Kinder Morgan Energy Partners: A “New” Rumpelstiltskin Tries to Cash in

on the Last Gasp of Industrialized Extraction

Wendy Lynne Lee

Originally posted with photographs at The Wrench:http://thewrenchphilosleft.blogspot.com/2013/10/kinder-morgan-energy-partners-new.html

1. The Magical Thinking of Richard Kinder-Stiltskin: Resources

versus Reserves

If ever an extraction corporation epitomized the spirit of

16th century philosopher Francis Bacon, it is surely Kinder

Morgan Energy Partners (KMEP). But this isn’t merely because

their record of fossil fuel transport and export rivals the

company from which KMEP derives its major players—ENRON—for

sheer economic ruthlessness. It’s because—if Deborah Lawrence

Rogers of the Energy Policy Forum (EnergyPolicyForum | America

has come to crossroads with regard to energy) is right—Richard

Kinder (COO–Chief Operating Officer) of Enron for over 16

years to 1996) is gambling KMEP’s assets—not to mention the

environmental integrity upon which millions of human beings,

nonhuman animals and wildlife depend—on what can only be

called magical thinking.

Why? Because we’ve very little good reason to believe

that the gas KMEP needs to get into its pipelines is going to

be gas we can actually get out of the ground—even via the

massive environmental destruction to which we’re already

witness. Kinder, in fact, must be channeling Bacon if he

thinks that his most recent pricey gambit—the Tennessee

Pipeline—is going to cash out the over the long haul; indeed,

only magic could make this true—or perhaps the “magic” of

deception, or even better, the “magic” of creating deceptive

cover while you cash out the last whiff of fossil fuel from

the shale plays.Historian Carolyn Merchant points out that

“[i]t was Bacon’s singular achievement to demonstrate through

rhetoric, metaphor, and vivid example how the ‘‘secrets of

nature’’ could be extracted and put into use in the service of

humankind. Bacon’s thought evolved during a period in which

natural magic emerged as a new practical technique for

understanding the workings of the natural world through the

manipulation of matter.” “Rhetoric, metaphor, and vivid

example” have become for the natural gas industry the magical

currency—literally—for transforming what has in fact a very

limited life-span into the promise of virtually endless wealth

—at least for a few. The trouble, as Bacon himself realized,

was that when you deploy “natural magic,” namely, empirical

analyses of real evidence, as a “new practical technique” the

illusion that, for example, you can turn stones into nuggets

of gold is quickly vanquished. So too long-term profits spun

from shale gas.

What Rogers shows is that because there is a world of

difference between what might be in the shale and what might

be recoverable from the shale, the promise of long-term

profits for Fracking-Stiltskin and the industry’s sycophantic

associates evaporate as quickly as do Rumpelstiltskin’s

promise of gold threads from straw—or Kinder-Stiltskin’s

promise of huge pipeline profits from shale gas and/or LNG

transport.

What the industry needs is a “new” kind of magic, ergo the

“rhetoric, of “cheap, natural, abundant,” the metaphor of the

“good American,” or, as Roger’s shows, the vivid example of a

one hundred year resource. The trouble, as Rogers spells out

(and fracking industry executives no doubt know) is that the

“vivid example” is nothing but a ploy intended either to

bamboozle investors, or provide them cover (“defraying risk”)

on the hope that the ploy will magically translate into profit

quickly and robustly enough that they’ll never have to raise

the flag of the flatly false claim that they were bamboozled.

If Rogers has her way, however, there will be no flag to

raise—false claims or no. Why? Because a resource is not the

same thing as a reserve:

This notion that we have 100 years of gas available ismisleading at best. Industry uses this figure but itsimply isn’t true in a way that is meaningful. It is adeliberate confusion of what geologists refer to asresources vs. reserves.

