When the movement of oil trains emerged as a major controversy in the region, it wasn’t the first rodeo for many of the Northwest environmental activists who joined the fight.
Plenty were already involved in the campaigns against coal and natural gas, which are still very much alive — if perhaps overshadowed in Vancouver — along with the oil effort. Opponents have turned out by the hundreds to speak against plans to expand the presence of commodities they say pose a grave threat to public health and safety.
The fight over fossil fuels is the latest in a long history of environmental battles in the Northwest. One of the most transformative in recent memory was the so-called “timber wars” of the early 1990s, which dramatically reshaped forest policy and logging in Oregon and Washington. One of the icons of that era, the northern spotted owl, remains a key factor in conservation efforts today.
But the recent debate over fossil fuels, particularly coal and oil, has resonated with people in a way the timber wars never did, some activists say. That’s partly because of visibility, said Beth Doglio, campaign director for Climate Solutions in Olympia. Residents can plainly see coal and oil trains rumbling directly through urban areas across the state, she said. They’ve seen stories of derailments and disasters elsewhere, then watched the same rail cars pass by homes, parks and rivers, she said.
“It’s a very real thing, and it’s very tangible,” Doglio said. “A spotted owl is an owl. It’s not your children that could be harmed.”
The fossil fuel controversy has escalated in recent years as a spate of new coal and oil terminals have been proposed across the state. The issue took on an even higher profile in Vancouver last year, when Tesoro Corp. and Savage Companies floated plans for an oil terminal capable of handling an average of 360,000 barrels of crude per day. The oil-by-rail operation would be the largest such facility in the region, by far.
Many of the players in the current fossil fuel fight weren’t around for the environmental battles of yesteryear. But some of the communities in the cross hairs are no stranger to controversy. Doglio noted Grays Harbor — the site of three proposed oil terminals — as an example. “That was ground zero in the timber wars, and in the spotted owl battle,” she said of the community on the southern Olympic Peninsula.
The timber wars culminated in the Northwest Forest Plan of 1994. Large swaths of forestland became off-limits to logging, and timber harvests by then had plummeted from their earlier peaks.
Some activists during that time used acts of civil disobedience for their cause, such as spiking trees or chaining themselves to them. Today’s activists have made headlines by occasionally attempting to block oil trains on railroad tracks, among other actions. Last year, three demonstrators in a large protest rappelled off the Interstate 5 Bridge and unfurled a banner that read “COAL OIL GAS/NONE SHALL PASS.”
In any debate, it can be tempting to boil positions down to something that’s overly simplistic, said Glenn Lamb, executive director of Vancouver-based Columbia Land Trust. But such an approach doesn’t always reflect the complexity of those issues, he said.
Lamb has watched Northwest environmental battles play out for decades as an observer. His organization, the land trust, is a nonprofit conservation and stewardship organization that hasn’t been involved in any particular campaign.
Today’s activists also operate in a very different technological world than in the past. Email and social media connect people like never before, which has helped drive huge numbers of people to the fight in one way or another. The review of proposed coal export terminals has drawn tens of thousands of comments. Just this week, more than 700 people packed a hearing in Olympia on the subject of oil transport safety. Gatherings in Vancouver have seen similar numbers.
“This is the perfect storm to produce massive democratic opposition to fossil fuel exports,” said Lauren Goldberg, staff attorney with environmental group Columbia Riverkeeper.
There’s also a feeling that the Northwest is a key tipping point, Goldberg said. Climate change figures prominently into the arguments of fossil fuel opponents. The fight has put Washington and Vancouver in the national spotlight, and the decisions made here will reverberate far beyond Washington and Oregon, Goldberg said.
“We are the thin green line here in the Northwest,” she said.
Brush Prairie activist Stephen Hulick sees stopping coal and oil terminals themselves as a bigger priority than worrying about how the commodities are transported, he said. Hulick said he’s seen plenty of environmental controversies during his decades of activism, but remains focused on the Beyond Coal and Oil campaign he’s now involved in.
The timber wars pitted environmental activists against a logging industry tied to many families and communities in the region. Today’s fossil fuel clash involves a wide range of communities and companies promising new jobs and other economic benefits.
The settings are very different. But the driving force behind the battles of today and the past may not be so different, Lamb said.
“In their heart, I feel like a lot of the people want to protect this place,” Lamb said. “It feels like the interests then and now are coming from that place of loving the Northwest.”
