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During these times of continual economic stress and exclusion, the communities on the front lines of saying no to dirty energy have discovered that they will never build the base they need unless they can simultaneously provide economic alternatives to the projects they are opposing. So after three years of just saying no to the Keystone XL pipeline, a group of farmers in Nebraska came up with just such a strategy: they built a barn, powered by wind and solar, in the pipeline’s path. And they pointed out that the power generated from just that one barn would bring more energy to the region than the oil in the pipeline that was headed for the export terminal in Texas.23 On one level, the Build Our Energy Barn was just PR: the farmers were daring President Obama to tear down a renewable energy installation to make way for dirty oil. But it also showed their neighbors that, if the right policies are in place, there is another way to earn some much needed extra income without putting their land at risk.
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Naomi Klein (This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate)