Above All Else

Above All Else was warmly-received at its world premiere at Austin's SXSW Film Festival. The film offers a powerful indictment of the dangers and negative impact of the construction of this pipeline. However, rather than dealing with some of the realistic political strategies that could be used to fight the construction of the pipeline, the film focuses in on some of the more idealistic radical – and frankly naive – environmental activists who think they can stop the pipeline construction through East Texas by sitting on the top of trees, chaining themselves to trucks, and crawling into pipelines. Their idealism is admirable, but they need some lessons in practical politics. Their whole quest is so clearly doomed from the start that it makes very little political sense. The landowners who initially host themselves eventually give up under legal pressure from TransCanada and the local sheriff. The film spends too much time on the quixotic efforts of the activists instead of focusing on the more practical efforts to organize much larger groups of people online and across the country. Massive campaigns of civil disobedience combined with legislative action to change the eminent domain laws and influence the Congress and the President would be much more useful. Perhaps, the film footage wouldn't be as interesting as kids building tree houses, but it would be a more practical way to advance their cause. In general, the film went on a bit too long with repetitive footage that could have been edited down by 15-30 minutes. Activists, including film makers, who seek to achieve social change should focus on the practical politics rather than Utopian idealism. It is easy to cheer for young idealistic activists fight an evil corporation, but it is a waste of time and effort when they adopt ineffective and wasteful strategies like these. I wish the film makers also tried to focus on strategies that stood a chance in fighting the pipeline and advancing the larger struggle to prevent climate change.