Resources are the total amount of gas that is potentiallyavailable in the ground. And this is indeed about 100years worth but this gas is not necessarily available noris it necessarily economically viable to pull it out ofthe ground. The Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE)

defines resources as “potentially recoverable but not yetmature enough for commercial development due totechnological or business hurdles.” In other words, itexists but cannot necessarily be pulled out of the groundbecause of lack of existing technology or it simply isnot economically viable.

Reserves on the other hand are defined by petroleumengineers as gas that can be realistically pulled out ofthe ground at today’s prices and using today’stechnologies. This is now estimated to be only about 11years worth. Unfortunately, claiming resources ratherthan reserves makes it sound as though natural gas isvery abundant when in fact it may not be. Obviously itbecomes even more problematic when policy begins to beimplemented based on resource numbers rather than actualreserve numbers and that is precisely what is occurringat present. That is foolish to the extreme. (Deborah Rogers’March 2012 Presentation – PA and NY | EnergyPolicyForum)

In other words, it takes quite a lot of magical thinking—

deliberate confusion—to believe that resources are (or can

become) reserves, and yet, as was reported by Ian Urbina of

the New York Times way back in January 2011, that’s exactly

what drives investments in the exploding extraction industries

—and hence the Kinder-Stiltskins of the shale play:

Natural gas companies have been placing enormous bets onthe wells they are drilling, saying they will deliver bigprofits and provide a vast new source of energy for theUnited States. But the gas may not be as easy and cheapto extract from shale formations deep underground as thecompanies are saying, according to hundreds of industrye-mails and internal documents and an analysis of datafrom thousands of wells. In the e-mails, energy

executives, industry lawyers, state geologists and marketanalysts voice skepticism about lofty forecasts andquestion whether companies are intentionally, and evenillegally, overstating the productivity of their wellsand the size of their reserves. Many of these e-mailsalso suggest a view that is in stark contrast to morebullish public comments made by the industry, in much thesame way that insiders have raised doubts about previousfinancial bubbles. “Money is pouring in” from investorseven though shale gas is “inherently unprofitable,” ananalyst from PNC Wealth Management, an investmentcompany, wrote to a contractor in a February e-mail.“Reminds you of dot-coms.” (Insiders Sound an Alarm Amid a Natural GasRush – NYTimes.com)

No wonder, like his analogues over at EXCO, Kinder has been in

a hurry ever since the birth of KMEP emerged from the carnage

of ENRON, to structure his corporate empire—as a master

limited partnership—in such a fashion that KMEP could be

protected from some forms of liability, pay no corporate

taxes, and hire virtually no employees:

In the years before the shale boom, Kinder and Morgan(since retired) unlocked magic by taking a sleepycorporate structure known as the master limitedpartnership and reinventing it as a growth vehicle. MLPs,as they’re known, simply hold long-lived, income-producing assets. They usually have no employees oroffices (all of that is handled by the general partner),and crucially, they don’t pay corporate taxes. Allprofits and tax liabilities are passed on to unitholders.(Kinder’s own pretax distributions top $100 million ayear.) “Our idea, Bill Morgan’s and my idea, was that wecould take that and we could operate them veryefficiently with laser focus so our whole game would be

assets,” Kinder says. “We wouldn’t be in the tradingbusiness.” Because of their tax treatment MLPs enjoy alower cost of capital than regular corporate structures.Kinder could buy pipelines from non-MLP owners, drop theminto the Kinder Morgan Energy Partners MLP, squeeze outcosts and immediately increase free cash flows. (RichKinder’s Energy Kingdom – Forbes)

That’s just the kind of sweet deal a Kinder-Stiltskin needs to

make good on a gambit as clearly dicey on the evidence as the

shale play—a gambit that doesn’t even begin to take heed of

the serious environmental and human health impacts already

accruing to the extraction industries to which KMEP is

beholden.

Here’s the simple upshot: the only way to make shale gas

extraction via horizontal slickwater hydraulic fracturing

profitable is to swindle investors into thinking (or provide

them cover so that they can pretend that that’s what they

believed) that resources can be translated into reserves

and/or to make this piece of magical thinking appear true by

structuring the enterprise for maximally efficient execution of acquisitions

and expansions (MLPs), and

getting as much production into the pipeline and ready for export to the

global markets as fast as possible before the ratio of production cost to profit

margin becomes too narrow, too risky, or too transparently a shell game to

continue.

