Culture and Coexistence into the Great Unknown
With “ambitious but achievable” transportation and land use proposals left off the table, California’s first climate protection mandated Sustainable Communities Strategy aimed high but did not quite achieve setting the San Diego region on a long-term course toward sustainability.
REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) purports to combat global warming by saving rainforests, but without reducing greenhouse gas emissions, nor putting the capitalist system and its excesses—the real causes of environmental disaster—on the table.
President Obama: We citizens for Tar Sands Action in Los Angeles laud your decision to send the Keystone XL Pipeline back to the State Department for re-review. Yet, ensuring climate stability, protecting land and water resources, and launching an alternative clean energy economy will take much more work.
The COP17 climate meeting in Durban, South Africa, is themed “Saving Tomorrow Today.” The environmental impact of hydroelectric dams in Africa and beyond places tomorrow’s ecosystem sustainability at risk.
Reducing oil dependence. Strengthening energy security. Creating jobs. Tackling global warming. Addressing air pollution. Improving our health. The Union of Concerned Scientists has outlined a US national blueprint for a clean energy economy.
Keystone XL, touted to bring jobs and energy security, will do neither. Even if the pipeline never spilled, even if the tar sands weren’t an environmental atrocity, this would still be a bad deal for the US public.
While thousands surrounded the White House, a hundred people marched through downtown Los Angeles in solidarity calling for Obama to reject the 1,700-mile tar sands oil pipeline from Alberta, Canada to the Gulf Coast.