On Tuesday this week, the CEOs of a number of major environmental organizations in the United States and Canada sent a letter to President Obama asking him to say no to dirty fuels such as tar sands, oil shale and liquid coal. The letter was sent by Corporate Ethics International, Earthworks, Environment America , Environmental Defence Canada, Friends of the Earth, Natural Resources Defense Council , National Wildlife Federation, Sierra Club and the Western Organization of Resource Councils.
The letter starts out by noting that the expanding oil spill disaster in the Gulf demonstrates the need to end our dependence on fossil fuels and reject increasingly destructive and dirty sources of energy. Deepening our reliance on dirty fuels—tar sands, liquid coal, and oil shale—will increase greenhouse gas emissions, undermine efforts to build a clean energy future, and destroy critical land, air and water resources.
For that reason, our groups are also asking the Administration to put the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline on hold. This pipeline raises many of the same issues that are raised by the Gulf disaster in terms of questionable safety standards and rushing a project through depending that the oil industry will take care of things. Especially given the lessons being learned from the Gulf oil spill, this tar sands pipeline should not be rushed through, but should be given enough time to make sure that we have the information we need to determine if it is really in the national interest and the safety standards in place to ensure that this pipeline is not another disaster waiting to happen.
Our organizations do not think that the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline should be built. We see it as an expensive and risky project from the past that will benefit oil companies and not American citizens. As this letter shows, our organizations strongly feel that dirty fuels are the wrong path for America. We have the technology and ingenuity to build the clean energy economy that President Obama has promised. Dirty fuels have no place in our clean energy economy.
You can read the letter at: http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/sclefkowitz/Green%20Group%20Dirty%20Fuels%20Letter%20May%202010%20to%20President%20Obama.pdf