BLOCK THAT PIPELINE!!!
BLOCK THAT PIPELINE!!!
BLOCK THAT PIPELINE!!!
Go and submit a comment about the Keystone XL.
Here are some bullet-points. Just copy & paste if you’re in a hurry; paraphrase if you’ve got more time. The more comments, the better. Don’t wait.
• Yes, the Keystone XL will generate jobs: cleanup specialists, leak stoppage crews, oncologists, and (eventually) undertakers.
• Conservatives arguing that action on global warming is too expensive operate from a stance of multiple denial: they reject the climate science substantiating the greenhouse effect’s dangerous consequences, they reject the economic evidence that investment in clean energy and sound environmental practices are net positives for job creation, and they reject the fact that a significant majority of Americans recognize that climate change is a problem with huge repercussions for our nation and the world. It’s no accident that these same fact-rejecting politicians are the ones advocating strongly for the Keystone XL pipeline, a project whose likely contribution to climate change could well tip the balance from disastrous to catastrophic.
• Keystone is catastrophic on multiple levels of scale. The destruction of millions of acres of boreal forest in order to exploit Canada’s tar sands is already an environmental blunder of huge proportions. Transporting the filthy oil across the US offers the potential for hundreds of local and regional disasters from leaks and contaminated aquifers — and, or course, burning all that oil will send the greenhouse effect into a drastic runaway zone from which recovery may be impossible. If President Obama allows the pipeline project to proceed, we will know that his commitment to the fight against global warming is inadequate to the magnitude of the crisis.
• Perhaps we should ask the residents of Mayflower, Arkansas what they think about running a pipeline full of toxic crude across the continental US. Leaks and spills are inevitable; rather than acceding to a business strategy that derives profits from despoiling the land, perhaps we’d be better off just leaving that dirty crude in the ground, and finding ways to conserve, reduce, and eventually eliminate our use of fossil fuels.