties, Trump’s proposed behemoth threatens Native American sovereignty, blights pristine natural areas, and stands to fragment vital wildlife habitat (for instance, it could thwart the Southwest’s exciting resurgence of jaguars). In short, it’s a trick with potential for exponentially ghastly ripple effects.
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Which is what makes the following treat so sweet: On October 8, an elusive French street artist who goes by “JR” installed a colossal dining table straddling the border of Tecate, California, and Tecate, Mexico, so as to literally connect citizens of the two countries for one giant, shared meal. Musicians from the same band positioned themselves on both sides of the fence, and atop the long table, JR positioned an image representing the eyes of a dreamer—one located on each side of the border. JR made headlines last month for another border statement—an enormous scaffolding of a real-life one-year-old boy, Kikito, peering over the wall, which symbolized the innocence of a child unwittingly stuck in the throes of a national debate. JR invited citizens of both Mexico and the U.S. to his picnic, intended to celebrate the last day of his Kikito installation, via social media. In a tweet, JR said, “GIANT PICNIC at the border today in Tecate . . . around the eye of a dream . . . we forgot the wall for a minute.”
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This last trick you’ll surely recall—in June, a very fossil fuel industry-friendly Trump announced he would pull the U.S. out of the 195-nation 2015 Paris climate accord, citing his doubts about the mainstream findings that climate change will cause more floods, droughts, wildfires, heat waves, and rising sea levels. No comment on that reasoning.
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According to a survey released this month from the London-based nonprofit CDP, which tracks companies’ environmental performance, U.S. companies are still among the most ambitious in setting targets to combat global warming. America-based firms made up of a fifth of those in CDP’s “A List” of 159 companies implementing ambitious climate policies. This made U.S. firms the biggest single national group. U.S. companies matched their 2016 accomplishments—even though CDP’s criteria for A-list inclusion gets tougher each year.
Keep pushing back against the zombies’ trickery, and we’ll keep finding reasons for you to treat yourselves. In the meantime, please enjoy a happy Halloween.
