On Saturday, approximately twenty youth from Oregon’s climate and energy justice movement embarked on a 20-mile bicycle ride through the farmland of Yamhill County, to protest high-carbon liquefied natural gas (LNG) development and meet with landowners whose property and farming businesses are threatened by LNG pipelines.
Building on the success of a similar LNG bike-protest that took place in Oregon’s Washington County one year ago, this year’s “Bike-the-Pipe” event took us along the approximate route of the Oregon LNG and Palomar Pipelines in Yamhill County. If energy giants get their way these two LNG pipelines will cut right through some of Oregon’s most valuable farm and forestland, jeopardizing the businesses of countless landowners en route to delivering a carbon-intensive fuel to the California gas market.
Saturday morning I joined a carpool of climate activists from Portland who made the trip to McMinnville, Oregon to meet up with the Linfield College students who organized this year’s Bike-the-Pipe. After a discussion of the negative impacts proposed LNG projects would have on the local economy and Oregon’s clean energy future, we climbed aboard our bicycles and set out to see the area threatened by LNG first-hand.
At our first stop of the day we met and spoke with the owner of one of the nearby farming properties at risk. Listening to community members explain how LNG companies have attempted to condemn their land through eminent domain in order to make way for a corporate project that would increase the western United States’ reliance on dirty fossil fuels, it was hard not to be appalled by the lack of respect these corporations have shown local landowners, and the impact LNG would have on the fertile farmland that’s so essential for supplying Oregonians with locally grown, low-carbon food. The story of Oregon landowners who are standing up to LNG is one of the most inspiring examples of community resistance I have ever encountered.
In contrast to the stereotype that environmentalism is the concern of urban city-dwellers, the fight against LNG began in Oregon’s rural communities and spread to urban areas where climate activists took up the cry to defend Oregon from LNG. More and more the fight against LNG is becoming a struggle that bridges traditional political divides, and brings people together who would not normally have a reason to interact. On Saturday it became apparent that in Yamhill County, as in so many other parts of the state, college students and long-time farming families have begun a dialogue that might not have come about any other way, initiating an ongoing conversation about land stewardship, our region’s energy future, and the need to put the welfare of local communities above the wants of corporate profiteers.
The crowning point in McMinnville’s Bike-the-Pipe event was when the group of bicyclists stopped at Dayton High School to meet with landowners, Yamhill County Commissioner Mary Stern, and Candidate for the County Commission Kris Bledsoe to discuss how Yamhill County can continue to fight LNG proposals. In the wake of the Yamhill County Commission passing a unanimous resolution opposing LNG pipelines, most participants in the gathering seemed hopeful that local government can continue to play a constructive role in building pressure against LNG.
Equally important however is the continued involvement of students and other young people in this process, for it is the power of the largely youth-driven climate movement that’s given new momentum to efforts to stop LNG. Hearing from community members who remembered witnessing the birth of the modern environmental movement in the late 1960s, it was inspiring to realize that young people across the country are finally bringing to maturation a political force that has been decades in the making. Linfield College students described how they hope to use their campus’ power as a natural gas customer and investor to tip the balance away from LNG, while a student from McMinnville High School described her efforts to take the struggle for a clean energy future to the area’s pre-college youth.
Across the state of Oregon, young people are reaching out their communities and starting conversations with residents of their college towns whom they otherwise might never have met. Events like Saturday’s Bike-the-Pipe serve not only to draw media and political attention to this issue, but to bring the diverse coalition opposing LNG projects closer together. The youth of Oregon have spoken loud and clear: We want a future powered by renewable energy, not LNG.
Filed under: Act Locally, agriculture, Cascade Region, Climate Justice, global warming, Impacted Communities, LNG, Natural Gas 
