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This guest post comes courtesy of DWG ….

Hurricane Katrina revealed the power of nature and the incompetence of the Federal Emergency Management Agency under Michael Brown. The storm shredded the Gulf coast and breached the levees protecting New Orleans, leaving 1883 people dead, 2 million homeless, and the city in chaos. It took the Joint Task Force Katrina under Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré to rescue the recovery efforts. The general has since retired from the military, but now leads a Green Army.

“I don’t call myself an environmentalist, I call myself a pollution fighter.”

Here is a taste of the general in action. Starting at the 3:50 mark, he says that the environment is biggest challenge of the millennial generation and beyond. Here is the situation in Louisiana.

“There is an expiration date on clean drinking water in Louisiana. We will have less tomorrow than we had today. And this is because of the acts of men, of greed and of a failed democracy. A democracy that put the flag of oil and gas companies over our capitol, over the constitutional responsibility to look out for the welfare of the people.In that regard, our democracy has failed us. I don’t say that with any pride. I say it with a sadness in my heart because I spent 37 years, 3 months, and 3 days wearing the cloth of this nation as a soldier. To come back to my home state and see corporations work with total disregard, with collaboration and support from elected officials, to do things that tell the people of Louisiana that oil field wastewater is not hazardous. These are elected officials in the state of Louisiana who will stand up and defend this industry.”

He goes on to describe industry-fueled propaganda as psychological operations (about the 6:00 mark).

Every day this group practices psychological operations on us. Don’t say nothing bad about the oil and gas companies because if you do, they will leave. And, oh my Lord, what is going to happen to our economy. This is psychological operations.

Now that is speaking truth to power.

The catalyst for the general’s becoming a pollution fighter was the massive sinkhole that has swallowed most of Bayou Corne, Louisiana, courtesy of Texas Brine. Texas Brine, a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum, had been mining salt from a massive underground dome and then using the hollowed-out spaces to store oil, gas, or drilling wastes. The sinkhole opened up in August, 2012, bringing a toxic brew to the surface while swallowing acres of trees and the town. After a year of dithering by the company and state officials, Honoré became an advocate for area residents desperate for relief.

Before long, the general helped forge a broad coalition of local and national organizations to help fight to reduce industrial air and water pollution in Louisiana. The Green Army was born.

The Green Army Rises

“It’s not a conventional Army,” the old general says cracking a grin. “It’s a guerrilla army.”

The Green Army coalition is impressive. By January of 2014, the groups included Save Lake Peigneur, Baton Rouge Aquifer Protection, Concerned Citizens of Grand Bois, the Sierra Club, VAYLA New Orleans, Zion Travelers Cooperative Center, 350 NOLA, Ouachita Riverkeeper, Restore Louisiana Now, Save Charity Hospital, NOLA Trash Mob, Lower Ninth Ward Village, Lower Mississippi Riverkeeper, Louisiana Progress, Louisiana Bucket Brigade, Levees.org, Louisiana Environmental Action Network, the League of Women Voters, Global Green USA, Gulf Restoration Network, The Green Project, Lower Ninth Ward Center for Sustainable Engagement and Development, Advocates for Environmental Human Rights, Alliance for Affordable Energy and the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice.

Advocacy for the residents of Mossville was one of the first projects undertaken by the Green Army. In an interview with Kevin Knodell, Gen. Honoré used Mossville to illustrate why environmental and social justice are inextricably intertwined.

He tells the story of Mossville, Louisiana—a poor, predominantly black town surrounded by 14 chemical plants. Diseases like cancer and asthma are much more common there than other parts of the country. And chillingly, the once-rural town that depended on agriculture, fishing and hunting has no birds.But Honoré says many people there don’t have the money to move someplace healthier. He added that the poor and people of color are the ones who suffer most from pollution.

