by Rachel Morlock
WASHINGTON, DC--Last Friday, September 9, 2011, I was one of 1,253 people arrested in a two-week long sit-in in front of the White House. After reading a call to action issued by some of the leading environmental scientists and activists of our day, including James Hansen, Bill McKibben and Wendell Berry, I felt compelled to join the growing group of people opposing the Keystones XL Pipeline. Now I'd like to issue my own call, urging you to learn more about the pipeline and take whatever action seems appropriate to you. To help you do this, I‘d like to present some of the information I learned last week, but if you don‘t have time to read my lengthy report, please consider watching this video instead:
or visiting www.tarsandsaction.org.
The Keystone XL Pipeline is a proposed 1700 mile pipeline that would carry oil from the Tar Sands in Alberta, Canada, across six states down to refineries in Texas. This plan is problematic on so many levels that I could not even begin to offer you a complete view of the project. What I can do is relate a few of the perspectives I encountered in D.C. last week that urged me to join the action.
The sit-in was populated by many people who will be directly affected by the pipeline. There were farmers whose lands will be crossed by the pipeline, people whose sources of fresh water lie in its path, and members of Indigenous communities in both Canada and the US who are already being affected by oil production from the Tar Sands.
The Tar Sands in Canada yield oil only after a resource and energy intensive process in which the oil is mined and bitumen is separated from the clay, sand and water in which it is buried. The Tar Sands lie beneath Canada‘s boreal forest, which is being cleared daily to allow the extraction of oil, a process which requires vast amounts of fresh water (35 gallons for every one gallon of oil) and fracked gas and produces 36 million tons of carbon dioxide per day. Three times more greenhouse gases are emitted than in the production of conventional oil. This industrial process has created a hellish landscape the size of Florida, with toxic waste pools so large they can be seen from outer space. Air and water quality in the surrounding areas is compromised by leaks from waste pools and by other dangerous compounds and air pollutants like benzene that are released as the oil is produced.
Before the sit-in, several indigenous residents of Alberta spoke about the effects of the Tar Sands on the communities that live downstream. Rare cancers and respiratory diseases are ravaging these small communities. One speaker called Tar Sands mining ethnocide, and it‘s hard to see it as anything else when you consider the ways that mining is contaminating the air and water and plaguing surrounding communities with rare and severe diseases.
One representative of the People of the Caribou spoke about the high incidence of disease in his community and among the wildlife. They are encountering something they‘ve never seen before: as they hunt caribou, they find that they are covered in internal sores. The woodland caribou of Alberta are in such decline that they are expected to die out within twenty years, threatening not only this species, but also the cultural identity of the People of the Caribou. The people and wildlife all suffer from polluted air and water and dwindling forests.
Contamination isn‘t limited to the water downstream of the Tar Sands, there are also many bodies of water that will be jeopardized by the pipeline. It‘s hard to believe that we could be seriously negotiating the creation of an oil pipeline that would travel across sources of fresh water just one year after the horrific BP oil spill. The pipeline would run above the Ogallala Aquifer in the Great Plains, which supplies drinking water to two million people. TransCanada, the company building the pipeline, predicted that there would be a likelihood of one spill every seven years, and yet in the past year there were 12 spills of corrosive raw tar sands along another TransCanada pipeline. How could we justify such a risk to large fresh water sources when we are already experiencing water shortages?
Even if we disregard the immediate dangers of the pipeline and the complications of using dirty tar sands oil, it‘s hard to ignore the implications of our oil use in general. This is the time when we should be striving more than ever to decrease our dependence on fossil fuels. The climate is changing. This is not news to vulnerable populations: the residents of island nations threatened by rising sea levels, people suffering from drought and famine in Africa, communities dependent on glaciers for fresh water, to name just a few. They‘ve been at the front lines of climate change, but now it seems that the front lines are moving closer to us. We have plenty of hurricanes and disasters to remind us of how destructive our addiction to fossil fuels can be.
The proponents of the pipeline are arguing that we should seize this opportunity to create jobs for our battered economy and to use “ethical oil” from our friendly neighbor, Canada. If we want jobs, why not create jobs in clean energy that will bring life rather than destruction and pride rather than shame? If we want our resources to be ethically obtained, why not turn away from the mirage of “ethical oil” and toward the promise of sustainable energy?
Without a presidential permit from Obama, the Keystone Pipeline cannot be built. But in order to stand up to the pressure of big oil, Obama needs to know that he has the support necessary to seek alternatives. Help us keep Obama accountable to the promise he made to “heal the planet” by adding your voice to those opposing the Keystone XL Pipeline and supporting Obama‘s commitment to fostering a safer and healthier environment.
The sit-in at the White House was only phase one of this action. If you‘d like to be involved in the next steps, please visit www.tarsandsaction.org. I can say from the time I spent in D.C., thatthe leaders of this movement are incredibly creative, well-organized and motivated. Please join them in bringing this issue into the spotlight and encouraging Obama to make the decision that will best serve our people and our planet.
Source:
For more information contact:
Rachael Morlock
Saint Joseph's House of Hospitality
P.O. Box 31049
Rochester, NY 14603
Street Address:
402 South Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620
585-232-3262
http://saintjoeshouse.org/html/Welcome.html
http://saintjoeshouse.org/html/Welcome.html
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