Almost every month for the past 10 years, activists with the climate action group Beyond Extreme Energy, or BXE, have attended the monthly meeting of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, to raise concerns about the agency’s rubber-stamping of almost every methane pipeline, compressor station and liquefied natural gas export terminal project that has come before it. At its November meeting, the five commissioners approved the equivalent of nine coal plants’ worth of carbon emissions.
Although the public isn’t allowed to speak at FERC’s so-called public hearings, when people interrupt the proceedings, they’re removed and banned from future meetings. At its Nov. 21 hearing, a broader coalition called Unfrack FERC protested outside the Commission meeting that included activists from Third Act, an organization of elders, and The Grail, a spiritually grounded women’s group. Nine women dressed in sackcloth and ashes, calling themselves Lamenters, walked slowly in a circle across the driveway of the FERC parking garage, wearing signs with stark black lettering proclaiming the climate disasters they are lamenting, such as floods, droughts, biodiversity loss, and hunger.
Four individuals spoke out at the Nov. 21 meeting, including a mother and her daughter Teagan Blackburn and Teya Blackburn-Baker from New York. Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus, who is a member of BXE, asked them why they attended the FERC meeting and their concerns about the climate crisis and the future of our planet. We hear first from 15-year-old Teya.
TEYA BLACKBURN-BAKER: The environment is something I’ve always cared about. I was raised by my parents who taught me at a young age that I should, you know, protect my planet, my home because it takes care of me. So we should take care of it back. But also on a personal level, as someone who’s going to grow up in this world, as this generation, I want to take care of it. And I want to see my children take care of it and grow up in a world where we have all of this beautiful biodiversity and we have all of these changes of seasons and we’re healthy and we’re happy, and I don’t want to destroy the world that I’m gonna give them. So I came down to D.C. I wanna make a difference and I wanna show people that this generation and that younger people care too, and that we care about the world that you’re giving us.
MELINDA TUHUS: When you spoke out at the FERC commissioners’ meeting, you said you were angry and you were terrified. You know, I work with young people, not usually as young as you, but, you know, college age and early 20s. And I’m always afraid to ask them how they feel unless they express to me how they feel. Because I don’t wanna raise anything that is gonna be more painful to them because I’m not gonna be around all that much longer. I mean, no matter how hard I try, I cannot imagine what it’s like to be a 15-year-old, especially with the Trump administration coming in. I mean, I understand why you’re angry. I’d like to hear more about the terrified part.
TEYA BLACKBURN-BAKER: I’m scared and I’m angry that there are so many people who seem to care so little about me and about our home, and who seem so willing to self-sabotage and destroy their home, their planet, just for for profit, for recognition. And so, it’s terrifying that some people seem to be so uneducated that they are willingly killing themselves, killing the environment that sustains them. And, you know, it’s usually not their fault.
MELINDA TUHUS: Teagan, let me ask you, why did you come down and bring your daughter to this meeting in D.C.?
TEAGAN BLACKBURN: Well, I came down after facilitating a meeting for the Grail Climate Action Group that was talking about how to help people who do care about the state of the world’s climate. How do you get more involved? How do you activate? What can you do? How do you educate yourself and others? And so after that weekend in October, I was very inspired to start to take more action because I feel like with climate change, it does seem Grail Climate Action Grouplike, such a big insurmountable problem that many people don’t where to start.
Like, how do I start to care besides recycling or composting? I mean, there’s so many other ways to get involved, but they seem like so insignificant, like these these little tiny pieces of progress that you can make. But what I’ve come to realize as an activist over all these years is I really give some deep thought about how can I make the most change the quickest or how can we as a society solve this problem the quickest?
And the people at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission have so much power for being just five people, making these decisions about you know, how many fossil fuel fuel projects are we gonna renew this year and where are they gonna be located and how are we going to build up the infrastructure to transmit energy from one region to the next or not?
However, they’re not giving enough thought to where the energy is coming from and at what stake, like what is going to be lost if we choose to derive the energy for our grid from fossil fuels instead of from geothermal and wind and hydropower and solar and all these other wonderful up and coming technologies that work with Mother Earth, like with the planet instead of against the planet. And I feel like with going and disrupting the FERC meeting and trying to bring some more attention to the people in the room and to the media, that like, this is where the big change can be taking place. And if we don’t organize more governmental laws and regulations, we need climate mandates like clean energy mandates, because just leaving it up to people to make decisions about what kind of car they buy or how they’re gonna insulate their house or not is not gonna be enough for how much time we have left, which is not much.
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