Making sure that laws are written, governments bought,

propaganda crafted, opponents neutralized, and the harmed

silenced is essential to the Fracking-Stiltskin enterprise as

a whole because there is no hundred years to make good on the

gambit. Maybe there’s ten years; maybe there’s only five. But

in another two years, no one’s going to buy, for example, the

bridge fuel metaphor because the bridge turns out to be

nothing more than a Rumpelstiltskin straw stretched across the

rising oceans of climate change.

“[R]eminds you of dot.coms.” Yup.

Boy, Mr. Kinder-Stiltskin, do you need those pipelines.

2. The High Cost of Trying to Convert Straw into Gold: From Enron to Kinder- Stiltskin

As reported by The Wall Street Journal, October 2011, Richard

Kinder, who owns 30% of KMEP, is one “lucky ex-Enron employee”

Kinder managed not only to “escape the carnage” of meltdown

that put his colleague, Jeff Skilling, into a Colorado prison

for twenty-four years, but to “engineer one of the biggest

energy deals in history,” namely the acquisition of El Paso

Corporation, the second largest acquisition in the U.S.

rivaled only by Exxon-Mobil’s take-over of XTO. As reported by

the New York Times:

Kinder Morgan agreed on Sunday to buy the El PasoCorporation for about $21.1 billion in cash and stock,striking one of the biggest energy deals in history, totap into a boom in natural gas drilling and production.Through the deal, Kinder Morgan will become the biggestof North America’s midstream energy companies, which areentities that process oil and gas products beforetransporting them to production facilities. Kinder Morganwill own or operate about 67,000 miles of pipelinesstretching across the continent. “If you believe in thefuture of natural gas, you believe in putting togetherthe biggest possible network,” Richard D. Kinder, KinderMorgan’s chief executive, said in an interview. He addedthat the deal was “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”(Kinder Morgan to Buy El Paso for $21.1 Billion – NYTimes.com)

A once in a lifetime opportunity, that is, if as a “midstream

company” you can leverage your production assets into pipeline

infrastructure and gas flow before frack-gas goes “dot.com.”

Kinder also paid a heavy premium for El Paso: “For each share

of El Paso, Kinder will pay $14.65 in cash, 0.4187 of a Kinder

share and 0.640 of a warrant. At Friday’s closing price, that

values the offer at about $26.87. That is a 37 percent premium

to El Paso’s Friday closing price and a 47 percent premium to

El Paso’s 20-day average closing price.” But Kinder “believes

in the future of natural gas.” So much so, in fact, that he’s

promised “that the transaction will provide big rewards for

shareholders. The company said that it expected to begin

raising its dividend next year at an average annual rate of

about 12.5 percent through 2015.”

That’s one mother-load of a promise, especially since

Kinder’s willing to stake a claim in the construction of

pipeline in shale plays that Rogers has shown to have either

already peaked, or will in short order, the Bakken of North

Dakota, the Eagle Ford in South Texas, and the Marcellus in

Pennsylvania. In what Rogers dubs the “drilling treadmill,” or

running as fast as you can just to stay in the same place, she

sites a study of the Bakken shale fields (re-posted with

permission by Energy Policy Forum from The Oil Drum):

Findings from this in-depth study of time series forproduction from some individual wells: Presently theestimated breakeven price for the “average” well in theBakken formation in North Dakota is $80 – $90/Bbl Inplain language this means that presently the commercialprofitability for new wells is barely positive. The“average” well now yields around 85 000 Bbls during thefirst 12 months of production and then experiences a yearover year decline of 40% (+/-2%). The recent trend fornewer “average” wells is one of a perceptible decline inwell productivity (lower yields). As of 2007 and also asof recent months, the total production of shale oil fromBakken, has shown exceptional growth and the (relativelyhigh) specific average productivity (expressed asBbls/day/well) has been sustained by starting up flowfrom an accelerating number of new wells. Now and basedupon present observed trends for principally wellproductivity and crude oil futures (WTI), it ischallenging to find support for the idea that totalproduction of shale oil from the Bakken formation willmove much above present levels of 0.6 – 0.7 Mb/d on anannual basis. (The Bakken: Another Drilling Treadmill | EnergyPolicyForum)

