Above All Else
More Information on the film, Above All Else
Apart from premiering at the 2014 South by Southwest Film Festival, ABOVE ALL ELSE has won “Best North American Documentary” at the Global Visions Film Festival, in Edmonton, Alberta and a Special Jury Prize at the Dallas International Film Festival. The Houston Film Critics Society nominated it for a 2014 Texas Independent Film Award. The film also screened during the historic Climate Week activities in New York City in September 2014. After a successful festival run and many screenings with community and activist groups around the US and Canada, ABOVE ALL ELSE has been released on leading digital pay-per-view platforms. Here is the digital download of Above All Else, along with a BONUS recording of a panel discussion with filmmaker John Fiege, Reverend Lennox Yearwood, Jr. and Julia Trigg Crawford, moderated by Steven Mufson of The Washington Post.
Above All Else is a dramatic, firsthand account from the front lines of the climate fight, shedding light on the high cost of resistance to the enormous political and financial power of the fossil fuel industry.
First proposed in 2008, the Keystone XL pipeline (pdf) is a multi-billion dollar project that is slated to transport tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada, across six U.S. states to refineries on the Texas Gulf Coast – a path which involved cutting straight through the land of David Daniel (above), a retired stuntman and high wire artist living in East Texas. While proponents claimed that the pipeline would increase North American energy independence and create jobs, the Keystone XL has faced opposition from day one, and Daniel joined that resistance.
Pipeline opponents have a wide variety of concerns, from property rights and indigenous rights, to water quality and ecological destruction. Yet the most fervent and controversial reason many people oppose tar sands is that its exploitation will release massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and further disrupt the Earth’s climate, while diverting attention and resources away from low-impact, renewable, domestic energy. For these reasons, environmental groups such as the Tar Sands Blockade, which Daniel welcomed onto his land, specifically targeted the Keystone XL and created a campaign of civil disobedience to stop its construction.
In 2011, the fight against the Keystone XL pipeline became the most visible fight in the American environmental movement when over 1,200 people – including Daniel and his neighbors Eleanor Fairchild and Julia Trigg Crawford – were arrested in front of the White House. A few months later, 12,000 people formed a ring around the White House to urge President Obama to reject the pipeline’s permits. Nonetheless, in March 2012 the president fast-tracked the southern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline which would run from Oklahoma to the Gulf Coast, and pass through our subjects' lands.
In response, David Daniels, with help from the Tar Sands Blockade, began a tree-sit in protest, constructing a visually stunning “tree village” directly in the path of the Keystone XL. Susan Scott (above) offered her land for Tar Sands Blockade to host the Texas Keystone Convergence training action, while Julia Trigg Crawford (below) refused to sign an easement agreement and fought the pipeline company, TC Energy, all the way to the Texas Supreme Court.
Eleanor Fairchild (below) also joined the protest against the Keystone XL, urging the president to stop its construction, and was arrested on her property for impeding construction crews. The consequences of their choices to stand up for the environment and their property rights forms the core of our story in Above All Else.
Although there were efforts to authorize the Keystone XL pipeline during the Obama administration, the permits were denied for an extension in 2015. The Trump administration approved construction in 2017 through an executive order, but it was met with litigation. In Rosebud Sioux v. Trump, tribes argued that the order infringed upon treaty rights and tribal sovereignty. The ruling in 2020 stated that the presidential permit to TC Energy only authorized the pipeline at the borders of the United States and Canada, but did not approve the construction of the entire pipeline route across U.S. land. In 2021, former President Joe Biden signed an executive order revoking the permit, and the proposal to build the Keystone XL pipeline was terminated by TC Energy.
As of 2025, President Donald Trump has shown interest in the construction of the pipeline, but not much has come of it.
The Keystone XL pipeline continues to be a symbol of the ongoing environmental movement, and serves as a beacon of hope.