CLIMATE ACTIVISTS IN WHITE HOUSE SIT-IN
A watershed moment for Obama on climate change
Bill McKibben, August 16, 2011 (Washington Post)
"…[M]ore than a thousand people have signed up to be arrested over two weeks beginning Aug. 20 — the biggest display of civil disobedience in the environmental movement in decades and one of the largest nonviolent direct actions since the World Trade Organization demonstrations in Seattle back before Sept. 11…
"The issue is simple: We want the president to block construction of Keystone XL, a pipeline that would carry oil from the tar sands of northern Alberta down to the Gulf of Mexico. We have, not surprisingly, concerns about potential spills and environmental degradation from construction of the pipeline. But those tar sands are also the second-largest pool of carbon in the atmosphere, behind only the oil fields
of Saudi Arabia…"
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"…If we tap into them in a big way, NASA climatologist James Hansen explained in a paper issued this summer, the emissions would mean it’s “essentially game over” for the climate…That’s why the executive directors of many environmental groups and 20 of the country’s leading climate scientists wrote letters asking people to head to Washington for the demonstrations…
"…[I]t may turn out to be a defining moment of the Obama years…because…the president… has to sign a certificate of national interest before the border-crossing pipeline can be built…Congress is not involved, so he doesn’t need to stand up to the global-warming deniers calling the shots in the House…But the president does need to stand up to the fossil fuel industry, which has done its best to influence the decision…It’s a rare, character-defining moment…[and it’s] hard to predict what will happen…"
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