Blockadia Rising: Rowdy Greens, Direct Action and the Keystone XL Pipeline

TransCanada’s proposed Keystone XL pipeline has encountered opposition from Indigenous peoples, landowners, and environmental activists across North America. Cropping up wherever extractive projects such as hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and tar sands expansion are found, Blockadia (Klein in This changes everything: Capitalism vs. the climate, Simon and Schuster, New York, 2014) is a roving, transnational conflict zone that has become host to the showdown between environmental activists and the fossil fuel industry. Utilizing increasingly confrontational direct action tactics such as marches, mass arrests, lockdowns and blockades, “rowdy greens” such as 350.org are seeking to address climate change by taking to the streets, while other groups such as Tars Sands Blockade take to the trees to obstruct oil sands infrastructure projects. With the battle over Keystone XL still undecided, President Obama is faced with a crucial decision: approve the pipeline and allow further state facilitation of corporate crime within the fossil fuel industry, or reject the project and reaffirm the vital role of mass social movements in creating change.