The next great battle of the Occupy movement may not take place in city parks and plazas, where the security and surveillance state is blocking protesters from setting up urban encampments. Instead it could arise in the nation’s heartland, where some ranchers, farmers and enraged citizens, often after seeing their land seized by eminent domain and their water supplies placed under mortal threat, have united with Occupiers and activists to oppose the building of the Keystone XL tar sand pipeline. They have formed an unusual coalition called Tar Sands Blockade (TSB). Centers of resistance being set up in Texas and Oklahoma and on tribal lands along the proposed route of this six-state, 1,700-mile proposed pipeline are fast becoming flashpoints in the war of attrition we have begun against the corporate state. Join them.

The XL pipeline, which would cost $7 billion and whose southern portion is under construction and slated for completion next year, is the most potent symbol of the dying order. If completed, it will pump 1.1 million barrels a day of unrefined tar sand fluid from tar sand mine fields in Canada to the Texas Gulf Coast. Tar sand oil is not conventional crude oil. It is a synthetic slurry that, because tar sand oil is solid in its natural state, must be laced with a deadly brew of toxic chemicals and gas condensates to get it to flow. Tar sands are boiled and diluted with these chemicals before being blasted down a pipeline at high pressure. Water sources would be instantly contaminated if there was a rupture. The pipeline would cross nearly 2,000 U.S. waterways, including the Ogallala Aquifer, source of one-third of the United States’ farmland irrigation water. And it is not a matter of if, but when, it ...

The National Transportation Safety Board blamed multiple corrosion cracks and “pervasive organizational failures” at the Calgary-based Enbridge pipeline company for a more-than-20,000-barrel oil spill two years ago near Michigan’s Kalamazoo River. [Washington Post]

The cost of the spill has reached $800 million and is rising, the NTSB said, making the pipeline rupture the most expensive on-shore oil spill in U.S. history. The pipeline’s contents — heavy crude oil from Canada’s oil sands — have made the spill a closely watched case with implications for other pipelines carrying such crude.

The NTSB also blamed “weak federal regulations” by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration for the accident, which spilled at least 843,444 gallons of oil into a tributary of the Kalamazoo in Marshall, Mich. The oil spread into a 40-mile stretch of the Kalamazoo and a nearby wetlands area.

Corn prices soared toward new highs on Monday amid growing fears that the drought scorching the U.S. Midwest will prove to be the harshest in decades. [Wall Street Journal]

Climate change researchers have been able to attribute recent examples of extreme weather to the effects of human activity on the planet’s climate systems for the first time, marking a major step forward in climate research. [Guardian]

The influence of manmade global warming on the climate system continues to grow, with human fingerprints identified in ...

Tucked away on West 16th Street in Manhattan, among the nightclubs and food purveyors of the Meatpacking District, the Highline Ballroom may seem an unlikely place for a gospel revival. But on Sunday afternoon, Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping brought their unique liturgy to a standing-room-only crowd. The construction site of the Spectra gas pipeline served as a figurative, and, by the end of the day, literal backdrop for a musical sermon on the evils of high finance, fossil fuel dependence and corporate-mediated culture.

The Occupy Wall Street’s Environmental Solidarity Working Group, along with other community organizations, hosted the “church service” as part of a fight against Texas-based Spectra Energy’s plan for a 30-inch, high-pressure gas pipeline that would cross the Hudson River, entering Manhattan on Gansevoort Street, just steps away from a park and playground. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) recently approved the pipeline, as did the Hudson River Park Trust. The trust’s board of directors is chaired by Diana L. Taylor, partner of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is also a pipeline supporter.

The pipeline would pass through several municipalities in New Jersey, and some of these, notably Jersey City, have fought the pipeline aggressively. The city argued that FERC cannot be objective in its approval process because the agency’s budget depends on fees from approved pipelines. Jersey City’s counsel called the process