The upshot here is that the Bakken shale fields will

experience a decline in production (reserve will not match

resource), hence the only way to continue to profit from the

shale play here is to find ways to raise the price of natural

gas. But here is precisely the gambit of a Kinder-Stiltskin

whose argument is that production has so exceeded pipeline

capacity that the glut—burning off the excess instead of

pipelining it—is what explains the drop in the price of

natural gas. More pipeline. More demand. More profit—at least

for as long as the boom lasts.

Indeed, so committed to turning this straw into gold,

Kinder-Stiltskin is apparently willing to ignore growing

suspicion within his own industry that resource is being

deliberately conflated with reserve:

Forecasting these reserves is a tricky science. Earlypredictions are sometimes lowered because of drops in gasprices, as happened in 2008. Intentionally overbookingreserves, however, is illegal because it misleadsinvestors. Industry e-mails, mostly from 2009 and later,include language from oil and gas executives questioningwhether other energy companies are doing just that…The e-mails do not explicitly accuse any companies of breakingthe law. But the number of e-mails, the seniority of thepeople writing them, the variety of positions they holdand the language they use — including comparisons toPonzi schemes and attempts to “con” Wall Street — suggestthat questions about the shale gas industry exist in manycorners. “Do you think that there may be somethingsuspicious going with the public companies in regard tobooking shale reserves?” a senior official from IvyEnergy, an investment firm specializing in the energysector, wrote in a 2009 e-mail. A former Enron executivewrote in 2009 while working at an energy company: “Iwonder when they will start telling people these wells

are just not what they thought they were going to be?” Headded that the behavior of shale gas companies remindedhim of what he saw when he worked at Enron. (Insiders Sound anAlarm Amid a Natural Gas Rush – NYTimes.com)

“Behavior he saw while working at Enron.” Go figure. When KMEP

bought El Paso, it also bought the Tennessee Gas Pipeline, and

despite investor predictions in late 2012 that the company

might have “reached its peak,” Kinder-Stiltskin is determined

to continue the corporation’s phenomenal rate of growth via

“increases in volumes and prices” as well as “expansions and

acquisitions” having spent 30 billion since 1998 (Revealing the

Structure of the Kinder Morgan-El Paso Deal – Insider Monkey). The Tennessee Gas

Pipeline—the Northeast Upgrade Project—is essential to Kinder-

Stiltskin’s vision: “The 13,900-mile Tennessee Gas Pipeline

serves the Northeast with access to the Marcellus and Utica

shale plays” transporting natural gas from “Louisiana, the

Gulf of Mexico and south Texas” (Kinder Morgan – Tennessee Gas Pipeline).

KMEP promises a myriad array of benefits including the hire of

local union-shop workers, revenue for local businesses, and an

energy source that is “versatile, clean, and abundant” (Benefits

of Natural Gas | Northeast Upgrade Project).

