“GAME OVER” - The Power Surge: Energy, Opportunity, and the Battle for America's Future - page 81

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“GAME OVER”
On a typically warm late August Sunday in Washington, D.C., which
marked the i rst day of protests against the Keystone XL pipeline,
70 men and women were arrested outside the White House. 1 h e next
day, another 50 joined them, and by the third day of the action 162
had gone to jail. 2 h e following Monday, Bill McKibben, the writer
turned activist who masterminded the protests, was released; he had
been detained on day one. “I'm a lit le tired and a lot hungry but I'm
happy as can be,” he told an interviewer as he exited Central Cell Block,
the main D.C. jail. 3 h e protests were at racting at ention. “h is is what
starts to happen,” he said, “when people show what the stakes are.”
For McKibben and the other 1,251 people who would ultimately be
arrested over the next two weeks, those stakes were impossible to over-
state. First proposed in 2008, the Keystone XL pipeline was supposed
to stretch 1,179 miles, from Hardisty, Alberta, to Steel City, Nebraska,
before linking up with other lines that would connect to the rei neries
of the Texas Gulf Coast. At the northern end of the pipe lay the mas-
sive Canadian oil sands. Geologists have known for decades that the
Athabasca region, which extends over more than a hundred thousand
square miles north of the Albertan capital of Edmonton, held within it