The joy in some quarters over the Obama decision to deny the permit to TransCanada to build the Keystone XL pipeline to carry tarsands oil from Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico. I’m glad for the decision, but it was hardly a ringing endorsement of either concerns about potential damage caused by spills from the pipeline or concerns about what tapping into the tar sands will do to the climate. Rather, it was political posturing for effect by DC politicians on either end of Pennsylvania Avenue. The GOP forced a rider into must-pass legislation saying “You’ve got 60 days to approve or deny” and State said — back then — that with that kind of a time limit, they’d have no choice but to deny. And this week, they did just that.

As Bill McKibben says, “We’ve won no permanent victory (environmentalists never do) but we have shown that spirited people can bring science back to the fore.”

Come Tuesday, Bill will be taking a group of spirited people to Capital Hill, to take the fight to the science-deniers who live off the money from Big Oil. It should be quite something.

Everything changed on September 11, 2001. It’s become an American truism. And for many, it’s also absolutely true. It certainly was the case for Tom Engelhardt. He was roughly seven miles north of the World Trade Center that morning and that’s about the furthest he’s been from it since.

The Obama administration will likely soon announce that the State Department will consider an alternative route for the Keystone XL Pipeline. If that happens, it will likely delay any decision on the pipeline until after the 2012 election.

I was at the White House once again yesterday protesting the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline along with many of the folks I was arrested with on September 9 including Dan Choi, Jessica, Ari, Scarecrow and Bill McKibben. It was really gratifying to see that our relatively small crew of 65 who were handcuffed, [...]

There are two flashpoints coming up on the Keystone XL pipeline: Nebraska is holding a session today to consider how it might force the pipeline sponsors to reroute the pipeline away from the giant Agallala Aquifer. On November 6, Bill McKibben’s group has organized an effort to surround the White House in protest.

Bill McKibben is one of the most effective and widely-respected writers on environmental issues today. Starting with The End of Nature in 1989, he’s written and published a long line of powerful works that make complex environmental issues accessible to a general audience.

Bill McKibben made a direct connection between the greed and corruption of the corporate/financial system represented by Wall Street and the greed and folly on global climate change represented by the Keystone XL Pipeline and tar sands oil development in Alberta, Canada. He invited the Occupy participants to join him in circling the White House on November 6 to liberate Barack Obama from his stunt double.

Bill McKibben, 350.org founder and leader of the recent TarSands protests and arrests in front of the White House, has an op-ed in the New York Times today that will not make President Obama happy.
McKibben pointedly links the corporate cronyism shown by the Obama State Department’s cozy relationship with the sponsors and lobbyists for the Keystone XL Pipeline with Dick Cheney’s Big Oil dominated 2001 energy task force.

I’ll be at the 3pm demonstration at the White House today with Naomi Klein, Bill McKibben and others, and I hope to be livestreaming the event. Cross your fingers they’re not vindictively arrested by the Park Police on behalf of a thin-skinned government.

Welcome to “under the bus,” environmentalists and eco-conscious Eaarth citizens. We gays have decorated it quite festively, and our Latino and other immigrant communities have added their own touches as well. We’ve all been thrown under here, sacrificed to the highest goal: Obama’s re-election.