Hey do y'all want some good news?
The battle is still not won -- environmental reviews can be tampered with and/or ignored, so it's super important that it's a transparent, honest environmental review that is done by actual specialists, not ex-oil employees who are being paid by the DAPL..... but this is a huge, fantastic step in the right direction.
And, so long as you Americans vote out your oversized sexist Cheeto In Chief and his whole party in November, then once the environmental review is finalised and the project comes to the government for approval/rejection, then there is a decent chance that the environmental findings will actually be listened to, and the project scrapped entirely.
So -- with love and desperation from an Australian -- get your American asses to the voting booths in November, and get the talking toupe out of your fucking white house.
And continue to be loud and active in your defence of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, and all other Native Americans who are facing similar injustices (look into the pipeline that's been approved to go through the Appalachian Trail,, for instance), because your indigenous folk have suffered a lot of shit, and you should be supporting them wherever possible.
Good news on the Appalachian Trail front (not sure when this post was made), but the Atlantic Coast Pipeline that you reference was also shut down.... Because of this case!
It’s also interesting because with cases such as this, having Trump in office is actually making it easier to fight because they’re shooting themselves in the foot constantly.
The most effective way to shut projects like this down (because our environmental laws have no teeth) is to make them cost more in legal costs and permits than its worth. Because Trump’s administration is so sloppy and trying to fast-pass every pipeline and project that comes through - that makes it super easy for legal cases to get brought up against them and tie up pipeline projects for years in having to redo permits over and over because the Trump administration is issuing them improperly and too quickly. That’s what happened with the ACP. The permits they got issued kept getting fought for being improperly issued and causing them to waste years and money in fighting all the legal cases that came up, and when the DAPL pipeline was ruled against the ACP realized that the courts were not going in their favor these days. Regardless of what administration is in office, people don’t want pipelines anymore and have the will to bring them to court and fight.