UPDATE: on Friday, August 26, the U.S. State Department released the Final Environmental Impact Statement for the Keystone XL Pipeline Project despite concerns from EPA and growing protests by environmental groups. Although the EIS offers a green light to the proposed 1,700-mile pipeline to carry heavy oil from Canada across the Great Plains to the Gulf Coast, President Obama will announce the final decision by December. Contact President Obama and let him know you don’t support this dirty, expensive and risky form of energy.
In a January blogpost, SACE Executive Director Stephen Smith highlighted the dirty truth about Canada’s tar sands and the proposed Keystone XL pipeline designed to bring Canadian oil into the United States. James Hansen, a renowned climate scientist and head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has publicly decried the proposed project as “Essentially game over” for carbon reductions and climate recovery.
This week, the group Tar Sands Action is organizing advocates to gather in Washington, D.C., as part of a two-week campaign of daily sit-ins to urge President Obama to reject the permit for this pipeline. Monday began with more arrests along the White House fence; similar acts of civil disobedience are expected through September 3.
Hundreds of activists who were arrested, including Bill McKibben, sent messages from jail encouraging people to organize in order to stop the permitting of this high risk energy development, which would deliver 900,000 barrels a day of the world’s dirtiest oil to US refineries.
“The only thing we need in here is more company. We don’t need your sympathy, we need your company.” – Bill McKibben
For more information on Tar Sands Action: Visit their website or check them out on Flickr | YouTube | Twitter | Facebook You can also read more about this issue on USCAN’s website.
To listen to a recent interview with SACE’s Federal Policy Director Jennifer Rennicks discussing tar sands oil click here.