The KMEP strategy is clear: amass as much pipeline

infrastructure as possible across a wide array of extraction

ventures (including, but not limited to, shale plays),

distributing both risks and gains across that array, thereby

defraying against production declines, and limiting

competition. Then, via the advantageous corporate structure

provided by the MLP, utilize incoming revenues to acquire

additional pipeline. For example, KMEP “operates the only

pipeline that carries tar sands crude out of Alberta over the

Rocky Mountains to its tanker terminal in Vancouver. Kinder

acquired the Trans Mountain Pipeline in 2005 and now seeks to

expand it from 300,000 barrels per day to 750,000 bpd by

building a new $4 billion pipe alongside the first. He’s

already signed up nine oil companies eager to fill the

proposed line with their crude.” Kinder is also gearing up for

the Northern Gateway Project as well as part of the action in

the Keystone XL Pipeline “to bring more oil sands crude into

the U.S. and ultimately down to Gulf Coast refineries,” much

to the discontent of environmentalists, (Rich Kinder’s Energy Kingdom –

Forbes). When you’re Kinder-Stiltskin, however, and you need to

hedge your bets against the inevitable decline in reserves by

getting the price of extraction-booty as high as possible,

national borders apparently become a nuisance (and why

shouldn’t they when patriotism has long been appropriated to

corporate propaganda?) KMEP’s latest venture—like so many of

his corporate fellows—is export:

A new business for Kinder is liquefied natural gas. Withthe El Paso deal came two liquefied natural gas terminalsin Elba Island, Ga. and Pascagoula, Miss. They were builtfor LNG imports, but Kinder is reconfiguring them and hasalready received permits to export LNG. Producers willjump at the chance to ship gas to the likes of Japan andKorea, where it can fetch upwards of $12 per thousandcubic feet. You can buy the same amount of gas in

Louisiana today for $3.70, a tasty spread.But will what’sgood for Kinder Morgan be good for America? If all theproposed LNG projects get done it would give the U.S. theability to export 20 billion cubic feet of gas per day,or about a third of current supplies. This could causeU.S. prices to skyrocket. Some politicians, likeRepresentative Ed Markey (D-Mass.), want to block LNGexports altogether, insisting U.S. gas would better serveAmerica if it remains at home to keep prices low.

This frustrates Kinder. Despite supporting presidential

hopeful Mitt Romney, he thinks many politicians–including

Romney, Obama and Markey–are out to lunch when they talk about

the U.S. being somehow “energy independent.” “If people think

we can draw a circle around North America and that we can be

an independent island of energy, that’s not realistic,” says

Kinder. “This is a world market for oil, for refined products

and increasingly for natural gas.”

Having the option of exporting gas will put a floor under gas prices, he says, and

that will protect drillers, producers–and the country–from painful boom-and-bust

cycles.

That last line about “getting a floor under gas prices, and

protecting the country from painful boom and bust cycles” is

especially revealing in that it acknowledges both what Rogers

insists players like KMEP must already know, namely, that

they’re banking on the perception that the boom will last even

in the face of clear evidence that it won’t, and that they’re

more than willing to appeal, however indirectly to patriotism,

national security—and thus the fear this solicits—to advance a

profit-venture. Such ventures may well afford protection to

“drillers and producers,” but, as those pesky

environmentalists continue to point out, at an enormous cost

to the environment and human health—the sin qua non of

national security.

3. What Kinder-Stiltskin Leaves Behind: What No Promise of

Magic Can Repair

In the original version of Rumpelstiltskin, an imp spins straw

into gold for a girl whose king has shut her up in a tower

because her father—a lowly miller—has lied to the king telling

him the girl has magical powers. Seeing the gold spun by the

imp—and thinking it magic belonging to the girl, the king

demands more and more. In my version, the imp—Kinder-Stiltskin

—turns straw not into gold, but rather “gold,” by convincing

the king that the environment—the shale—can spin resources

into reserves for an endless supply, and quieting lowly

investors with dividends sufficient that they’ll not notice,

for example, the deterioration of their water and air, or the

despoiling of their lands. After all, the king can always

point out, the lowly investors wanted “gold,” depend on

“gold,” and now have “gold.” It would therefore be unseemly

for them to raise a ruckus over the “girl” environment put to

service to extract it. Indeed, the king may even know of the

imp who has exploited the “girl,” taken everything she has in

collusion with the king, and left her in the end bereft, but

can only determine that the desire for the “gold” is so great

that the cost is worth it.

