Grassroots Strategy Is Key to Winning Keystone XL Fight
The Martin Luther King Jr. memorial dedication was canceled last August 22 because of Hurricane Irene, a storm that grazed D.C. on its way to causing devastation in parts of northern New England. While the dedication events down by the Lincoln Memorial were put on hold, another sort of celebration of Dr. King's legacy was taking place at the other end of the mall. That Monday morning, over 100 people walked across Pennsylvania Avenue and started the second week of sit-ins at the White House to push President Obama to deny the permit for Keystone XL, a 1,700 mile pipeline from the tar sands of Alberta to refineries on the Gulf of Mexico. By the end of August, exactly 1,253 people would be arrested during the protest.
At the time, Keystone XL was just gaining prominence as a national issue. Now, five months later, the pipeline has become the highest profile energy and environmental fight in the nation. Big Oil front groups like the American Petroleum Institute and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are spending millions of dollars on TV ads promoting the project. Republicans in Congress are using legislative tricks to pressure President Obama on the issue. And the mainstream media is increasingly mentioning the pipeline as a key election issue in 2012.
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Guest Column: Obama Got It Right on Keystone XL
Luke Metzger is the Director of Environment Texas
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Enter Keystone XL, a proposed 1,700-mile pipeline which would transport the dirtiest form of oil — tar sands — from Canada across America’s heartland all the way to Texas.
As oil from easy-to-reach reservoirs has run out, oil companies have increasingly used riskier and more environmentally destructive methods to obtain oil. Production of oil from Canada’s tar sands has destroyed vast areas of boreal forest, polluted local waterways with toxic substances, and increased global warming pollution.
Tar sands contribute 10 percent to 40 percent as much global warming pollution as conventional oil and one estimate found Keystone would result in climate damaging emissions equal to adding six million cars to U.S. roads. This led NASA’s top climate scientist to conclude that construction of the pipeline would mean game over for our climate.
The pipeline would also threaten our precious water supplies, crossing the Ogallala and Carrizo-Wilcox aquifers, which supply drinking water to millions of Texans. Over the past decade, more than 1 million barrels of oil products have leaked from petroleum pipelines, including oil from 14 spills since 2010 from existing pipelines operated by TransCanada, the company behind Keystone.
All this risk to Texas so that a foreign oil company can make billions selling Canadian oil to China and other countries.
