Well I’m sore, after finishing about 15 miles of the People Over Pipelines march; but I’m soft, spending the night at home. Some of our hardiest marchers have walked the full 43 miles, and are spending the night in tents at the State House.
You can read Miguel Otárola’s report in the Globe here. A great lede:
After marching 43 miles from Medway to the steps of the State House, 69-year-old David Klafter on Sunday said there were times when he would have loved to go home and rest his feet.
But the toll it took on his body in the past four days, he said, is nothing compared to what future generations may feel from the effects of climate change.
So together with members of grassroots climate groups, he marched to protest the construction of natural gas pipeline projects in Massachusetts.
The pipeline is simply the local manifestation of the challenges the climate movement has to face head on. In a sense, we are fortunate to have a very local foe. This is something tangible — and expensive — that we can fight. And the very locality makes the issue immediate to many folks who might not otherwise become activated: They don’t like climate change, and they sure as hell don’t want inflammable climate juice running through their yards. Think globally, act locally indeed.
Tomorrow (Monday) morning at 9:30am, we start the work of lobbying our legislators and the Governor – who this week take up the energy bill in conference committee. We are urging them to drop — in fact, prohibit — the pipeline fee.
I’m also going to ask them to up the annual increase in the Renewable Portfolio Standard (a requirement of utilities to buy renewables) from 1% to 2% per year, and for at least 2000MW of offshore wind, and strong gas leak language. Because why not? We should be running as fast as possible away from fossil fuels, and with technology and common-sense efficiency, we’ve actually got a way to do it.