As Eric de Place reports, however, in April 2012, that cost

may be far greater than the environment can endure. “Gold” for

Kinder-Stiltskin represents not merely shale but every

extractible fossil fuel exportable. KMEP, for example, “is

planning to export millions of tons of coal to Asia from an

Oregon port on the Columbia River,” and claims great expertise

in such ventures having coal export facilities in Virginia,

South Carolina, and Louisiana. And that, argues de Place, is

just the problem:

The truth is that Kinder Morgan’s existing coal export

operations are well known for blighting neighborhoods and

fouling rivers. In fact, the company’s track record in

the Northwest and beyond is one of pollution, law-

breaking, and cover-ups.

In Louisiana, Kinder Morgan’s coal export facilities are

so dirty that satellite photos clearly show coal dust

pollution spewing into the Mississippi River.

In South Carolina, coal dust from Kinder Morgan’s

terminal contaminates oysters, pilings, and boats. Locals

have even caught the company on video washing coal

directly into sensitive waterways.

In Virginia, Kinder Morgan’s coal export terminal is an

open sore on the neighborhood, coating nearby homes in

dust so frequently that even the mayor is speaking out

about the problem.

In Portland, Kinder Morgan officials bribed a ship

captain to illegally dump contaminated material at sea,

and their operations have repeatedly polluted the

Willamette River.

Kinder Morgan has been fined by the US government for

stealing coal from customer’s stockpiles, lying to air

pollution regulators, illegally mixing hazardous waste

into gasoline, and many other crimes.

Kinder Morgan’s pipelines are plagued by leaks and

explosions, including two large dangerous spills in

residential neighborhoods in British Columbia.

Just to provide a sample of the cases de Place surveys:

Kinder Morgan’s operations in Portland, Oregon, have been

home to pollution, law- breaking, and even bribery. In

one incident, Kinder Morgan illegally dumped contaminated

potassium chloride into the Pacific Ocean rather than pay

landfill charges to dispose of it properly. In 2003,

according to dockworkers, company officials bribed a ship

captain $1,100 to haul 159 tons of the fertilizer

component out to sea and dump it. Nearly five years

later, Kinder Morgan finally pled guilty to violating the

Ocean Dumping Act and settled with the US Attorney’s

Office, agreeing to pay $240,000. Previously, in response

to a lawsuit against the company for its poor handling of

soda ash in Portland, Kinder Morgan agreed in 2004 to pay

$75,000 for spills and to prevent its soda ash from

continuing to pollute the Willamette River.36 But

problems continue. In July 2011, state officials levied a

$10,400 fine for a spill at Kinder Morgan’s port site, in

which a fueling vessel spilled 125 gallons of marine fuel

into the Willamette River. Then in October 2011, the US

Coast Guard investigated a mysterious oil spill and fish

die-off at Kinder Morgan’s soda ash facility; state

officials say it was the deadliest fish kill on the lower

Willamette in nearly a decade.

In 2010, the federal government fined Kinder Morgan $1million for repeatedly violating the Clean Air Act at itsPort Manatee Terminal in Florida. The US Department ofJustice found that, among other crimes, Kinder Morganmanagers lied in permit applications, stating that thecompany would control its pollution when they knew thecontrol equipment was not being operated nor evenmaintained properly.

The most tragic Kinder Morgan mishap occurred in November2004 when an excavator ruptured a high-pressure oilpipeline in the town of Walnut Creek, California. Awelding torch then ignited the fuel, and five workers

were killed as the pipeline erupted in a fiery explosion.A Kinder Morgan subsidiary was subsequently convicted ofsix felony counts related to the Walnut Creek explosionand ordered to pay $15 million in fines.

More recently, in May 2011, the US Pipeline and HazardousMaterials Safety Administration announced a proposed$425,000 fine against Kinder Morgan for safetyviolations, following a federal investigation into KinderMorgan spilling 8,600 of “hazardous liquid” in NewJersey. Then in December 2011, a two-year-old KinderMorgan natural gas pipeline leaked in Ohio, spewing127,000 cubic feet of natural gas and forcing nearbyresidents to evacuate their homes. (http://www.sightline.org/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2012/02/Coal-Kinder-Morgan-April-12_final.pdf).

