Politics

How the pipeline died — and how to bury it for good

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This Wednesday afternoon, the Obama administration rejected the permit for Keystone XL, a 1,700 mile oil pipeline that would have run from the tar sands of Alberta to refineries on the Gulf of Mexico. The announcement is a huge victory for the grassroots climate movement. While the fight to stop the Keystone XL pipeline is over for now, the political battle over the consequences of Obama’s decision is just beginning. Big Oil front groups like the American Petroleum Institute and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are already spending millions of dollars on TV ads to bash the President over Keystone XL.

Waking up, walking away

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Today’s industrial societies preen themselves on their openness to change and the vast number of choices they provide to their inmates — er, citizens. Why is it, then, that all those changes and choices inevitably amount to more of what we’ve already got — which is not exactly working well any more? The Archdruid considers the options, and offers an unwelcome but necessary suggestion.

Rajasthan’s cutting-edge public policies to promote land commons

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If only the rest of the world could emulate the Government of Rajasthan in India in adopting public policies to promote the commons! As the Times of India reports “Rajasthan has become the first state in the country to have drafted a policy underlining the importance and the need to preserve and secure common land (commons) in rural areas.” There may be other such government policies around the world, but they are few and far between.  The Rajasthan policies are a real breakthrough.

Bumper 2011 grain harvest fails to rebuild global stocks

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The world’s farmers produced more grain in 2011 than ever before. Estimates from the U.S. Department of Agriculture show the global grain harvest coming in at 2,295 million tons, up 53 million tons from the previous record in 2009. Consumption grew by 90 million tons over the same period to 2,280 million tons. Yet with global grain production actually falling short of consumption in 7 of the past 12 years, stocks remain worryingly low, leaving the world vulnerable to food price shocks.

Security by Design

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It is commonly assumed that our national security depends only on our capacity to project military power beyond our borders and has little to do with how we organize the internal business of the country. The nation’s armed strength and its “soft power” are necessary components of security, but they are not—and cannot be—the whole of it. A larger vision of security includes the internal resilience, health, and sustainability of the nation, that is to say its capacity for self-renewal. Real security, in other words, is inseparable from issues of energy policy; education; public health; preservation of soils, forests, and waters; and broadly based, sustainable prosperity.