A Resister’s Guide

By Michael Jessen

“Government was intended to suppress injustice, but its effect has been to embody and perpetuate it.” – William Godwin

Like Henry David Thoreau, I heartily agree with the motto – “That government is best which governs least”.

When one considers the long list of problems that our governments have tried unsuccessfully to resolve, it is easy to formulate the opinion that governments are motivated more by self interest than principle.

In his opus Enquiry Concerning Political Justice – published in 1793 – William Godwin recognized that the shortcomings of government stemmed from the failure to see the intimate connection between ethics and politics.

Our governments should be bastions of morality, fostering continuous improvement in communities and nations. With input and assistance from their constituents, governments should be constantly trying to make public life better.

“Public life,” José Ortega y Gassetwrote in The Revolt of the Masses, “is not solely political, but equally, and even primarily, intellectual, moral, economic, religious; it comprises all our collective habits, including our fashions both of dress and of amusement.”

Since the time of the ancient Greeks 2,500 years ago, people have been debating the use and abuse of state power and the exact nature of the social contract that exists between a citizen and her/his government.

When global temperatures are soaring above the 20^th century average, actions taken (or not taken) by governments have assumed a life or death quality.

Today we are still debating what inalienable rights the individual has and what responsibilities a government has to its citizens. More and more the debates are occurring in the courtroom.

In June 2015, a court in The Hague ordered the Dutch government to cut its greenhouse emissions by at least 25% within five years, ruling that government plans to cut emissions by just 14 to17% compared to 1990 levels by 2020 were unlawful, given the scale of the threat posed by climate change.

“This is the first a time a court has determined that states have an independent legal obligation towards their citizens,” said Dennis van Berkel, legal counsel for Urgenda, the group that brought the suit. “Before this judgement, the only legal obligations on states were those they agreed among themselves in international treaties.”

“The right and the physical power of the people to resist injustice, are really the only securities that any people ever can have for their liberties. Practically no government knows any limit to its power but the endurance of the people.”                                                    – Lysander Spooner

Now the United States Department of Justice has admitted that rising CO₂ levels have placed the nation on a “costly, insecure, and environmentally dangerous path.”

Since 2015, 21 youth plaintiffs have been leading a landmark campaign in federal court to secure the legal right to a stable climate and healthy atmosphere for the benefit of all present and future generations. Their complaint was filed by a team of lawyers working for the non-profit organization Our Children’s Trust. 

On January 13, the United States filed its Answerto youth plaintiffs’ complaint in Juliana v. United States. In their Answer, the federal defendants make several admissions to their longstandingknowledge of climate change danger and to today’s knowledge on the severity of thoseimpacts.

The defendants admitted the following allegation: “[T]hat for over fifty years some officials and persons employed by the federal government have been aware of a growing body of scientific research concerning the effects of fossil fuel emissions on atmospheric concentrations of CO₂ – including that increased concentrations of atmospheric CO₂ could cause measurable long-lasting changes to the global climate, resulting in an array of severe deleterious effects to human beings, which will worsen over time.”

Julia Olsen, counsel for plaintiffs and executive director of Our Children’s Trust, said the Obama administration was committed to scientific research and disclosing the full dangers of climate change to the American public.

“This answer, made in his final days in office, reflects the stark contrast between the truth of the climate dangers we face and the destructive lies being perpetuated by the incoming Trump Administration,” Olsen added. “At trial, truth will prevail.”

The case is scheduled for trial later this year.

“Any government, that is its own judge of, and determines authoritatively for the people, what are its own powers over the people, is an absolute government of course. It has all the powers that it chooses to exercise. There is no other or at least no more accurate definition of a despotism than this.” -  Lysander Spooner

Only hours after Donald Trump’s inauguration as President, the White House website wiped all mention of climate change from the site and posted his America First Energy Plan in which the Trump Administration vows to “embrace the shale oil and gas revolution” and to revive America’s coal industry.

While the energy plan references “protecting clean air and clean water, conserving our natural habitats, and preserving our natural reserves and resources,” it makes no mention of the CO₂ emissions that will be vastly increased as a result of the plan. 

Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune labelled the plan “a polluter wish list that will make our air and water dirtier, our climate and international relations more unstable, and our kids sicker.” 

Then only days into his term, Trump issued two presidential memoranda reviving the controversial Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines in what critics call his biggest assault yet on our environment and our climate.

The Keystone XL is a 1,179-mile (1,897 km), 36-inch-diameter pipeline proposal by TransCanada Corporation to funnel tar sands oil from Hardisty, Alta. south to Steele City, Neb. With an estimated price tag that may reach $8 to $10 billion, the cost will be shared by TransCanada and oil shippers.

