This December President Obama will face the most important test of his environmentalist credentials before the next election when he decides whether to approve the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. The pipeline was the subject of the largest environmental protest in decades when 1,253 people were arrested over two weeks of sit-ins led by the Tar Sands Action at the White House. Many of those arrested were once volunteers on the Obama campaign upset about the president's failure to live up to the high hopes he set for changing the country's environmental policies.
Since the protest ended, there have been protests at Obama appearances in Ohio, Virginia and North Carolina, with more planned at future campaign stops. The Tar Sands Action is also now leading actions at Organizing for America offices across the country, and plans are in the works for another historic rally on November 6th, one year from the next election. The action also inspired 9 Nobel Laureates, including the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, to call on the President to embrace the protestors and reject the pipeline.
Of course, all of this organizing has inspired pushback from the oil industry as well, with TransCanada, the pipeline's builder, on pace to spend 1.4 million dollars on lobbying this year after hiring top Obama and Clinton 2008 campaign staff to lead their efforts. With the oil industry and their supporters lining up, a new infographic from Heather Libby (tcktcktck.org) and Duncan Meisel (TarSandsAction) just released asks the question: Which side is President Obama on in the Keystone XL showdown?
Find out more about the growing protests against the Keystone XL pipeline at tarsandsaction.org.
Follow Heather Libby on Twitter: www.twitter.com/heatherlibby
Chris Genovali: Wolves, Caribou, Tar Sands and Canada's Oily Ethics
Check out this article about them that hit the AP today: http://www.hastingstribune.com/september/news0921pipeline.php
Americans: www.avaaz.org/en/obama_stop_the_tar_sands/
Canadians: www.avaaz.org/en/canadas_deadly_oil/?cl=1241850960&v=10087
http://ssppjournal.blogspot.com/2011/09/game-over-on-climate-change.html
So why is it all about Obama?
What they want is a pipeline to a major oil port. As things stand today, they can only economically sell to the US and Canada. If they got their oil to Texas, they could then demand world oil prices.
As to-date, man can't eat, drink and breathe a pipeline; I would think oxygen, fresh water, food and life might actually be more vital than a job. If we were to take a 24 hour clock gauging man's existence, employment, jobs, paper monies, supermarkets and concrete and cities only began about two minutes until midnight.
For almost the entirety of man's existence, he was not in the business of killing the Earth. Even the most stupid of birds doesn't destroy his only nest. And, do birds worry about employment?
When these ecosystems die, the Earth and man will lose the oxygen releasing; the evapotranspiration from the trees and plants and fresh water; the balancing of the gaseous composition of the atmosphere; the loss of the sequesteration of heat trapping gases that will be released when the soil is disturbed and upon deforestation; the moderation and regulation of the climate and a long list of natural ecosystem cycles and services.
All integrated ecosystems and their native species of plants and animals or biological diversity are in the eco-nomics of all life, and all ecosystems have feedbacks and loops to the atmosphere and the climate, and they all together create the very life zone of the Earth or the biosphere. This pipeline will cause Earth to become more like Mars.