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National Grid plans to construct a one-mile gas pipeline along Huntington Ave, in Boston. Incredulous. MA has sufficient energy currently for all nations living in MA. Why bury money and sink gas (methane, more accurately) under Boston’s streets. All MA methane is fracked gas pumped in from PA. Boston has Brazilians who clean banks, we have Salvadorans who build roofs in Chelsea, we have Iranians publishing erudite journalism.

Why a new pipeline when all across the nation savvy entrepreneurs are building wind and solar renewables? Maura Healey, our justice seeking attorney general, and Boston City Councilors have asked a halt to this pipeline.

The pipeline will start at Berkeley St in the South End and end near Christian Science Church, right near Boston Symphony Hall, NE University, brownstone houses, transport hubs, Latina stores. This area has 33K people per square mile. Why tear up the streets and put up a construction zone in a high destination neighborhood for students, musicians, and shoppers? It seems that some well-sculpted glass-walled 26 story apartments are built by the realtors, Buzzuto, who need methane tubal feeding for the millionaires’ guarded homes.

In January I walked downtown to Huntington Theatre in the Back Bay crossing the planned pipeline. I watched sea gulls drawing spirals over the rooftops. I saw students jogging in shorts, and women with wool hats ducking into drug stores. The Back Bay is vibrant and humming even as the ocean surges onto Boston streets during winter storms. Like squirrels curled inside the hollows of trees, we store our nuts and ignore the current climate tidal wave. My friends know that coastal homes are soaked with water and that children are dying due to emissions of carbon. Human use of fossil fuel is a major cause and we haven’t reversed our energy use. The islands like Culebra Puerto Rico, Marshall Islands, and Hawaii are losing life. Am I safe inside my tree with a bundle of acorns while the forests near the coast come crashing down?

Ordinary citizens are stunned by the melting glaciers, fires and floods. Boston has had a series of storms in 2018 with lots of power outages. These are dangerous to our health, not just alarming. Some citizens are turning off mainline gas breaking the law in defense of the planet. Some divestment from fossil fuel is happening in defense of the planet. Lots of new renewables programs are more efficient than the brontosaurus gas companies. (Remember Sinclair?) Massachusetts and other states are not taking leadership needed to change the human onslaught mildly To call the current deterioration “Global Warming” is milktoast to a lumberjack.

In this decade the fracked gas demand is forecasted to decline, yet the pipeline can only merit being built if it is guaranteed a 30-40 year lifetime. If installation happens by 2020, Boston expects to rely on liquid methane until at least 2050. A reclusive group, the ISO of NE said just last month that our region can amply supply its power demands until 2021-22. Our state passed the GWSA (Global Warming Solutions Act, 2008) in order to refurbish our energy plan away from fossil fuels, not to whip up a billionaires’ dream of luxury living.

Can we use any new infrastructure for renewables, not methane; can we spend our energy providing for our grandchildren, not for the rich 1%.

Perhaps I am the face of your fears. Because I am a woman, because I am Black, because I am a lesbian, because Ia m myself—a Black woman warrior poet doing my work—-come to ask you: are you doing yours? Audre Lourde, 2007