Going into Sunday’s action outside the White House to protest the Keystone XL pipeline, two things were unclear: how many people will it take to encircle the White House and will enough people turn out to answer that question? The answers are, fewer than 10,000 and yes.
The number of people at the demonstration far exceeded everyone’s expectations. One explanation could be that the event represented more than just a pressure point on the Keystone XL pipeline; it may have also offered an opportunity – exactly one year before the 2012 election – to vent the collective disappointment with President Obama’s environmental record.
Clearly the proposed pipeline, which would traverse the country from Montana all the way down to the Gulf Coast of Texas, has hit a nerve within the environmental and climate community. But beyond the environmental and climate stakes involved in this project, there are other forces at work that have elevated the Keystone XL pipeline to priority issue number one for so many activists and environmental leaders.
