Health & Environment

• Environmentalist Bill McKibben was among 100 people arrested on the weekend  (Aug 20-21) for protesting against the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. But why are climate campaigners so concerned?
• 3 Reasons Why the Tar Sands Pipeline Has to Be Stopped

Dana Nuccitelli, London Guardian | UK/OpEdNews.com

This article is made possible with the generous contributions of readers like you. Thank you!

Bill McKibben is leading what may be the largest green civil disobedience campaign in a generation, against the proposed construction of the 1,600-mile long Keystone XL pipeline.  The pipeline would transport oil from the Alberta tar sands in Canada to American refineries at the Gulf of Mexico, and many are concerned about the associated impacts on the climate.  Digging up new sources of fossil fuels will inevitably increase the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, and the tar sands result in higher carbon emissions than even conventional oil. 

On 15 June 2011, the Energy and Power Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Panel approved a bill to expedite a decision on the pipeline, possibly trying to rush it through before adequate environmental impact assessments are completed.

The project must be approved by President Obama in order to proceed, and the aim of the protest is to convince the president to reject the project.

If the Keystone pipeline is not approved, the tar sands oil may be stuck in place.  As McKibben noted, "Alberta is remote, and its only other possible pipeline route — to the Pacific and hence Asia — is tangled in litigation."

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Related:

3 Reasons Why the Tar Sands Pipeline Has to Be Stopped, Janet Redman, AlterNet

• Here's three reasons why the pipeline is truly idiotic and why I'm willing to get arrested to stop it.
• Video: Josh Fox for the Tar Sands Action

'Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.' - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr

3 New Items including:

• Will Clarence and Virginia Thomas succeed in killing Obama’s health-care plan
• Universal Health Care: Can We Afford Anything Less?
• Universal Health Care in Vermont?

David Culver, ed., Evergreene Digest

Joe Heller

Will Clarence and Virginia Thomas succeed in killing Obama’s health-care plan? Jeffrey Toobin, New Yorker Magazine

• Thomas’s views both reflect and inspire the Tea Party movement, which his wife has helped lead almost since its inception.
• For decades the conservative movement has called for a small federal government, but for the Tea Party, and for Thomas, small government is a constitutional command.
• Impeach Clarence Thomas.

Universal Health Care: Can We Afford Anything Less? Gerald Friedman, Dollars & Sense/Truthout
Why only a single-payer system can solve America’s health-care mess.

Universal Health Care in Vermont? Firedog Lake

• Only If Obama Administration Allows
• Firedoglake and Physicians for a National Health Program Petition to Kathleen Sebelius Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services
• Add your name to our letter
• Single-Payer in Vermont, A State of Healthy Firsts

• California has four of the top 20 metropolitan areas in the nation facing food hardship. Fresno ranked fifth, Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana area ranked 18th (28.3 percent).
• And, according to Kidsdata.org, 59 percent and 62.3 percent of children living in the Fresno and Los Angeles County, respectively, are Latino.

Raul Rodriguez, New America Media

This article is made possible with the generous contributions of readers like you. Thank you!

One in four California households with children reported food hardship, according to a new analysis of Gallup data released last Thursday by the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC).

“It’s disturbing, but not surprising,” said Kelly Hardy, director of health policy at Children Now.

The report analyzed data gathered as part of the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index project’s responses to the question: “Have there been times in the past 12 months when you did not have enough money to buy food that you or your family needed?”

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