You can do anything in the name of saving Gaia.
An Oregon man goes on trial in Montana on Tuesday in the latest criminal prosecution against activists who sought to call attention to climate change by shutting down pipelines carrying crude from Canada’s oil sands region to the United States.
Leonard Higgins, 65, of Portland is charged with trespassing and felony criminal mischief for breaking into a fenced site near Big Sandy, Montana, to turn off a valve on a Spectra Energy pipeline in October 2016. Activists simultaneously targeted other lines in Washington state, North Dakota and Minnesota.
Higgins, a retired technology worker for the state of Oregon, wants to tell jurors that his act of civil disobedience was necessary because climate change is an emergency that can’t be ignored, he told The Associated Press.
But District Judge Daniel Boucher (boo-SHAY) has indicated that he won’t allow the trial to be used as a vehicle for political protest. Boucher said in an April order that testimony on climate change would be irrelevant to the charges faced by Higgins.
“The energy policy of the United States is not on trial, nor will this court allow Higgins to attempt to put it on trial,” Boucher wrote in the order. “Mr. Higgins is on trial for his voluntary acts.”