Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Yes or No For a Climate-Killing Oil Pipeline -- and Obama Gets to Make the Call

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Yes or No For a Climate-Killing Oil Pipeline -- and Obama Gets to Make the Call

Click here to access article by Bill McKibben from Tom Dispatch.

This noted environmentalist reports on plans for a new oil pipeline that will accelerate the transmission, and thus the production, of the dirtiest form of oil on earth. As you can see, this political liberal, by referring only to Obama, obscures the real decision makers and their system which makes such plans inevitable.

So there will be a battle, and there will be nothing complicated or abstract about it. It will be based on one question: Does that carbon stay in the earth, or does it pour into the atmosphere? Given the trillions of dollars at stake it will be a hard fight, and there’s no guarantee of victory. But at least there’s no fog here, no maze of technicalities.