24 Hours, 800,000 Petitions, and 1 Pipeline

When Bill McKibben calls you up and asks you point blank whether or not you think the climate movement can get 500,000 petitions in 24 hours, there's a moment of moral dilemma. Because you're not quite sure if it's a rhetorical question about tactics, or an ice-breaker for a call to action. With Bill, it's best to always assume the latter.

And why shouldn't we dream big? After months of success after success - from the sit-ins to encircling the White House, from the delay to the denial - we find ourselves somehow still fighting the Keystone XL pipeline. I'll admit, I'm actually flabbergasted.

Since the denial of the KXL permit earlier this year, right-wing conservatives and Big Oil cronies have deviously wiggled their fossil fuel agenda into as many bills as they can get their hands on. This insidious tactic has reared it's ugly head most recently in the Transportation Bill, yet again holding democracy hostage over a political tit-for-tat.

So yesterday the big dream of getting half a million people to call out this corruption and demand an end to this KXL debacle once and for all came true. Point in fact, 800,000 people took up the call to action. Best believe that that made some heads spin, including Big Oil.

These 800,000 petitions were delivered to Congress yesterday as a testimony to the overwhelming cry for #NOKXL and for fossil fuel cronyism to step aside for democracy. It was a clear and powerful statement that we, the citizens, are fed-up with this ludicrous game of Keystone whack-a-mole. Congress definitely understood that we are, again, exercising a power not to be fooled with.

There is still more fight ahead, and KXL is certain to come up again and again in various bills. But we don't seem to be deterred by these set-backs, and our petition delivery proved that. So onto the next victory folks!