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Earlier this week, Mississippi rejected the awful personhood amendment that would have put fertilized eggs above the rights of women to use birth control, get abortions, and even use IVF. Hooray! That was a bit of somewhat unexpected sanity on the part of the voting public. Of course the creeps behind the amendment intend to try again in other states, so the battle continues, but winning in a conservative state like Mississippi is a big deal.
I just heard about another piece of political good news. I've been following the fight against the Keystone XL pipeline, a proposed pipeline that would have carried oil from Canada's tar sands down to the US Gulf Coast refineries. Not only would this have involved potential for oil spills across important watersheds, valuable farmland, and wilderness, it would have supported tar sand oil, which has an environmental impact even more devastating than other oil. Mining it involves essentially skinning huge tracts of land, then requires processes to convert the tar sand into oil that themselves use large quantities of energy, making tar sand oil a climate catastrophe. The pipeline's approval depended on a permit that could be issued by the executive branch, no need to involve congress. Thus, protestors have focused on asking President Obama to turn down the pipeline and live up to his campaign promises to fight climate change. The good news is that Obama has just sent the pipeline back to the state department for thorough review, which could well kill the project. YAY!!! This isn't over, but it's another important victory that seemed unlikely not so long ago. We get so few even minor victories in the struggle against climate change in the US, so this is cause for celebration.
Two pieces of political good news in one week. That must be some sort of record. In celebration, let's watch a video of astronauts falling down on the moon:
I just heard about another piece of political good news. I've been following the fight against the Keystone XL pipeline, a proposed pipeline that would have carried oil from Canada's tar sands down to the US Gulf Coast refineries. Not only would this have involved potential for oil spills across important watersheds, valuable farmland, and wilderness, it would have supported tar sand oil, which has an environmental impact even more devastating than other oil. Mining it involves essentially skinning huge tracts of land, then requires processes to convert the tar sand into oil that themselves use large quantities of energy, making tar sand oil a climate catastrophe. The pipeline's approval depended on a permit that could be issued by the executive branch, no need to involve congress. Thus, protestors have focused on asking President Obama to turn down the pipeline and live up to his campaign promises to fight climate change. The good news is that Obama has just sent the pipeline back to the state department for thorough review, which could well kill the project. YAY!!! This isn't over, but it's another important victory that seemed unlikely not so long ago. We get so few even minor victories in the struggle against climate change in the US, so this is cause for celebration.
Two pieces of political good news in one week. That must be some sort of record. In celebration, let's watch a video of astronauts falling down on the moon:
