Field Journal #4 - 17 Jul 2008
by Anthony Marr
founder of HOPE
lead campaigner of GEO
“road warrior” of CARE-1, CARE-2, CARE-3, CARE-4, CARE-5 & CARE-6
My last entry was written in Missoula, and now I’m in Janesville,
Wisconsin, at the home of Marv and Betty Burns, parents of WI activist
Amy Burns, with Montana, North Dakota and Minnesota already behind me. I
arrived at 1:30 last night, from Minneapolis where I started driving
around 9 pm. Betty had left the back door open for me and I just walked
in and went straight to my assigned bedroom, which was spic-and-span as
always, with a stack of fresh towels on the bed, and the faint
night-lights left on. One of her two cats, Libby, was there to welcome
me. As I had half-expected, I found the proof copy of “Homo Sapiens!
SAVE YOUR EARTH” lying in the center of the bed facing the heavens. The
first thing I did in the room after laying down my laptop and toiletry
kit was to pick up the book and hold it in my hands. It was a magical
sensation. Of course I’ve held thousands of books in my hands since I
began reading some 60 years ago, but I’ve had this magical feeling
holding a book only once before, and that was when I picked up a copy of
my first book “Omni-Science and the Human Destiny” for the first time
back in 2003. I’ve never had a child of my own, but it must be what a
mother and father would experience when they hold their new-born child
in their arms.
While I was still in Missoula, I had a few phone conversations with
Lynn Wolff, the Organizer of the Dakota Resource Council head-quartered
in North Dakota, which culminated in him making a series of phone calls
to his colleagues in Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota and
Iowa. These states have something in common. They all have separate
pipelines planned or already partly constructed, all stemming from
Canada of course – the Montana one(s) coming straight down from Alberta,
the Dakota one(s) down from Saskatchewan and the Minnesota one(s) down
from Manitoba, all ultimately originating from the Alberta tar sands.
Lynn’s efforts led to a series of meetings on my way east.
I left Missoula on July 14, Monday, around 8:30 a.m.. My first stop
was Billings MT, driving time over 4 hours. The person to meet there was
Mike Scott of the Northern Plains Resource Council, whose office is
situated in a “green” building called Home On The Range, of some local
fame, time set for around 1 pm. His group is a soft one in my view, and
though they are aware of the pipeline situation, are hesitant to do
hardcore battle against their government, and does not seem to look
beyond the U.S. border to the root cause in Canada and do battle there.
They appear to work only with the private landowners whose land would or
might be impacted negatively by the pipeline. Their pipeline is in the
public consultation process and they seem to be concentrating on this
front. I asked him if any pipeline has been stopped by this process, and
he said no. When I asked him to have their organization join the
Coalition to Abolish the Tar Sands (CATS) to cut the pipelines upstream,
he quickly responded with, “I’ll have to run this past the board.” When
I asked him to come to Billings Gazette newspaper office with me, he
said a very quick no, adding that currently, their organization had no
hard position or strategy to present to media on the pipelines issue.
I called up the Billings Gazette myself, and talked to the editor
Steve Prosinski. He was friendly enough, but said that he had no
reporter available that day, but asked me if I would be in town the next
day. Unfortunately, I had to go to Bismarck ND for further meetings the
next morning. Anyway, without Mike’s cooperation to provide a local
angle for a local newspaper story, chances are that there would be no
story for the Gazette. I could check with Prosinski by phone when I have
time, but a phone-call is likely all it’s worth. While walking towards
my car on the way out, I noticed, to my unpleasant surprise, that my
rear right tire had run itself almost bald since the start of the trip,
and the left one wasn’t much better, neither had much tread left before
the tour in the first place. It would be downright dangerous to run on
them much farther, especially if it got wet, which thankful it didn’t,
but no time to change tire tires for now, at least not till I get to
Wisconsin. Meanwhile I reduced my speed from 125 kph (80+ mph) to about
115 kph (75 mph, which is the standard interstate speed limit in these
parts).
By the time I arrived in Bismarck, it was around 9 pm. I got a room
at the Motel-6 right off the highway, room cost about $50. At one point,
after loading my laptop, etc. into the room, I went out to my car one
more time, and found that I’d left the key-card in the room. So I went
back to the office to get a spare key-card. In there was a young man at
the counter getting a room, and behind him in the small lobby was an
older gentleman around 55, with salt-and-pepper hair and beard, waiting
to get a room. While the young man was about done, I’d had a light chat
with the older gentleman, and told him with some embarrassment that I
had locked myself our of my room. He offered for me to go before him,
since to get a spare key-card would take much less time than to book a
room. I thanked him, got I spare key-card, said good-night and left. The
next morning, I went to my 9 a.m. meeting with Mark Trechock, head of
the Dakota Resource Council and Lynn Wolff’s boss, and Mary Mitchell and
Wayde Schaefer, both of the Sierra Club, at the Mr. Delicious cafe. We
had a little initial laugh when Mark recognized me as the guy who locked
himself out of his room, and I him as the courteous gentleman who let me
go first. In the meeting, it was Mark who talked the most, and most
freely. All three had pretty well accepted that the pipeline through
North Dakota was a done deal, but its extension into South Dakota was
still being fought. Upon being asked to join CATS, Mark had no trouble
saying yes, whereas the Sierra Club people again said they had to
consult their board. Before ending the meeting, one of them mentioned an
anti-tar-sands group in Montevideo MN, called Clean Up the River
Environment (CURE). Finally, there was a group not just about the
pipelines, but about the tar sands itself, for me to talk to.
