Photo credit: Peter Essick, National Geographic
The fight against the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline has reached another crucial turning point. Big Oil has teamed up with Republicans in Congress to push a provision that would allow the Senate to resurrect the project. This despite the fact that President Obama rejected this dirty energy project in January.
The environmental movement is joining in an all out, 24 hour push to keep Congress from approving the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. From noon eastern on Monday to noon on Tuesday, we are aiming for 500,000 messages to show the clear public support for President Obama’s decision to deny the permit for this dirty energy project.
The reason for this urgency is that we think there will be an attempt to put a provision to approve Keystone XL in the Senate transportation bill. And this can happen at any moment. So we are showing that there is widespread public support for the President’s rejection of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. The American public does not want to see Congress approving a dirty energy project.
The facts for why the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline is such a bad idea bear repeating. Tar sands strip-mining and drilling is destroying Canada’s great Boreal forest and spewing climate changing greenhouse gases. Tar sands pipelines are not like regular oil pipelines. They are more likely to leak and once tar sands spills it is more difficult to clean up. And who benefits while we are put at risk? The proposed Keystone XL pipeline will make climate change worse and threaten America’s heartland with oil spills all so that oil companies can get a higher price for their product by exporting it overseas.
The irony is that we do not need this tar sands pipeline. The United States already has more pipeline capacity than there is tar sands oil for decades to come. Make no mistake, this is not a project meant to benefit America. This is a project so that oil companies can divert tar sands from the Midwest and have the ability to get a higher price for tar sands oil by reaching overseas markets. The pipeline company TransCanada has said this itself.
Stopping Keystone XL will make a real difference for our climate. It is false to argue that tar sands will be expanded even without the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. Tar sands does not have a path to Asia and is unlikely to get one. But we are inundated with misleading arguments as Big Oil throws itself into securing a pipeline to make its already enormous profits even bigger.
We’re going all out in the next 24 hours to stop the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline and are asking you to take action. Don’t forget to tell all your friends and ask them to take action as well.
Take action at: www.StopTar.org.