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Keystone pipeline leak days before Nebraska expansion ruling

TransCanada Corp.’s Keystone pipeline leaked an estimated 210,000 gallons of oil onto agricultural land in northeastern South Dakota, but state officials don’t believe the leak polluted any surface water bodies or drinking water systems.

State officials and pipeline operator TransCanada Corp. disclosed the leak Thursday, and the company shut down the pipeline.

TransCanada said it activated emergency response procedures after detecting a drop in pressure resulting from the leak south of a pump station in Marshall County. The cause was being investigated.

Discovery of the leak comes just days before Nebraska regulators are scheduled to announce their decision Monday whether to approve the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline, an expansion that would boost the amount of oil TransCanada is now shipping through the existing line, which is known simply as Keystone. The expansion has faced fierce opposition from environmental groups, American Indian tribes and some landowners.

This lady takes the wrong approach to literally everything…

Y’all wanted your Keystone pipeline and predictably it comes with 210,000 gallons of oil spilled onto your farmland. https://t.co/YP4T2hSdOa

— Joy WE VOTED!! WEAR A MASK!! Reid 😷) (@JoyAnnReid) November 17, 2017

The Lakota Sioux warned us.
Tribal nations tried to protect us.
Relatives at Standing Rock fought for the health of our land.

DAPL maimed us, tapped our phones, and infiltrated camp so they could leak oil and poison our water.

Time to end fossil fuels.#MniWiconi https://t.co/26a2KYdHnO

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) November 16, 2017

Hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil have just spilled from the #KeystonePipeline. How long until it’s @Enbridge Line 5? #ShutDownLine5

— Abdul El-Sayed, MD, DPhil (@AbdulElSayed) November 16, 2017

Democrats Are Doomed Unless They Start Listening to Millennials

2017 is the year of the youth vote. From the stunning surge of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party in the UK elections to Ralph Northam’s victory in Virginia, the power of young voters to influence political outcomes is increasingly clear. It is often absurd to speak in terms of “generational ethos,” but the cohort that voted so strongly for Labour in the UK and the Democratic Party in the US do have shared memories. Coming of age during a cataclysmic recession caused by the excesses of the 1 percent, millennials have experienced a political system that prioritized assets over human beings. They’ve watched as failures of the elite class resulted in the further accumulation of wealth in the hands of the ruling class, even while pundits declared that the system worked.

The Boomer generation, secure in the post-war welfare state, felt no compunctions pulling up the ladder. They voted for white supremacists devoted to the destruction of the social safety net while secure in the knowledge that their own healthcare would remain cheap—and indeed, Medicare has not been threatened by the Republican Party like Medicaid has. Yet despite the clear leftward lean of young people, caused in no small part by the Great Recession, pundits have frequently overlooked their electoral power, and too many Democrats still don’t know how to energize them.

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The implications of the increasingly powerful youth vote are clear, if Democrats want to embrace them. Though elections are often decided by turnout among young people, many Democratic strategists have spent their time concerned with winning back older whites. The tactics Democrats have been advised to pursue to attract Obama to Trump voters, such as criticizing “sanctuary cities”, ceding ground on immigration enforcement, and rejecting “multiculturalism,” won’t play well with young people. Millennial independents are more racially liberal than non-millennial independents. While moving to the center on race may have helped Democrats win “independent” voters in the past, the strategy will have diminishing returns.

The diversity of the millennial generation can be see in the young candidates running for office across the country. The down-ballot races in 2018 will build the next generation of political talent. Daniel Squadron, a former New York state senator and executive director at Future Now Fund, argues that Democrats have often missed opportunities down-ballot. “For the first time, people see the potential in state races, but the seeds that are planted take time to sprout,” he told me. “The focus has to be maintained in 2018, and in accountability after candidates are first elected.”

“Young people are ready to take back our democracy, to build the future we’re going to live in. It’s time our politics and our politicians reflect that,” Abdul El-Sayed a Democratic gubernatorial candidate in Michigan who transformed a public health department eviscerated by privatization, told me. He highlighted policies like “tuition relief, universal healthcare, environmental protection and clean energy,” that he felt would mobilize young voters.,

What Democratic civil war? The left already won.

There’s been lots of talk about a supposed civil war brewing within the Democratic Party, as its centrist and progressive wings vie for power. But at least as a matter of presidential politics, this talk isn’t premature — it’s too late. The war may not have been won but the eventual victor is clear: By the end of the 2020 presidential primaries, an increasingly liberal grass-roots activist base is likely to have gained full control of the party.

The party that nominated Barack Obama to the presidency almost a decade ago had moved considerably to the left by the end of his second term. Hillary Clinton was barely able to withstand these changes in her campaign against Bernie Sanders. She ultimately secured the nomination by harnessing the remnants of the decaying Democratic political apparatus and racking up overwhelming support from the appointed superdelegates.

This transformation has been building since the beginning of the past decade, fueled by Bush v. Gore, George W. Bush’s subsequent decision to go to war in Iraq and growing income inequality exacerbated by the economic crisis. The Trump presidency has only further energized the liberal base.

It is difficult to overstate the depth and breadth of the move to the left on social and economic policies among Democrats since Bill Clinton’s presidency. The Pew Values Survey released last month found that the percentage of Democrats and Democratic leaners who express liberal or mostly liberal political values exploded from 30 percent in 1994 to 73 percent in 2017.

Two months after Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands are still living in misery. As a nation we must do better. pic.twitter.com/a11cjeTZUs

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) November 16, 2017

Tribes make renewed push for pipeline protections

Two American Indian tribes in the Dakotas are making a renewed push to bolster protections for their water supply while federal officials further study the potential impact of the recently completed Dakota Access oil pipeline.

