The Pipeline and the Paradigm: Keystone XL, Tar Sands, and the Battle to Defuse the Carbon Bomb - Softcover

Avery, Samuel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0985574828 ISBN 13: 9780985574826

Publisher: Ruka Press, 2013

Synopsis

This thoroughly researched and wholly engaging book investigates the economic, ecological, political, and psychological issues behind the Keystone XL pipeline—a project so controversial it has inspired the largest expression of civil disobedience since the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. With enough carbon trapped in the Canadian tar sands to plunge the Earth into irreversible climate change, it is the Keystone XL pipeline that will set that carbon free. The debate rages on over whether this 2,100-mile long steel pipeline is a vital piece America’s energy future or the conduit for global climate disaster. From the enormous tar sands mines in Alberta to a tree-top blockade in Texas, this book introduces the people and explores the competing interests that power the environmental issue of the current generation.

About this title

About the Author

Samuel Avery is a certified solar installer, longtime social activist, and trainer in nonviolent resistance techniques. He is the author of four books, including The Buddha and the Quantum and The Globalist Papers. He lives in Louisville, Kentucky. Bill McKibben is an environmentalist, an activist, and the cofounder and chairman of the board of 350.org. He is the author of Eaarth and The End of Nature. He lives in Vermont.

From Booklist

Almost unmentioned by the mainstream media a few years ago, the Keystone XL pipeline project, which would extend an existing oil pipeline from Canada to Texas refineries, suddenly became controversial when President Obama temporarily halted its construction in 2012. Environmentalists quickly vilified the pipeline as an agent in exacerbating global warming, while industrialists extolled its potential to create jobs and promote energy independence. No stranger to divisive ecological issues, Avery, a longtime social activist and solar-panel entrepreneur, offers a guided tour of all the contentious issues surrounding the pipeline, from climate scientists’ assertion that Canadian tar sands oil extraction will almost double atmospheric carbon dioxide to the risk of damaged ecosystems wherever the pipeline is built. While Avery gives pipeline promoters a fair hearing, it’s clear where his values lie in framing opposition to Keystone XL as the most critical environmental cause of our time. Allowing the project to continue could spell irreversible climate change, while blocking it would signal a global paradigm shift in finally putting our planet’s welfare above industry-driven profit. Extremely useful analysis as debate continues. --Carl Hays

Edition details

• Publisher: Ruka Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0985574828
• ISBN 13: 9780985574826
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240