These are not arguments; they are facts. It doesn’t matter,

moreover, where they occur. What they illustrate is a pattern

that solicits far more than a Kinder-Stiltskin who qualifies

as an “imp.”

An imp is simply a selfish child with a penchant for cruelty.

Kinder-Stiltskin is a genocidal profiteer whose vision of power is not merely

environmentally exploitive but takes us all the way back to

Francis’ Bacon’s images of a nature depicted as a female whose “secrets”

must be forcibly appropriated and commodified.

Kinder-Stiltskin, in other words, is not an imp, but an

assailant willing to commit rape to insure his MLP continues

to grow. Like the imp, Kinder-Stiltskin is willing to lie to

get what he wants.

For example, although KMEP insists that it does not make

political contributions, Kinder-Stiltskin and his wife clearly

do:

Richard Kinder seems to focus his political contributionson unregulated “soft money” giving nearly half a milliondollars to the Republican National State ElectionsCommittee since 2001. He also contributed over $250,000to Political Actions Committees (PACs) and an additional$90,000 in “joint fundraising contributions” forRepublican candidates. His wife, Nancy Kinder, donatedover $90,000 to the National Republican SenatorialCommittee, and since 2001 she has contributed over$340,000 to Republican candidates and PACs, plus morethan $80,000 in joint fundraising contributions.64Richard and Nancy Kinder were also major financialsupporters of George W. Bush, raising well over $1million for his two presidential candidacies.

It is no wonder that the prospect of the Tennessee Gas

Pipeline meets with deeply committed resistance from the

people who are already feeling the effects of its clear-

cutting of old growth forest, and the threat KMEP poses to

essential public resources in the Delaware River Basin.

Organizers like Maya K. van Rossem from the Delaware River

Keeper (Delaware Riverkeeper),and so many others see is that

there is no magic that can turn the extraction of fossil fuels

into gold without turning our environment to rubble, our

bodies into the casualties of global competition for dwindling

resources, and our futures into a mausoleum of what was once

not merely a planet, but a home. We take up peaceful

nonviolent resistance all the while Kinder-Stiltskin cozies up

to Royal Dutch Shell to export LNG to the global marketplace

(http://seekingalpha.com/article/1138871-shell-joins-kinder-morgan-to-export-lng-from-the-u-

s.). There is unyielding violence in this. But it is not among

those of us willing to tree-sit to prevent the chainsaws from

destroying a hundred years of Hemlocks. No, the sanction for

violence lay in Francis Bacon’s (and John Locke before him)

blithe insistence that we can treat nonhuman nature just as

some men have treated women—as resources whose value is

calculable as exchange, as something that can be owned,

traded, discarded, and killed without remorse and without

conscience.

That we have institutionalized this violence such that

the Kinder-Stiltskins of the world can commit the sorts of

callous and mercenary crimes de Place chronicles without

meaningful penalty—such that KMEP can simply write off the

loss of human and nonhuman life to the cost of doing business—

indicates not that our fundamental social and economic

institutions stand in need of correction, but rather that they

stand in need of a revolution—one whose magic doesn’t traffic

in the fakery of profiteering charlatans, but allows us to see

that the beauty in the Hemlock is immeasurably greater than

its obstacle to the pipeline. The irony, of course, is that at

the end of at least one version of Rumpelstiltskin, the imp

becomes so angered by his failure to secure for himself the

only thing the girl–now queen–loved, her child, that he splits

himself in two and self-destructs. We could only be so lucky

with KMEP. But unfortunately, “splitting themselves in two” or

three or a hundred smaller entities is all just part of the

“magic” spun by Fracking-Stiltskin that keeps us from ever

knowing who it was that polluted our air and poisoned our

water.

For the committed activists of Stop the Tennessee Pipeline what

becomes split in two is all too palpable, all to real.

It is the trees.