Lawyers for the Standing Rock and Cheyenne River Sioux tribes on Wednesday filed court documents urging a federal judge to reject the recent arguments of federal officials and the pipeline developer that the tribes’ proposals are unnecessary or unwarranted.

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg is requiring the Army Corps of Engineers to further review the pipeline’s impact on tribal interests, but he’s allowing oil to continue flowing while that work is done over the next several months.

The tribes fear any oil spill beneath the Lake Oahe reservoir on the Missouri River would contaminate their water supply. They want additional protections including implementation of an emergency spill response plan that incorporates tribal input and includes equipment staging.

The Corps and Texas-based pipeline developer Energy Transfer Partners maintain the pipeline is safe. Their attorneys argued in court documents earlier this month that the tribal proposals aren’t needed, would duplicate other efforts or would be burdensome.

‘Biggest Pile of Money on the Planet’ To Dump Fossil Fuels Holdings

Environmental advocates on Thursday applauded the latest organization to shift away from continued support of the fossil fuel industry—Norway’s national bank.

In a move 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben called “astonishing,” Norges Bank, which oversees the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, advised the Norwegian government to dump all of its shares in oil and gas companies, leaving those entities out of its $1 trillion fund.

The bank’s decision comes two years after Norway’s parliament approved a measure calling for the fund to begin divesting from coal companies.

Norges Bank made the new recommendation in light of falling oil prices. Oil and gas are seen as increasingly risky investments as more countries turn to cleaner energy sources in order to meet requirements under the Paris climate agreement, which aims to keep global warming under two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

While Norway has built much of its sovereign wealth through oil and gas development in the past—six percent of the fund is invested in fossil fuels—it’s now home to a fast-growing solar power sector, with solar installations rising by 366 percent from 2015 to 2016.

Judge won’t impose deadline in gas pipeline suit

A federal judge tells developers of the Mountain Valley Pipeline he won’t order all landowners in its West Virginia lawsuit to respond by Dec. 4 to motions for summary judgment for rights of way available under federal regulations.

The Charleston Gazette-Mail reports that U.S. District Judge John Copenhaver at a status conference Thursday said he wants the developers to locate landowners and serve them with court papers.

How the Alaska Pipeline Is Fueling the Push to Drill in the Arctic Refuge

he war over the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) — one of the most contentious and enduring environmental fights in U.S. history — is once again heating up.

Congress is considering a budget bill that permits oil drilling throughout the coastal plain of the Arctic Refuge. With Republicans controlling the executive and legislative branches of government, proponents like Alaska Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski believe now is the best chance in decades to develop the refuge.

The debate over drilling in ANWR — a wilderness area nearly as large as South Carolina — has long pitted protecting this pristine environment against American energy security and creating jobs. But behind these talking points is a material infrastructure, the 800-mile Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, that has been incentivizing Arctic development for decades.

The truth is that the need to keep feeding the 40-year-old pipeline with oil is a key factor behind the current drive to open ANWR to fossil fuel drilling. The volume of oil flowing through the Alaska Pipeline has fallen sharply in recent decades, from a peak of two million barrels of North Slope oil a day in 1988 to 500,000 barrels a day last year. That steep reduction has created numerous technical problems, including a buildup of ice and paraffin wax (naturally found in crude oils) that hinders the easy passage of oil. One solution to the sluggish pipeline flow? Pump more oil into it, hence the drive by Congress and the Trump Administration to drill in ANWR and the nearby National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPRA).

As a result, the nation is now confronted with a great irony: The Alaska Pipeline was approved and built because the nation needed the oil following the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo, but decades later, when the U.S. has abundant supplies of cheap oil and natural gas, it is the pipeline itself that demands ever-more petroleum. That perverse impetus to start drilling oil in these unparalleled Alaskan wilderness areas will — along with projects like the Keystone XL Pipeline — keep the U.S. pumping, transporting, and burning oil for decades to come, even as the world rapidly warms.

Petitions to request dropping of charges against pipeline protesters

As a follow-up to the one-year anniversary of clashes between law enforcement and protesters against the Dakota Access Pipeline on Backwater Bridge near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation, anti-pipeline activists intend to deliver a petition on Monday with more than 55,000 signatures to state’s attorney Allen Koppy asking that all charges be dropped against the hundreds of people still facing charges for anti-pipeline activism.

The petitions were collected online and in-person by representatives of the Lakota People’s Law Project over the past four months. They’ll be delivered by Standing Rock leaders Phyllis Young and Ladonna Brave Bull Allard, Lakota People’s Law Project director Daniel Paul Nelson and Cheyenne River pipeline activist HolyElk Lafferty.

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“Nobody should suffer consequences for protecting our only source of water,” said Lafferty, who asserted that, even once the petitions are dropped and the cases are over, the movement created at Standing Rock will live on.

“The veil was lifted, and now there are millions of people staring straight at the dysfunction created by capitalism, and specifically the fossil fuel industry,” she said. “Standing Rock activated a sense of responsibility in each of us, a sense of courage. People saw what we were doing on the ground and people became active within their own environments. Now there are many, many people out there who, because of what they did for Standing Rock, know they have the power to make change.”

Battle Lines Drawn as GOP Moves Closer to ‘Greatest Transfer of Wealth to the Super-Rich in Modern American History’

With their passage of a deeply unpopular $1.5 trillion tax cut bill on Thursday, House Republicans did their part in “paving the way for the greatest transfer of wealth from regular people to the super-rich in modern American history,”—a move that sparked a flood of outrage from progressive activists and lawmakers who vowed to mobilize and do everything in their power to “kill the bill.”

“If we are going to stop Republicans from taking healthcare from millions and slashing Medicare to give tax cuts to the wealthy and large corporations, now is the time to stand up and fight back,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in a call to action that was echoed by many of the progressive groups that played a significant role in the fight against Trumpcare.