Block the way!

Today I'm going to take a break from my usual urban planning musings to talk about something much more pressing, which is the Keystone XL Pipeline. This is the pipeline being proposed to move the tar sands oil extracted from northern Alberta, Canada all the way down to Texas. You can read much more about the technical details of the project on the interweb. In short the problem is that it enables the extraction of the dirtiest form of oil from a huge carbon sink, meaning that the destruction of the land to extract the oil, the use of huge quantities of water and natural gas to perform the extraction, and the final burning of the product in automobiles nationwide will be a devastating blow to the fight of to limit green house gas emissions. And that's only the tip of the iceberg. The tar sands excavation is already destroying huge tracts of pristine nature. A pipeline from Alberta to Texas jeopardizes thousands of communities and sensitive environments.

Chief climatologist James Hansen says of the pipeline project “if the tar sands are thrown into the mix it is essentially game over.” I participated in the culmination of two weeks of demonstrating in Washington D.C. in front of the White House. Environmental groups are all aligned on this one. 1252 people were arrested for protesting over two weeks, and thousands more rallied with them.

Our addiction to oil needs to stop today. Cold turkey. We all have a personal responsibility to reduce our oil use substantially. We're fighting oil wars and destroying the planet to get this stuff. We all need to stand up to this nonsense and lead by example. That means stop driving today, curtail your meat consumption, and limit your overall consumption of products.


The US State Department recently released its final environmental assessment of the pipeline, claiming it would cause minimum risk. Recall however that the US does not acknowledge green house gas emissions as dangerous, which makes this entire report invalid from the outset. Here's an extract from the the segment of the final environmental impact report on air:

EPA did not propose to include the crude oil transportation segment of the petroleum and natural gas industry in this rulemaking due to its small contribution to total petroleum and natural gas fugitive emissions (accounting for much less than 1 percent) and the difficulty in defining a facility. The responsibility for reporting would instead be placed on the processing plants and refineries. Consequently, the proposed pipeline Project would not trigger GHG reporting requirements.

Are you angry yet? This is the environmental protection agency. James Hansen says "game over" and the EPA just kicks the can down the road, saying the processing plants might have to report it.

The fate of the pipeline now rests with the president. If you're sick of Barack Obama being a coward--I am--and you want to finally get off your haunches and start forcing some better political decisions--I do--then get involved in this fight.

Press:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0811/62144.html

Organizing site:

http://www.tarsandsaction.org/invitation/

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tarsandsaction/6109204889/in/set-72157627584467674/

I'm the guy in blue to the right of the red sign.

P.S. My family's from southern Alberta and I love it like my home. There's a lot of money in oil, but it's not worth massive destruction of land and culture.