Before last November’s arrests, the 300-mile Mountain Valley pipeline project had been stalled for almost two years, thanks to lawsuits, petitions and direct action by climate activists and environmental groups appalled at the risks posed to water sources, virgin forests and the climate.
Despite courts and regulators blocking construction of the MVP, it was resurrected last summer by Joe Biden as part of a backroom deal to appease Democratic senator Joe Manchin, friend of the coal and gas industries. (While Biden claims to be America’s first climate president, he has actually overseen record oil and gas production).
In response, climate organisers in West Virginia and Virginia carried out a wave of nonviolent civil disobedience along the pipeline route – a last-ditch effort to disrupt construction and call on lawmakers to avert the environmental damage that MVP will cause. Wagner was among almost 50 people – teachers, pensioners, farmers and other concerned citizens – arrested on wild charges ranging from trespass and obstruction to conspiracy and abduction.
To understand how this happened, our investigation takes us back to January 2020 when, in West Virginia, a lobbyist representing two influential oil and gas trade associations sent a draft version of legislation to the state’s energy committee. “Draft bill attached”, it said. The bill was introduced less than a fortnight later, and passed that spring despite widespread opposition from local residents and landowners who were forced to allow the pipeline on their property.
In Utah, emails we uncovered showed lawmakers asking several power companies if they should pass a law defining gas as “renewable” so it would “be under less attack”.
Why does this matter?
Since the 2018 Indigenous-led non-violent uprising against the Dakota Access oil pipeline on the Standing Rock Indian reservation, 22 US states have passed critical infrastructure laws that increase penalties for peaceful environmental protesters – which in some cases can lead to hard labour or felony charges with up to 20 years in prison. At least 23 other states have tried or still have anti-protests bills pending.
All these states had existing laws that could be used to prosecute criminal acts such as trespass and property damage, but this new wave of anti-protest laws adds an additional repressive legal tool that corporations and states can wield against legitimate protests. According to some experts, the laws are often so broad that they infringe on fundamental rights ostensibly protected under the US constitution, including the freedom of assembly and speech – arguably the bedrock of a healthy democracy.
“It’s disgusting, it’s deeply un-American, and in the end it won’t stop the transition to a cleaner world, but it will do great damage to good people and organisations in the next few years,” said Bill McKibben, an environmentalist and grassroots organiser who has himself been arrested.
This isn’t just an American problem. As the planet burns and extreme weather from floods and hurricanes to drought and wildfires devastate communities across the world, many governments have responded by cracking down on climate activists trying to raise the alarm, as I reported on with my Guardian colleagues last year.
“Existing legislation is being misused or new legislation is being brought in to criminalise peaceful acts calling for real action to combat climate change. This is unacceptable,” Mary Lawlor, the UN special rapporteur on human rights defenders, told us in our investigation.
Wagner, a committed Catholic who told me that his climate activism is deeply motivated by his faith, served two months in jail and remains on probation – and is also being sued by MVP. But “I don’t regret a single thing,” said Wagner. “Fossil fuels need to be stopped, period.”
Amen to that.
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