Bill McKibben and 70 others arrested

[Eternal Sunshine]

I'm rather hoping they let Bill out before October as I've paid good money to hear him speak at http://www.schumacher.org.uk/

He might not be allowed in the country if he has a record for protesting against the government.

[biffvernon]

Fortunately our government has not quite sunk to the depths of the USA's. Yet.

[Eternal Sunshine]

Looks like Obama is showing his true colours:

Campaigners disappointed as White House says 1,700-mile pipeline will not cause significant environmental damage

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... CMP=twt_fd

Why aren't we surprised.

[PS_RalphW]

To be honest I don't see that this pipeline is a big deal.

The tar sands are already being mined, and it is expanding. If the US does not take all that Canada mines, they will ship them to the coast in road tankers and sell it to the Chinese.

One irony is that building the pipeline will raise the headline price of oil as most USians hear it - it will clear the backlog at Cushing and raise WTI back to $110 from $85. (in today's market).

[biffvernon]

I don't think it works like that. Not for nothng is this pipeline called 'Keystone'.

The Keystone pipeline is,

a fifteen hundred mile fuse to the biggest carbon bomb on the continent, a way to make it easier and faster to trigger the final overheating of our planet.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... scompanies

[biffvernon]

Big piece on Al Jazeera

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/fe ... 57837.html

[biffvernon]

Ah yes , protest in front of the White House in August when the congress is on summer recess and the president is playing golf on Martha's Vineyard. A strategy that is bound to work.

Front page of the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/27/busin ... eline.html

[vtsnowedin]

Ah yes , protest in front of the White House in August when the congress is on summer recess and the president is playing golf on Martha's Vineyard. A strategy that is bound to work.

Front page of the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/27/busin ... eline.html

I think this pretty much says it all.

At the same time, rising concerns about the weak economy and high gas prices have made it difficult for the administration to oppose a project that would greatly expand the nation’s access to oil from a friendly neighbor and create tens of thousands of jobs

[biffvernon]

Yep, oil and jobs now are more important a habitable planet for our grandchildren. The grandchildren don't get a vote in democracies.

[biffvernon]

Your help is needed. We have big plans afoot.
Is this email not displaying correctly?
Message from Bill McKibben:

Something big is happening

Dear friends—

Here’s the battle plan we promised—a few hours late, because it’s been a big job wrapping up phase one of this campaign.

By now you know what you accomplished: 1,253 arrests, according to some journalists the biggest civil disobedience action since 1977, and the most sustained since the epic campaigns of the civil rights movement. That was enough to take a regional issue and make it a national and even global one (many thanks to our friends, who picketed American and Canadian embassies on every continent).

Together you managed to make this central environmental test for the administration, and to inform everyone who’s paying attention that Barack Obama will get to make the call by himself, without Congress in the way. In other words, you’ve laid the groundwork for a mighty victory—now we have to make it pay off.

Here’s the plan:

Our main efforts will be to keep the focus on the White House, even as we engage the State Department review process and other technical aspects of the debate. We don’t want the President to be able to hide from the decisions he's making.

And we’re not going to do him the favor of attacking him. Instead, we’re going to pay him the dangerous compliment of taking his words from 2008 seriously. Just to remind you, here are two of the many pledges he made while he was inspiring so many of us to knock on doors and send in donations in 2008:

“Let's be the generation that finally frees America from the tyranny of oil"

"Because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children … this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal."

We're still planning something big for October 7th or 8th - the 7th is the date of the last State Department hearing in Washington, DC - but first we need to go back into our communities to keep building this movement. The White House is going to be watching to see if our sit-in was an isolated incident or whether there really is a movement of people across this country rising up to stop the pipeline.

First, we need to tell the story of what just happened in Washington by meeting with folks in our communities to talk about our experiences. This could be as simple as a small gathering in your home, or as elaborate as you'd like. Your story is the most powerful tool you have to keep building this movement. A few of our organizers got together to make a PowerPoint slideshow that you can use in a meetup, and if you'd like to host an event in your community to spread the word, sign up here: http://www.tarsandsaction.org/meet-up

Second, all around the country, people will be going to Obama campaign offices in polite but firm fashion to remind him that we took him seriously—that he shouldn’t have said it if he didn’t mean it. Watch this video that just arrived from Seattle to get a sense of what we have in mind. We’ll be trying to coordinate this work from city to city—if you’re willing to help in your town, and are certain you can deliver a calm, stern message, sign up here: http://www.tarsandsaction.org/office-visits/

That’s our plan for now. I want to make sure that we use this opportunity to strengthen our connections with each other, and make this a true movement. This is your opportunity to start taking a leadership role in this campaign.

We’ll be giving you updates on plans for the 7th of course, and letting you know what's up. We have no guarantee we’ll succeed, but thanks to you this fight is very much on!

-Bill McKibben for tarsandsaction.org

PS - We’re very aware that the federal government has scheduled the hearing on the 7th for Yom Kippur. With whatever action we take, we will make sure our Jewish brothers and sisters will be able to join us.

[Eternal Sunshine]

Let's be the generation that finally frees America from the tyranny of oil

Good luck with that.

[vtsnowedin]

Funny I spent the holiday weekend doing a normal amount of TV viewing between the other chores and relaxations and I don't recall this subject being brought up even once by a news broadcaster. Perhaps I'm watching the wrong channels. ??

[An Inspector Calls]

. . . Just to remind you, here are two of the many pledges [Obama] made while he was inspiring so many of us to knock on doors and send in donations in 2008:

. . .

"Because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children … this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal."

But Obama has delivered on this promise:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2011-262

Healing nicely, I'd say!

[kenneal - lagger]

Funny I spent the holiday weekend doing a normal amount of TV viewing between the other chores and relaxations and I don't recall this subject being brought up even once by a news broadcaster. Perhaps I'm watching the wrong channels. ??

Perhaps your media don't want to rock the boat for their advertisers.

[ujoni08]

AIC, your linked article says:

'By detecting where water is on the continents, Grace shows us how water moves around the planet," says Steve Nerem, a sea level scientist at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

So where does all that extra water in Brazil and Australia come from? You guessed it--the ocean. Each year, huge amounts of water are evaporated from the ocean. While most of it falls right back into the ocean as rain, some of it falls over land. "This year, the continents got an extra dose of rain, so much so that global sea levels actually fell over most of the last year," says Carmen Boening, a JPL oceanographer and climate scientist. Boening and colleagues presented these results recently at the annual Grace Science Team Meeting in Austin, Texas.

But for those who might argue that these data show us entering a long-term period of decline in global sea level, Willis cautions that sea level drops such as this one cannot last, and over the long-run, the trend remains solidly up. Water flows downhill, and the extra rain will eventually find its way back to the sea. When it does, global sea level will rise again'.

Jon