Walter Williams has produced a number of videos for the Green Army to show the scorched earth practices of the oil and gas industry in the southern Louisiana bayous. By dredging thousands of miles of canals to service drilling rigs and pipelines, the industry has allowed salt water incursion to destroy the wetlands. These coastal wetlands once absorbed the energy of hurricanes and tropical storms but their rapid disappearance now leaves New Orleans increasingly vulnerable. Add in rising sea levels from fossil fueled climate change and you have a recipe for disaster that will make Katrina look like a spring shower by comparison. Here is one of those videos.

In his many public appearances, the general describes his dismay as “ruthless industrialists” have conspired with elected officials in Louisiana for decades to produce some of the weakest environmental protections in the nation. In the first video posted above (starting at the 7:40 mark), he summarizes the situation as follows.

“Our rules protecting clean water in Louisiana are so weak that Alabama ships its oil field fracking water to Louisiana to dispose of because the state of Alabama will not allow it to be dumped there.”

The man is not exaggerating. Here is the perfect example of just how corrupt the state government has become under Bobby Jindal.

In June 2013, a regional flood protection authority in southeastern Louisiana filed a lawsuit against nearly 100 oil and gas companies for damages due to coastal erosion. (Louisiana loses 24 football fields worth of land daily, in part because of the network of pipelines and canals carved across its wetlands.) In Baton Rouge, oil industry lawyers helped write a bill that retroactively quashed the suit and prohibited local authorities from filing similar cases. Jindal signed the bill last June.

Apparently the “states rights” so often cheered by these liberty-loving politicians trumps individual and local community rights. Should a corporation drilling for oil or gas make a mess on your property or in your town, you cannot file suit or appeal to state regulators. Suck it up or leave, cupcake. I could have sworn these same champions of freedom also feel that property rights are sacred. If the corporate lord poisons the well you drink from or the air that you breathe, tough shit. It is a paradise worthy of Ayn Rand.

So far, the Green Army has scored a few legislative and legal victories over the past 2 years. The industry has taken note and appears to be planning a counterattack.

The recently established Green Army has been raising a lot of eyebrows (and anxiety) in the ranks of the oil and gas industry. “We are under attack from these people, and we have to push back,” explained Louisiana Oil and Gas Association (LOGA) President Don Briggs at the recent State of the Industry Luncheon held in Lafayette, La.

Quoteable

I do like the way this man frames issues. Gets right to the heart of the matter. Here are a few of my favorite quotes.

“Everyday we have less clean water and clean air than we did yesterday. I tell people that to scare the shit out of them.” (source)“The next wars won’t be fought over oil. They’ll be over water.” (source)

“We’re all destroying the planet. Me included.” (source)

“But the fact is that it’s happening in a Southern bayou, in a place that people in the rest of America are just willing to write off.” (source)

“It’s been one year since this tragedy, one year since Bayou Corne descended into hell.” (source)

“We are the witnesses. We must report. We must speak out. We must take action to make sure that the rest of the Nation knows that we are killing our water.” (source)

“I think we can create a new economy. Everyone tells me it’s impossible. Which drives me. There’s opportunity on the other side of impossible.”  (source)

The Green Army is promoting accountability for the oil and gas industry along with the rapid deployment of clean and sustainable forms of agriculture and energy. To my eye those seem laudable goals.

Feel like helping the Green Army??

Start by joining their mailing list so you have a front row seat to the battles in bayou country. Show them some love on social media. Consider supporting one of the member organizations that form the Green Army with a contribution. If you can make it to Baton Rouge this coming Saturday, come party with Green Army on the steps of the state capital.

Run, General, Run

Since this is a political site, here is a political angle.

Honoré is critical of Jindal and the Republican most likely to replace him, Sen. David Vitter, also a staunch friend of the petrochemical lobby. Asked if he’d consider challenging Vitter in the 2015 gubernatorial election, Honoré, a pro-choice, pro-gun, African American veteran, answers, “Oh yeah, I think about it — I think about it a lot.”

I would pay a lot of money to see the general go toe-to-toe with Diaper Dave Vitter. Governor Honoré sure would put the fear of God in the oil and gas industry if they cannot buy the election. It may be long-shot but not out of the question.