I have been an environmentalist for my whole life, but I’ve only become an activist this year. Bill McKibben and Gus Speth inspired me to dive headfirst into the Tar Sands Action movement to stop the Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta to Texas, from getting arrested during my first week living in D.C. to attending State Department hearings to helping encircle the White House six bodies deep. It seemed like a really long shot at first, and then like it would be a slow progress, and all the while pipeline approval seemed more inevitable than anything else…until one week ago, when all of a sudden it wasn’t so inevitable anymore. The State Department announced it will be re-reviewingTransCanada’s environmental impact statement for the convenient period of at least a year, bringing the final approval to a time just after the next presidential election.
As Bill McKibben said, “um…we won.”