The new law makes it a felony, pun­ish­able by a fine of up to $10,000 and up to six years in prison, to tres­pass on the prop­er­ty of an oil pipeline or stor­age facility.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, some peo­ple seem to have mis­read the warn­ings: On Nov. 20, Wisconsin’s gov­er­nor, Tony Evers, a Demo­c­rat, signed a law that, instead of penal­iz­ing oil pipelines, penal­izes pro­test­ers who dis­rupt the con­struc­tion of such ​“crit­i­cal infrastructure.”

A recent pair of Unit­ed Nations cli­mate reports make at least one thing clear: It is crit­i­cal that we stop con­struct­ing new fos­sil fuels infrastructure.

The Wis­con­sin law did not gen­er­ate in a vac­u­um. The bill, which is sim­i­lar to mod­el ​“crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture” leg­is­la­tion pro­mot­ed by the Amer­i­can Leg­isla­tive Exchange Coun­cil (ALEC), was a response to the Lako­ta-led upris­ing at Stand­ing Rock, N.D., against the Dako­ta Access Pipeline, dur­ing which pro­test­ers built a sprawl­ing camp in the pipeline’s path, chained them­selves to con­struc­tion equip­ment and marched onto the pipeline right-of-way to halt con­struc­tion. After Stand­ing Rock, indus­try groups such as Koch Indus­tries, Marathon Petro­le­um Cor­po­ra­tion and Ener­gy Trans­fer Part­ners mount­ed a lob­by­ing cam­paign in state leg­is­la­tures across the coun­try to advo­cate such anti-protest laws.

The effort has been suc­cess­ful. Accord­ing to Green­peace, Wis­con­sin is the 10th state to insti­tute such a law, and at least 13 oth­ers are con­sid­er­ing sim­i­lar measures.

But that’s not the only con­text that mat­ters. The lat­est U.N. Emis­sions Gap report, issued Tues­day, made head­lines with its ​“bleak” find­ing that because the Earth’s gov­ern­ments have failed to cut emis­sions in the last decade, steep­er cuts are now required much more quick­ly if the world hopes to avoid cat­a­stroph­ic cli­mate change. Accord­ing to the New York Times, the report found that even if every coun­try ful­fills its cur­rent pledge under the Paris Agree­ment, aver­age tem­per­a­tures would be on track to rise by 3.2° Cel­sius above the base­line tem­per­a­ture at the start of the indus­tri­al age. Bleak­er still, many coun­tries, includ­ing the Unit­ed States, which has begun to offi­cial­ly pull out of the agree­ment, are not on track to meet their mod­est pledges under the Paris Agreement.

Bizarrely, even as they pledge to reduce emis­sions, many sig­na­to­ries to the Paris cli­mate accord con­tin­ue to ramp up fos­sil fuel pro­duc­tion. Accord­ing to the U.N. Pro­duc­tion Gap report — issued on Nov. 20, the same day that Gov. Evers signed the bill to squelch pipeline protests — the Earth’s gov­ern­ments plan to extract 50% more fos­sil fuels by 2030 than would be con­sis­tent with a path­way to 2° C of warm­ing and 120% more than would be con­sis­tent with a path­way to 1.5° C of warm­ing. While the pro­duc­tion gap is largest for coal, accord­ing to the report:

Oil and gas are also on track to exceed car­bon bud­gets, as coun­tries con­tin­ue to invest in fos­sil fuel infra­struc­ture that ​“locks in” oil and gas use. The effects of this lock-in widen the pro­duc­tion gap over time, until coun­tries are pro­duc­ing 43% (36 mil­lion bar­rels per day) more oil and 47% (1,800 bil­lion cubic meters) more gas by 2040 than would be con­sis­tent with a 2°C pathway.

The report goes on to explain the mani­ac log­ic coun­tries use to jus­ti­fy increas­ing production:

Many coun­tries appear to be bank­ing on export mar­kets to jus­ti­fy major increas­es in pro­duc­tion (e.g., the Unit­ed States, Rus­sia, and Cana­da) while oth­ers are seek­ing to lim­it or large­ly end imports through scaled-up pro­duc­tion (e.g., India and Chi­na). The net result could be sig­nif­i­cant over-invest­ment, increas­ing the risk of strand­ed assets, work­ers, and com­mu­ni­ties, as well as lock­ing in a high­er emis­sions trajectory.

In short, if gov­ern­ments real­ly did their jobs, they would crim­i­nal­ize pipelines, not protesters.

In response to the reports, Mitch Jones, cli­mate and ener­gy pro­gram direc­tor for Food and Water Action, says our most urgent task is to ​“cut off the sup­ply of fos­sil fuels at their source.” He says, ​“We have no time left to waste on neolib­er­al mar­ket tweaks.”

Jones, how­ev­er, holds out hope that the task may yet be accom­plished by pol­i­cy mak­ers and polit­i­cal lead­ers. Oth­ers, espe­cial­ly peo­ple in front­line and indige­nous com­mu­ni­ties who wit­ness the destruc­tion of fos­sil fuel extrac­tion first hand, aren’t wait­ing on the gov­ern­ment to act. Faced with the abdi­ca­tion by their elect­ed lead­er­ship, as detailed in the U.N. reports, these com­mu­ni­ties are tak­ing the mat­ter into their own hands, and forg­ing a decen­tral­ized glob­al move­ment — that Nao­mi Klein dubs ​“blocka­dia” — to resist, dis­rupt and defeat new fos­sil fuel infra­struc­ture. The move­ment burst into inter­na­tion­al vis­i­bil­i­ty on the Dako­ta plains, but it did not stop there. As it were a milk­weed pod, the North Dako­ta author­i­ties who crushed the Stand­ing Rock camps in Feb­ru­ary 2017 suc­ceed­ed only in spread­ing the seeds far and wide.

Giv­en this con­text, the Wis­con­sin law and oth­ers like it should be seen for what they are: maneu­vers in the cli­mate war, made by mad men intent on strap­ping us all into their dooms­day machine and seal­ing the exits.

These laws are evi­dence, also, of how afraid they are that the block­ade-at-the-source tac­tics that have pro­lif­er­at­ed since Stand­ing Rock just might work.