As you undoubtedly know, thousands of people, young and old, descended on Washington on November 6th, ringed the White House and told the President that the Keystone XL pipeline was not in the best interests of either the US or the planet. The fact of the turnout was great news in itself, but even better news was to come: President Obama announced a few days later that the decision on the pipeline was going to be delayed until 2013. Here’s coverage from PBS on the decision and some of the swirling politics. Jeff Goodell, the author of the superb Big Coal, said in Rolling Stone, “….the Keystone XL is dead in its tracks.” ‘Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.
For a really excellent insight into how the demonstrations on November 6th came off, preceded last summer by the civil disobedience tied to the Keystone XL project, and how the resulting political pressure has been building, read “Taking it to the Streets” in this week’s New Yorker by Jane Mayer. She cites the historian Michael Kazin who noted “…that the environmentalists grasped the famous point made by Dr. King’s political forebear, Frederick Douglass: ‘Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.'”
