This is an archive of WNV’s coverage of the movement against the Keystone XL pipeline (2011-2015).
Despite a strategy of ignoring climate change during his first term, President Obama appears ready to make it a top priority.
What happens when people from the nation’s largest and oldest environmental organization — the kind that sends cute nature calendars to its well-meaning supporters every year — get arrested in front of the White House? Don’t worry; it wasn’t for anything lewd, like a drunk and disorderly (although ecological collapse should be enough to send… More
An article published by CounterPunch yesterday, “Inconvenient Truths about Tar Sands Action,” argues that the grassroots campaign targeting the Keystone XL pipeline was nothing more than “a manipulated charade, funded and run with loads of money from pro-Obama Democrats through non-transparent organizations like the Tides Foundation.” It follows, then, according to the article, that the real… More
“I think we just won!” That’s what Zack Malitz said, looking rather bewildered, when he got off the phone with New York Senator Chuck Schumer’s office earlier today. The crowd of no more than a hundred activists gathered behind him in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza—just blocks away from Schumer’s office—did not yet know the news. But… More
In a statement released this afternoon, President Obama rejected the Keystone XL oil pipeline that would have linked Canada’s tar sands to Texas’s refineries. Obama had already effectively rejected the pipeline in early November, when he put off a ruling until after the 2013 elections. But the fossil fuel lobby and their allies in Congress… More
Methane is bubbling up from the bottom of Alaskan lakes–the result of ancient organic matter thawing and decomposing from its once icy chamber in an ever warming climate. This is just one of several ways the melting of Arctic permafrost could create a precipitous increase in greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere and speed up global… More
Environmental victories are so rare that apparently even environmentalists don’t quite know how to kick back and rejoice. At a rally in Trenton, New Jersey on Monday, discussion veered between joyous celebration of Friday’s announcement by the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) to indefinitely postpone a vote that would have paved the way for 20,000… More
Since last week’s “victory” against the tar sands industry, the question circulating among this growing climate movement has been, “What to do next?” When 350.org polled its supporters, twice as many people voted to fight oil and gas fracking than for any other cause. While it’s hard to prioritize any one threat to the climate,… More
“We won. You won.” Those were Bill McKibben’s first words after the Obama administration’s announcement yesterday that it would delay a decision on the Canada-to-Texas KeystoneXL oil pipeline until after the 2012 election. His next words, however, were slightly less uplifting: “Not completely.” This seems like an accurate read on the situation. On the positive… More
On June 11, 1963, President John F. Kennedy addressed the nation on the issue of civil rights and declared, “We are confronted primarily with a moral issue… as old as scriptures and… as clear as the American Constitution.” The president had long viewed civil rights as a historical injustice and private moral issue but this… More