The People in the Path of Keystone XL build Renewable Energy Barn to block TransCanada

Sometimes creating change means taking your own steps, to make the change yourself. A group of Nebraska farmers decided that they could block the Keystone XL pipeline simply by building a barn full of renewable energy technology right on its path.

The video is full of homespun wisdom, speaking from a deep connection to the land and surviving through tough times.

The issue here is whether an oil company should be allowed to “destroy” a long swath of land, just so the oil company can continue feeding the greedy appetite for fossil fuel products like gasoline or plastics. This group of Nebraskans are shown as uniting in opposition to the thought that TransCanada is out to destroy their land, destroying their way of life.

I suppose their reasoning is that – first, building the pipeline means industrialization of the land along the route of the pipeline. However, there are already dozens of pipelines running all over the country and the people in the path of those pipelines didn’t rise up in protest. (that I know of) In any case those existing pipelines also didn’t get in the way of farmers doing their farming thing. The other concern is going to be – what happens when (not if) the pipeline breaks and floods their land with toxic goo. Pipelines do break, and TransCanada has seen a few pipeline breaks themselves.

For me the bigger issue about the specific pipeline is that it continues the path of the death spiral that is the fossil fuel industry. Fossil fuels, because they’re a limited supply, and are rooted in dead material, simply are a death pattern. Living fuels like wind, sunshine, biofuels, those are what we need to focus our collective energy on. Those fuels follow a living pattern.

I really like the concept of what they’ve done. This is a typical barn but you see the solar panels on the roof, the mast of the wind turbine to the left, and flags out front.

Not only is it an attempt to blockade the Keystone XL pipeline, this is a potent symbol of the sort of energy we need to embrace.

Finally, I like this – “The People in the Path” – while there are people across the US protesting against the Keystone XL pipeline, these are the people who will be directly affected.

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About David Herron

David Herron is a writer and software engineer living in Silicon Valley. He primarily writes about electric vehicles, clean energy systems, climate change, peak oil and related issues. When not writing he indulges in software projects and is sometimes employed as a software engineer. David has written for sites like PlugInCars and TorqueNews, and worked for companies like Sun Microsystems and Yahoo.