No War for Oil! Keep it in the Soil!
No War for Oil! Keep it in the Soil!
Speech given by Meredith Aby-Keirstead, a member of the Anti-War Committee, on March 29, 2022 at a Climate Justice Committee protest in front of the Army Corps of Engineers in St. Paul
The Anti-War Committee is proud to stand here with the Climate Justice Committee to demand an end to Line 3. It is outrageous that the Walz and Biden administrations have allowed Line 3 to be completed and that they haven’t shut it down when – as we predicted – we already have evidence that it is leaking and polluting the Mississippi River and our aquifers. We need to shut down Line 3, Line 5 and move our country away from fossil fuels – for the health of our planet and for the future of our children!
We have participated in several CJC events and we normally talk about the role the US Dept of Defense plays as being the largest institutional consumer of fossil fuels in the world – and the largest institutional emitter. But today because of the conflict in Ukraine I want to focus on the role of wars for oil.
The Anti-War Committee was formed in 1998 during the war on Iraq which was the first war for oil I ever organized against. Repeatedly the US goes to war over pipelines and oil not just here in Northern MN but abroad. While the US would like to focus the recent conflict in Ukraine as a human rights tragedy – which it is – they are leaving out how the US instigated the conflict, how it is fueling the conflict and what role oil is playing again in causing war.
Russia is a major oil and natural gas exporter and this was helping them rival the US as an imperialist power in Europe, the Middle East and Latin America. In the lead-up to this conflict, tensions between the US and Russia escalated as the US attempted to block the completion of Russia’s Nordstream 2 pipeline to keep Europe dependent on US energy and energy sources the US controls. The conflict in Ukraine benefits US oil exporters as US sanctions on Russia attempt to force their competitor out of the market and gas prices skyrocket in the US and Europe.
We cannot afford another war for oil that is harming humans and the planet. We’re digging our own graves by continuing to guzzle down this finite resource. Ironically, wars for oil are one of the worst uses for the stuff, because we expend incredible amounts of oil just to secure future access. By moving the US away from oil we will make the World a safer place. So we join with you today in demanding an end to Line 3 and to an end to the US dependence on fossil fuels.
No wars for oil! Keep it in the soil!
