Climate change as a campaign issue could be a surprise winner for Obama.Photo: The White HouseThis essay was originally published on TomDispatch and is republished here with Tom's kind permission. Conventional wisdom has it that the next election will be fought exclusively on the topic of jobs. But President Obama's announcement last week that he would postpone a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline until after the 2012 election, which may effectively kill the project, makes it clear that other issues will weigh in -- and that, oddly enough, one of them might even be climate change. The pipeline decision …

My very favorite piece of punditry about the Keystone XL pipeline appeared the day after President Obama sent it back for more review, perhaps killing it off altogether. It came from the pen of a senior fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations named Michael Levi, who had spent the last few months endlessly opining about why the pipeline should be approved. Proven conclusively wrong, his sour-grapes op-ed explained that, in fact, environmentalists had damaged the cause of clean energy because they’d joined with Nebraska ranchers "who simply did not want a pipeline running through their backyards" to defeat the …

Dear Friends, Um, we won. You won. Not completely. The president didn't outright reject the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline. My particular fantasy -- that he would invite the 1,253 people arrested on his doorstep in August inside the gates for a victory picnic by the vegetable garden -- didn't materialize. But today the president sent the pipeline back to the State Department for a thorough re-review, which most analysts are saying will effectively kill the project. The president explicitly noted climate change, along with the pipeline route, as one of the factors that a new review would need to …

Photo: doctorwonderWhat do you do if you've lost an argument? Say you really really want to build a big pipeline from the tar sands of Alberta so that you can sell your bitumen to the world. But 20 of the nation's top scientists have written to the president to say it's a terrible idea -- and the planet's leading climatologist says burning the tar sands would be "game over for the climate." And nine recent winners of the Nobel Peace Prize have condemned the plan. And Robert Redford has just made a video explaining why the plan is an attack …

Photo: DavidThis essay was originally published on TomDispatch and is republished here with Tom's kind permission. For connoisseurs, Barack Obama's fund-raising emails for the 2012 election campaign seem just a tad forlorn -- slightly limp reminders of the last time 'round. Four years ago at this time, the early adopters among us were just starting to get used to the regular flow of email from the Obama campaign. The missives were actually exciting to get, because they seemed less like appeals for money than a chance to join a movement. Sometimes they came with inspirational videos from Camp Obama, especially …

Sometimes the world asks different things of you. A couple of weeks ago, many of us heeded the planet's call to block a bad thing: the proposed Keystone XL pipeline from the tar sands of Alberta down to the Gulf of Mexico. All in all, 1,253 of us ended up in jail, and many more helped in other ways. That fight's not over yet, not by a long shot. (You can keep up with developments at tarsandsaction.org). But we've all got another side too, one that wants to start good things. Which is why I'm looking forward so much to …

Bill McKibben in Washington, D.C.Photo: Tar Sands ActionDear friends, Here's the battle plan we promised -- a little late, because it's been a big job wrapping up phase one of this campaign. By now you know what you accomplished: 1,253 arrests, according to some journalists the biggest civil disobedience action since 1977, and the most sustained since the epic campaigns of the civil rights movement. That was enough to take a regional issue and make it a national and even global one (many thanks to our friends, who picketed American and Canadian embassies on every continent). Together you managed to …

Protesters in Wellington, New Zealand.Photo: Tar Sands Action Protests against a proposed tar-sands pipeline, which have already mushroomed into the largest civil disobedience actions in America in many years, broke out across the globe today, with solidarity demonstrations at U.S. and Canadian embassies and consulates on six continents. In Durban, South Africa, visiting Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had to cross a picket line thrown up by climate justice campaigners. "We were wearing Barack Obama T-shirts," said organizer Patrick Bond. He said the pickets would continue weekly.  In Wellington, New Zealand, 35 campaigners carrying signs that said "We Are All …

Bill McKibben is arrested in D.C.Photo: tarsandsactionThis essay was originally published on TomDispatch and is republished here with Tom’s kind permission. I didn't think it was possible, but my admiration for Martin Luther King Jr. grew even stronger these past days. As I headed to jail as part of the first wave of what is turning into the biggest civil disobedience action in the environmental movement for many years, I had the vague idea that I would write something. Not an epic like King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," but at least, you know, a blog post. Or a tweet. …