Motley Moose – Archive

Since 2008 – Progress Through Politics

Keystone XL

Forward on Climate: The Problem with Novel Technologies

Crossposted from the Forward on Climate blogathon at Daily Kos. There is a schedule of diaries and info about the blogathon at the end of the DK diary.

This week, we’ve had an impressive crop of diaries about the Keystone XL project — an pipeline that hooks us more deeply into one of the more damaging fossil fuel extractions we’ve ever seen. Selling oil from the tar sands promises to make Canada a player in the fossil fuel game…

Margaret Atwood, a Canadian, who recently observed that Canadians with The Tar Sands are Hobbits with The Ring. All of the riches in the world belong to he who holds that power. What Canada decides to do with the tar sands will affect energy policy for most of the next century.

With that against all of us — we who want to slow the rate we are pulling carbon out of the ground and putting it into the sky — there are few things we can control directly about Canada’s decision to mine the tar sands. What we can do is address the horse apples. Slowing the process enough could grind it to a halt. Slowing the process will have an impact.

For today’s horse apple, let’s have a few words about what happens when we try to regulate novel energy technology.

Forward on Climate: 350 Silicon Valley…A Call to Action

The Obama administration has done environmentalists a favor by delaying the Keystone XL pipeline decision until June. This will allow activists across the country extra time to raise awareness. Of course it would be easier if he just nixed the whole project, but he seems to like a slower, more reasoned approach with wide public support. This is why it is so important that we take it to the streets. He wants our voice… he wants our support. The Sierra Club, 350.org along with many other organizations are coming together next Sunday for the Forward on Climate rally on the National Mall in Washington, DC. If you can’t make it to the DC event, worry not, chapters of 350.org have coordinated events in solidarity across the country.