 The Dakota Access Pipeline is a $3.8 billion, 1,172-mile pipeline proposed by Energy Transfer Partners to transport shale oil from the Bakken/Three Forks play in North Dakota to Patoka, Illinois.

The fate of both pipelines has long been symbolic of both Canada’s and America’s energy future as the amount of oil produced from Alberta’s tar sands is expected to double by 2030. Shale oil has turned the U.S. into an oil exporter even though it still imports oil from Canada and OPEC countries.

Last year, about 11,000 protesters camped out near Cannon Ball, North Dakota to support the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe who opposed the pipeline traversing beneath their primary water supply.

"Approving the Kinder Morgan project flies in the face of precautionary, evidence-based decision-making and takes Canada in the wrong direction on climate change."                   – Karen Campbell, Ecojustice lawyer

In Canada, we’ve watched as our federal government has approved the Kinder Morgan and Energy East pipelines, the Site C dam and a liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal on B.C.’s north coast.

Our Federal Court of Appeal showed no mercy January 23^rd when it dismissed a court case filed by the Prophet River and West Moberly First Nations in northeast British Columbia in an attempt to halt Site C construction.

Earlier in January, Premier Christy Clark set a foolhardy precedent when she accepted a financial deal with Kinder Morgan worth as much as $1-billion over the next two decades in return for her blessing the $6.8 billion project – a project that one year ago her government opposed in a brief to the National Energy Board.

 The expansion will triple the capacity of Kinder Morgan’s existing 1,150-kilometre pipeline between Edmonton, Alberta and Burnaby, B.C. and result in about six more tankers a week leaving Vancouver harbour.

A government backgrounder says the company will pay the province between $25 million and $50 million for 20 years, depending on whether or not the pipeline is operating at full capacity on its spot market contracts, for a total payment between $500 million and $1 billion.

It is not a stretch to call this deal extortion or blackmail and Clark was not the only one practising it on this energy file.

Last December, Alberta Premier Rachel Notley traded federal approval of two oil pipelines boosting export capacity and opening Asian markets for the struggling oil industry for her commitment to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s national climate and carbon pricing plan.

“The apology, that is constantly put forth for the injustice of government, viz., that a man must consent to give up some of his rights, in order to have his other rights protected – involves a palpable absurdity, both legally and politically.”                           – Lysander Spooner                               

These Canadian and American government decisions have come at the same time our planet is experiencing atmospheric CO₂ levels not seen in millions of years; sea levels rising at a rate of 3.4 millimetres per year since 1993; animal populations “declining precipitously” and giraffes and 60% of the world’s primates facing extinction; Arctic warming more than 40 degrees Fahrenheit above normal; corals on the world’s reefs dying at an alarming rate; and a massive Antarctic ice sheet ready to break apart.

In 2014, Elizabeth Hanna, a climate change and health researcher with Australian National University, called climate change a “public health emergency” and said global heat deaths had increased 2300% in the past decade.

Since the 1950s, the frequency of weather-related catastrophes, such as windstorms and floods, has increased six-fold. As climate-related risks occur more often and predictably, previously insurable assets are becoming uninsurable, or those already underinsured further compromised.

An analysisby a coalition of the world’s biggest insurers has concluded that the “protection gap” – the difference between the costs of natural disasters and the amount insured – has quadrupled to $100 billion (£79bn) a year since the 1980s.

Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England, warns in the new reportthat: “Over time, the adverse effects of climate change could threaten economic resilience and financial stability [and] insurers are currently at the forefront.”

“The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.” – Henry David Thoreau

Government decisions approving new fossil fuel infrastructure can only be characterized as injustices to the living and the unborn.

They are morally wrong. They must be resisted.

We must stand up against these injustices.

Each of us who recognizes the folly of these decisions must do what we can to oppose them.

Send emails, write letters, sign petitions, join a group, support a political party with sane solutions, march in protest with like-minded individuals, be willing to be arrested.

Resistance is not futile. This is an extreme situation that warrants our opposition.

We are stronger than the government. If not for us, our governments would be instruments of plunder and oppression.

A wall hanging in my office quotes His Holiness Dalai Lama XIV: “Never give up, No matter what is going on around you, Never give up.”

Nothing is ever hopeless unless we let it be.

Michael Jessen is an eco-writer and sustainability consultant living at Longbeach near Balfour, BC. His business Zero Waste Solutions helps individuals, businesses and communities make sustainable choices in day-to-day management and utilization of resources. Michael can be reached by email at