Stopping the Biggest Carbon Bomb on the Planet - Bill McKibben

[limpyhobbler]

I haven’t written about the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline for a while, except to try and rally support for the brave people blockading construction along its southern portion. After more than two weeks in the trees of Texas, their dramatic action is drawing more and more attention, as they reveal the recklessness and heartlessness of a company like TransCanada—the kind that will call the cops to get a great-grandmother and arrest her for “trespassing” on her own land when she protests the pipeline crossing it.

The larger part of the Keystone pipeline project—the northern leg to Canada—has been on the political back-burner since last year’s massive protests. Since that northern leg would have been a fuse to the biggest carbon bomb on the planet, we counted that as a temporary victory.

The State Department is supposedly figuring out how to calculate the climate risk from the tar sands, something they failed to do last time round—but so far there’s no sign they have a real plan. Neither candidate for President has expressed any opposition to building the pipeline, so it may be just a matter of weeks before we need your help again, and in a big way.

And in the meantime, we have a piece of truly good news. Our friends in Canada have done a remarkable job of organizing opposition to the so-called Northern Gateway pipeline that would carry tar sands gunk to the Pacific. As this article in Canada’s leading paper put it last week, that plan is effectively dead, dashed against the rock-solid opposition of Indigenous groups, and Canadian climate activists both. With it goes the favorite talking point of Keystone backers, that “they’ll just send it to China anyway.”
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complete piece: http://ecowatch.org/2012/carbon-bomb/

[villager]

1. "Neither candidate for President has expressed any opposition to building the pipeline...."

sigh.....

[AverageJoe90]

2. We'll take any good news we can get right now.

I only hope we can continue fighting. We're doing okay, but we need to keep pushing. If we try hard enough, we'll have a good chance of beating them. And many, many Kudos to the Indigenous people and others who bravely made a stand for the environment. Bravo!