By Ellen M. Gilmer
Cusi Ballew is willing to die to stop drilling.
He’s climbing a dozen feet above the soggy ground this September afternoon for practice. When the time comes, he’ll climb even higher and dare authorities to cut the ropes. A couple of slits could send him plunging 60 feet down.
That’s what it takes, he says, to draw attention to rampant natural gas development in the area.
In July, dozens of demonstrators put the tactic to work. They blocked an access road with debris and crisscrossed ropes connected to two tree sitters 60 feet up in central Pennsylvania’s Moshannon State Forest. Beyond them towered a 70-foot natural gas drilling rig, which could be accessed only by toppling the blockade and slashing the climbers’…
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