MT Leg: Sen Baucus Shares Love of KeystoneXL Pipeline, Dirty Tar Sands Oil

by: Matthew Koehler

Thu Jan 10, 2013 at 16:00:01 PM MST

The Keystone XL Pipeline would take dirty tar sands oil from Canada and transport most of it through Montana, down the U.S. Great Plains to export docks in the Gulf of Mexico.

While you wouldn't really know it from following most Montana media outlets, construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline has already begun in part of rural Texas.  For over two months, local landowners, environmental activists, indigenous people and many others have been literally putting their bodies on the line with non-violent direct action to stop construction.

Here's a pretty dramatic video of Daryl Hannah (yes, that Daryl Hannah) and local Texas landowner/farmer Eleanor Fairchild taking direct action to stop construction...if even for a little bit. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

Ironically, Fairchild was arrested for "trespassing" on her own land.  After the action, Hannah wrote this piece for the UK Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/comm...

Learn more about this effort in the story below from the Texas Observer and at http://www.facebook.com/TarSan...

Iron Hands Behind the Pine Curtain
by Saul Elbein
Thursday, January 10, 2013
http://www.texasobserver.org/i...

The call came, finally, at nine o'clock in the morning. I was sitting in a cheap hotel in Nacogdoches, literally tapping my foot with impatience, when my phone rang. It was Ethan Nuss, one of the press people with the Tar Sands Blockade, the movement that has been waging a nonviolent guerilla war against the Keystone XL pipeline for the last two months.

"You ready to go?" Ethan asked. "We have two options. Out near Wells we have some guys hanging from trees. And at another site . . ." he paused, consulting his notes, "four blockaders locked to heavy machinery. Cops have been called to both places."

Entire story at: http://www.texasobserver.org/i...

Where do MT politicians stand on Keystone XL Pipeline?

by: Matthew Koehler

Thu Sep 08, 2011 at 07:23:26 AM MST

Must Read for Montana Progressives

by: Matthew Koehler

Fri Apr 01, 2011 at 10:58:29 AM MST

http://www.thenation.com/artic...

Wolverine ruling puts politics ahead of science

by: Matthew Koehler

Thu Dec 16, 2010 at 09:59:16 AM MST

This week President Obama's U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) decided the wolverine warranted listing under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). That action, in response to a lawsuit by conservation organizations, marks a dramatic turnaround from the agency's decision a mere two years ago that denied protection for these exceedingly rare animals. Unfortunately, wolverines will not be placed on the endangered species list and receive the protection they deserve. Instead, they will join hundreds of other species and continue their one-way march to extinction because the agency claims it doesn't have enough funding....

[T]hanks to both political expediency and the budgetary black hole into which ongoing wars have plunged the nation, even though the numbers of species deserving protection continues to grow every year, fewer and fewer plants and animals are actually being listed. Instead, as with the wolverine, the agency and the U.S. Congress that funds it, says protection is warranted, but their continued existence on the planet is a cost we just can't afford.

Even worse, we now have politicians like Montana's own Democratic Sens. Max Baucus and Jon Tester, who believe it's time to simply remove animals from the Endangered Species List through congressional mandate. I'm talking about the gray wolf, of course, a topic that never fails to spark heated debate these days over their numbers, livestock and wildlife predation, and the subsequent cost to sheep and cattle producers.

What Tester and Baucus fail to consider, however, is the consequences of their actions. If they succeed in pulling wolves from the endangered species list through a simple bill—or more likely, given Tester's recent proclivities, a rider on unassociated, "must pass" legislation—they will set a precedent that will literally gut the ESA....

The choice is clear. Congress can and should act. At the current level of more than $2 billion a day, only two or three days of military spending would fund the endangered species program into the foreseeable future. The excuse of "budgetary concerns" is simply a sad hoax perpetrated by politicians kow-towing to corporate interests. Unfortunately, between that and legislative manipulation of the endangered species list, this generation is stealing the future from those yet to come.