There is enough carbon trapped in the Canadian tar sands to plunge the earth into irreversible climate change, and it is the Keystone XL pipeline that will set that carbon free. Is this 2,100-mile steel pipeline a vital piece of our nation's energy future or the conduit for global climate disaster? In The Pipeline and the Paradigm, Samuel Avery investigates the economic, ecological, political, and psychological issues behind the Keystone XL -- a project so controversial it has inspired the largest expression of civil disobedience since the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s. In this thoroughly researched, wholly engaging book, Avery takes readers from enormous tar sands mines in Alberta to a treetop blockade in Texas to meet the people and explore the competing interests that power the environmental issue of our time.