Michael Foster, the valve turner who temporarily halted the flow of tar sands oil in TransCanada’s Keystone pipeline in October 2016, called for future actions to address the global climate crisis before he headed to prison, where he is expected to serve at least a year of his three-year sentence.

“Michael Foster isn’t a criminal; he’s a hero.”
—Dr. James Hansen,
climate expert

“It doesn’t matter if I’m sitting in jail. What matters is stopping the pollution,” Foster,  a 53-year-old mental health counselor from Seattle, declared after his sentencing in North Dakota on Tuesday.

“If other people don’t take action, mine makes no difference,” he continued. “And if they don’t, the planet comes apart at the seams. The only way what I did matters is if people are stopping the poison.”

Although others who participated in the multi-state #ShutItDown action two years ago have been allowed to present a “necessity defense”—or argue they believed their act was “necessary to avoid or minimize a harm” that was “greater than the harm resulting from the violation of the law”—Judge Laurie A. Fontaine rejected such a defense for Foster and Sam Jessup, who filmed Foster’s action and received a two-year deferred prison sentence with supervised probation.

Outside the court, Dr. James Hansen—who has been called “the father of modern climate change awareness” and was barred from testifying during the trial last year—said the public is generally unaware of the need to urgently address the climate crisis, emphasizing that we are entering “the age of consequences” for burning fossil fuels. “Michael Foster isn’t a criminal,” Hansen added, “he’s a hero.”

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