While in Bismarck, I also had a long phone conversation with
Stephanie Trask of Dakota Rural Action, South Dakota, and they are
tackling the pipeline that is now coming down from North Dakota, but
again, I feel that their method is a little on the soft side, and
concentrating only on the local property owners impacted by the
pipeline..
Before leaving Bismarck, I called the newsroom of the Bismarck
Tribune. I’ve been forewarned that all North Dakota politicians and
media and average Joe either pay no attention to global warming or
think/say that global warming is a hoax, and are generally in favor of
the pipeline. The editor John Irby, on the other hand, was friendly, and
passed me on to a reporter-columnist named Crystal Reid. Crystal invited
me to go into their office for the interview. The interview lasted a
good half an hour and it went well, but even before it began, Crystal
had forewarned that there were no promises.
After the interview, I drove on to Fargo, ND, to meet with Lynn
Wolff. We met in a restaurant parking lot around 8 pm, and shared a late
bite. He looked exactly like the image I had formed of him based on his
voice on the phone – late 60s, slightly heavy-set, and very affable. He
and I liked each other on sight, and had a nice dinner together, during
which he called his wife to look up CURE for me, and went on to make an
appointment for me with CURE for first thing the next morning, while I
called the Fargo Forum daily newspaper, and had a 20 minutes chat with
the night editor, who sounded interest, but again no promises.
After saying goodbye to Lynn around 9 pm, I drove on towards
Montevideo, but soon ended up on a slow 2-lane highway, which, just past
midnight, brought me to a town called Morris about 40 miles from
Montevideo. Along the way, all gas stations were closed, and all small
towns and villages seemed asleep. Morris was the first place with a
motel, and there was no guarantee there would be anything in Montevideo
when I got there. So, I went to a road side Super8 in Morris, which
proved to be full, but the counter lady made a phone call for me, and
found me a room in a nearby motel called the Prairie Inn for $69; no
choice but to take it, but that would be about the last motel I would
need for much of the rest of the trip.
The next morning, I spent some time on the internet before driving
the 40 miles from Morris to Montevideo, and got there in time for lunch,
CURE’s treat. The executive director is named Patrick J. Moore. When I
called CURE to inform them of my ETA, I asked the front lady if Patrick
had come from British Columbia, to make sure he was not the infamous Dr.
Patrick Moore who had turned from being a co-founder of Greenpeace to a
logging advocate. Good thing he was not. Patrick, in his late 50s, with
bushy grey hair, invited his colleague Duane Ninneman, 40s, bald but
with a full dark beard, titled Long Range Development Consultant, to
join us for lunch. I liked them both, and they are both well versed with
the tar sands. In fact, while in their offices, Moore gave me a copy of
“STUPID TO THE LAST DROP – how Alberta is bringing environmental
Armageddon” by William Marsden, to keep. When I asked them to have CURE
join CATS, Moore said without hesitation, “Absolutely.” I asked him,
“You don’t have to run it past your board?” He said, “I can make
unilateral decisions for CURE.” So that’s a done deal.
Moore also lined me up with an environmental attorney for Plains
Justice in Minneapolis named Paul Blackburn and his spouse Kelly Fuller,
environmental advocate. After the lunch with Patrick and Duane, I drove
on to Minneapolis and arrived at Paul and Kelly’s by 7 pm. We chatted
until about 9 pm, and I punched into my GPS the address as Marv and
Betty Burns in Janesville, Wisconsin, where I will be staying for the
next several days, ETA 1:30 in the morning. I finally got to bed by
about 2 a.m...
This morning, I woke up around 8 Central time, and read in bed for a
while before getting up for a shower. I started on STUPID TO THE LAST
DROP. Its Prologue outlined how the oil industry considered used
low-yield atomic bombs to extract crude oil from the tar sands. And its
Chapter 1, titled Highway to Heaven, started as follows:
Dr. John O’Conner, the coroner for Fort McMurray, had warned
me: “Never drive Highway 63 south or north on Thursdays…Sundays or
Mondays.”
“Why’s that?”
“Shift changes at the oil sands. The traffic is crazy. Your
heart is in your mouth.”
Then, he told me about the last accident he investigated: it’s
winter and dark. A logging truck swerves to avoid a pickup truck parked
on the shoulder but with one wheel on the road, its driver fast asleep.
Logs fly off the flatbed, piercing the windshield of an oncoming van.
Two workers died, one screaming for an hour before his heart finally
gave out…
Let me add to not drive on Hwy 63 on Saturdays either, the day I
almost had the head-on collision while passing two vehicles.
Now, it’s July 17, Thursday, afternoon. At 6:30 pm, I’ll be giving a
talk in a park in Beloit WI. Last time I got a newspaper article out of
it. Let’s hope for a repeat performance this time.
More later.
Return to
Care Tour 6
Since 