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• Debate: Keystone XL US-Canada oil pipeline - September 2nd, 2011.

Featured pro and con arguments from this article:

• PRO: US pipeline strategically taps huge Canadian oil reserves.
  
  Brad Carson, the director of the National Energy Policy Institute, said to Living on Earth in June of 2011: "It is now estimated that Canada has the world’s second largest oil reserves, only after Saudi Arabia. So, from purely the perspective of the oil market, Canada’s role and the United States’ interests in those tar sands is a very important one - a very important public policy issue for this nation."[1]

• CON: Keystone XL will significantly increase greenhouse gas emissions Russell K. Girling, TransCanada Corporation. "The proposed Keystone XL pipeline will be built responsibly." The Hill. July 13th, 2011: "The Canadian government insists that it has found ways to reduce those emissions. But a new report from Canada’s environmental ministry shows how great the impact of the tar sands will be in the coming years, even with cleaner production methods. It projects that Canada will double its current tar sands production over the next decade to more than 1.8 million barrels a day. That rate will mean cutting down some 740,000 acres of boreal forest — a natural carbon reservoir. Extracting oil from tar sands is also much more complicated than pumping conventional crude oil out of the ground. It requires steam-heating the sands to produce a petroleum slurry, then further dilution. One result of this process, the ministry says, is that greenhouse gas emissions from the oil and gas sector as a whole will rise by nearly one-third from 2005 to 2020 — even as other sectors are reducing emissions."

• Teacher-student friendships on Facebook - September 2nd, 2011.
• Law school - August 29th, 2011.
• Balanced budget amendment - August 9th, 2011.
• US debt ceiling deal - August 5th, 2011.
• Obama executive order to raise the debt ceiling - August 1st, 2011.
• Pornography - July 27th, 2011.
• Legality of coca production and consumption - July 20th, 2011.
• Ban on sale of violent video games to minors - July 8th, 2011.
  
• Mandatory ultrasounds before abortions - June 30th, 2011.
• US intervention in Libya - June 19th, 2011.
• Should colleges ban fraternities? - June 15th, 2011.
• Random sobriety tests for drivers - June 7th, 2011.
• Home plate collision rule in baseball - June 1, 2011.
• Child beauty pageants - May 28th, 2011.
• Trans fat ban - May 19th, 2011.
• China "one child" policy - May 12th, 2011.
• Release of Osama bin Laden death photos - May 6th, 2011.
• Osama Bin Laden Sea Burial - May 3rd, 2011.
• Return of Israel to pre-1967 borders - April 30th, 2011.

See Past Debate Digest topics

• Debate: Abortion Simon Van Zuylen. "A Radical New Ploy to Destroy Roe v. Wade—Which Just Might Work." The New Republic. September 2nd, 2011
• Debate: Legalization of Marijuana "California marijuana street fair fuels debate over legalization." Christian Science Monitor. September 3rd, 2011
• Debate: Death penalty Republican US presidential candidate Rick Perry executed 234 convicts during his ten years as governor of Texas [more than any other governor in modern history], reinvigorating a national debate on the practice.[2]
  
• Debate: US intervention in Libya As Libyan rebels took control of Tripoli, many came back to the question of whether US and NATO interventions were worth it, with many now conceding that the mission was worthwhile.[3]
• Debate: Polygamy This issue briefly peaked back into the news when Warren Jeffs, a notorious polygamist, was sentenced to life in prison on August 9th, 2011.[4]

More Debates in the News

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• Debate: Does Obama deserve a second term? is up next for the Debate Digest.
• Founder Brooks Lindsay is developing Debate: Keystone XL US-Canada oil pipeline for the Debate Digest. - August 31st.
• Myclob is experimenting with a new way of organizing argument pages, so that they are structured like main debate pages - in a pro/con structure with reasons to agree and disagree. See Argument: Polygamy leaves some men with no women to marry; socially destabilizing. A debate on the value of this kind of approach is occurring on Debatepedia's Facebook group. - August 26th.

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