President Obama has rejected TransCanada's application to build the Keystone XL pipeline (though TransCanada can reapply). You may know that TransCanada has already begun seizing land to build said pipeline under eminent domain -- TransCanada has filed almost three dozen eminent domain actions in Texas courts, plus almost two dozen more in South Dakota -- though Mr. Obama clearly won't approve the project for some time now. And, er, people live on that land. People farm on that land. Our government can invoke eminent domain for public-good projects -- hospitals, highways, railroads, and the like. But not for a project that stands a better chance of polluting heartland drinking water than it does of actually creating jobs or promoting energy independence. While courts have thwarted some of TransCanada's efforts, this is no time to get complacent. So CREDO helps you tell TransCanada to stop taking folks' land from them. If you want to fell a Goliath, ain't nothing for it like bad PR.
Meanwhile, the FDA has punted on limiting antibiotic abuse in food animals, but (in a decision I'm sure they'll regret) the Obama Administration has declared that it will respond to any petition that gets over 25,000 signatures on their "We the People" website, and so the Pew Environmental Trust helps you tell Mr. Obama to stop corporations from pumping antibiotics into their food animals willy-nilly. You'd think most antibiotics would go to sick people and sick animals, but they don't: 80 percent of all antibiotics in America go to factory farm animals who do not need them. See, the factory farms give antibiotics to animals as a sort of pre-emptive measure, since the animals are going to live in filthy conditions all their lives. But when you give antibiotics to animals who don't need it, you make all the pathogens in the world more resistant -- plus you make these animals' descendants more sickly. Heckuva job, factory farms! You're putting us all at risk of getting sick, all so you can save money on the production end.
Finally, I have two action alerts defending the Clean Air Act from Republican assaults. Moms Rising helps you tell your Senators to support the EPA's new mercury/air toxics standards. Mr. Inhofe said on the Senate floor last week the EPA "admit(ted)" that the new regulations would cost corporations more money than they'd make back, which would be a persuasive point if corporations breathed the air. But since we breathe the air, our government can make corporations stop pumping crap into it, and if that means some CEO can't gild the plumbing in his tenth vacation home, well, that's a risk I'm willing to take. Besides, cost-benefit analyses, as I've suggested, tend to concentrate on the losses shareholders risk, but last I looked they're not the only players in the economy -- the Union of Concerned Scientists tells us that the Clean Air Act has given us $51 trillion in economic benefits since 1970, mostly in preventing premature death from air poisoning. You may find UCS's action alert on clean air here.