The Alberta Tar Sands and the Keystone XL Pipeline:
"Game Over for the Planet" (Dr. James Hansen, top U.S. The Keystone XL would take the planet's dirtiest fossil fuel 1,700 miles to the Texas Gulf Coast, for export to China. It's the biggest climate issue we face in 2011. Key Facts: (see http://www.tarsandsaction.org)
- Energy Security: Tar Sands will not Reduce Dependence on Foreign Oil
- Gas
prices: Keystone XL will increase gas prices for Americans—Especially Farmers
- Jobs: TransCanada’s jobs projections are vastly inflated.
- Safety: A rupture in the Keystone XL pipeline could cause a BP style oil spill in America’s heartland, over the source of fresh drinking water for 2 million people. NASA’s top climate scientist says that fully developing the tar sands in Canada would mean “essentially game over” for the climate.
- Climate Change: Keystone XL is the fuse to North America’s biggest carbon bomb.
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A description by Lowell Greenberg, arrested August 31 at the Tar Sands Action civil disobedience at the White House:
Beneath a green sweep of Boreal fen and forest in northern Alberta lies a promise of addiction — tar sands that are being refined into petroleum products like gasoline. With the tar sands, Canada has the second largest oil reserves on Earth. Proposed is a massive 7 billion dollar pipeline to transport this oil — The Keystone XL. To be routed from Hardisty, Alberta to the Texas Gulf Coast, this tar sands pipeline is set to cross the country’s largest freshwater source, the Ogallala Aquifer (30% of all agriculture), and the fragile Sandhills of Nebraska, posing devastating consequences to human health, livestock and agriculture. If we stop construction of the pipeline — we will choke off the supply at the source and put a major dent in TransCanada Corps profits and the viability of exploiting this oil. What else happens if we don’t stop Tar Sands extraction? Dr. James Hansen, one of the world’s leading climatologists wrote: “The carbon emissions from tar shale and tar sands would initiate a continual unfolding of climate disasters over the course of this century. We would be miserable stewards of creation. We would rob our own children and grandchildren.”
In addition to the destruction of the water, land, indigenous communities, people’s health, production of enormous toxic waste areas that are visible from space, destruction of one quarter of the Earth’s remaining intact forests and 11% of the planet’s terrestrial carbon storehouses (an area the size of Florida) — the Tar Sands oil extraction project produces 3 times the global warming pollution of conventional fuel. The burning of fossil fuels is making our oceans acidic, destroying our climate and jeopardizing food and water security for billons on the planet. In the face of this threat to the 99% — what does the US State Department have to say about Tar Sand oil exploitation? Drill, baby, drill. However, final approval of the pipeline is Obama’s decision — he and he alone can stop the pipeline. Fight the global plutocracy — as Chomsky refers to it, “the rule by the wealthy or power provided by wealth that is destroying life on this planet.”
Join us at 2:00 PM at Terry Schrunk Plaza at 1200 SW 3rd St, downtown Portland.
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This mission is endorsed by Occupy Portland, Climate Justice Portland, and the Oregon Chapter of the Sierra Club.
