Not too instances of irony on the scale of the protest camp near the Dakota Access Pipeline route occur, but when they do, they need commenting on. The protestors left such a mountain of garbage in their wake, while agitating against the pipeline as a threat to the local environment, that authorities are being obliged to send in bulldozers to clean it up. Deposit it in huge dumpsters, to be hauled away to a local landfill in Bismarck. North Dakota. The local Native Americans have urged the protestors to leave for month, but their pleading fell on deaf ears.
Only the cold weather and the prospect of spring flood have caused the hordes to leave. The Army Corps of Engineers have ordered the camp closed by February 22, 2017 for public safety and to avoid environmental catastrophe when the floods start. The garbage has to be picked up before the flood least it be swept into the local streams and rivers that the protestors are claiming to protect.
Anyone who is surprised at the spectacle of environmentalists raping the environment while claiming to protect it forget the history of Occupy Wall Street. The OWS camps in urban centers in short order became toxic waste dumps, creating a stench and a health hazard. The same sorts of people were occupying federal land in North Dakota, performing the same service.
By contrast, the Tea Party picks up after itself at their protest venues. Indeed, the much-maligned tea parties are known for leaving the sites where they hold rallies more pristine than what they found them.
If the question arises whether a pipeline is a greater threat to the environment or the people protesting it, the answer has to be the latter.
The environmentalists did not bend any effort toward proper garbage disposal. They didn’t even put any effort into recycling which, for many people who are waking to the need to preserve the planet, is practically a religion. Perhaps members of the Tea Party could give the environmental movement classes in how to clean up after itself, something that apparently their parents never taught them.
