Open letter, sent to Sec. of State John Kerry, President Obama, and others:
I'm still shocked and disturbed that the State Department Keystone XL EIS underestimates the effects of the project on climate. The Pentagon has said concretely that climate change is one of the largest threats to our national security and well being in the future.1 This accelerates that undeniably.
The environmental impacts are significantly adverse as well, to the Canadian Boreal forests, Athabasca watershed, water quality, wildlife, humans and potentially the safety of communities in the US under which the pipeline would travel.2 Generating toxic trailing ponds from Tar Sands development has increased cases of cancer in local water sheds.2 Neil Young who visited in person says the project site looks like Hiroshima. The U.S. lead agency must consider the whole project, even though impacts would be greatest in Canada (and ultimately in the air).
In sum the project as a whole generates significant, adverse, unmitigatable environmental climate impacts and significant, adverse ground and water impacts in Canada and potentially in the U.S. This permit should be denied.
The statement that Canada will extract for eventual burning all that Tar Sands oil without the pipeline anyway can NOT BE PROVEN.3 Canadians themselves are resisting a pipeline be built of this dirty, difficult and expensive to extract and environmentally devastating oil in their own country.4 It is IMPOSSIBLE to state that the Tar Sands development will continue as the EIS states even if the XL is not built, seeing the face of strong opposition of this dirtiest of fuels everywhere. That is a fallacy, and should be removed from the report.
What is the compelling U.S. interest in allowing this project in the face of these negative impacts? For several thousand jobs for a couple months? It's been projected the pipeline will generate only a few dozen long-term jobs in the U.S. (but perhaps part-time work for all the clean-up crews that will be called in to "try" to remove the tar sludge when the pipeline would break/leak and U.S. communities and watersheds are under black gunk). The U.S. is unlikely to even use most of that eventual "oil," which is slated for foreign export.5 So energy security can't be it. The ONLY people to benefit in the long-term are the owners of the oil company and the refinery on the Gulf. That's it.
Allowing the pipeline to be built across the U.S. furthermore creates a green light for this market, growing additional like projects and adding cumulative effects there, creating worse climate change. We've seen the Pentagon say climate change is one of the worst risks to U.S. security. We can't keep growing the damn oil industry. That part, while less technical, is very clear.
LET'S PLEASE think of the long-term for the rest of us. The damage this pipeline will help wreak far outweighs any other benefits, for the few and fleeting, it could provide.
We must work with Canada on renewable, affordable, non-destructive energy, and to leave this obsolete, climate changing dirty oil in the ground, forever. If the State Department is truly looking after our best interests and enforcing its Environmental Impact Statement duties, denying this permit is the only choice to make.
1 Such climate-induced crises could topple governments, feed terrorist movements or destabilize entire regions, say the analysts, experts at the Pentagon and intelligence agencies http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/science/earth/09climate.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
2 Pipeline leak brings crude reality to Arkansas http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/01/us/arkansas-pipeline-spill/ There are currently over 720 billion litres of toxic tailings on the landscape in the Athabasca oil sands area. There is currently a lack of publicly available information on the rate and volume of seepage from oil sands tailings ponds, despite known incidents involving tailings seepage. http://www.resilience.org/stories/2009-09-22/environmental-impacts-oil-sands-development-alberta
What does environmental devastation look like? http://www.ted.com/talks/garth_lenz_images_of_beauty_and_devastation.html http://www.nrdc.org/wildlife/borealbirds.pdf Wildlife/birds http://www.nrdc.org/wildlife/borealbirds.pdf Impacts http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5287
3 Estimates by the Environmental Protection Agency found that Keystone would increase annual carbon emissions by “up to 27.6 metric tons, or the equivalent of nearly 6 million cars on the road.” Without the pipeline, tar sands production is estimated to fall flat by 2020. http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/03/03/1663291/states-keystone-report-is-the-tar-sands-pits/
4 While it is entirely possible that Canada could and will choose to ship its oil sands crude to Asia, that would require a another pipeline that some native groups in Canada have opposed in the past. http://science.time.com/2013/03/01/state-dept-build-the-keystone-pipeline-or-not-the-oil-sands-crude-will-flow/#ixzz2MVuHbF48
5 By skipping over refineries and U.S. consumers in the Midwest, tar sands producers will be able to send Canadian crude to the Gulf Coast refineries in tax-free Foreign Trade Zones, where it can be refined and then sold to international buyer--at a higher profit to big oil.
http://priceofoil.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/KXL_undermine_energy_security_2page_Web.pdf
I'm still shocked and disturbed that the State Department Keystone XL EIS underestimates the effects of the project on climate. The Pentagon has said concretely that climate change is one of the largest threats to our national security and well being in the future.1 This accelerates that undeniably.
The environmental impacts are significantly adverse as well, to the Canadian Boreal forests, Athabasca watershed, water quality, wildlife, humans and potentially the safety of communities in the US under which the pipeline would travel.2 Generating toxic trailing ponds from Tar Sands development has increased cases of cancer in local water sheds.2 Neil Young who visited in person says the project site looks like Hiroshima. The U.S. lead agency must consider the whole project, even though impacts would be greatest in Canada (and ultimately in the air).
In sum the project as a whole generates significant, adverse, unmitigatable environmental climate impacts and significant, adverse ground and water impacts in Canada and potentially in the U.S. This permit should be denied.
The statement that Canada will extract for eventual burning all that Tar Sands oil without the pipeline anyway can NOT BE PROVEN.3 Canadians themselves are resisting a pipeline be built of this dirty, difficult and expensive to extract and environmentally devastating oil in their own country.4 It is IMPOSSIBLE to state that the Tar Sands development will continue as the EIS states even if the XL is not built, seeing the face of strong opposition of this dirtiest of fuels everywhere. That is a fallacy, and should be removed from the report.
What is the compelling U.S. interest in allowing this project in the face of these negative impacts? For several thousand jobs for a couple months? It's been projected the pipeline will generate only a few dozen long-term jobs in the U.S. (but perhaps part-time work for all the clean-up crews that will be called in to "try" to remove the tar sludge when the pipeline would break/leak and U.S. communities and watersheds are under black gunk). The U.S. is unlikely to even use most of that eventual "oil," which is slated for foreign export.5 So energy security can't be it. The ONLY people to benefit in the long-term are the owners of the oil company and the refinery on the Gulf. That's it.
Allowing the pipeline to be built across the U.S. furthermore creates a green light for this market, growing additional like projects and adding cumulative effects there, creating worse climate change. We've seen the Pentagon say climate change is one of the worst risks to U.S. security. We can't keep growing the damn oil industry. That part, while less technical, is very clear.
LET'S PLEASE think of the long-term for the rest of us. The damage this pipeline will help wreak far outweighs any other benefits, for the few and fleeting, it could provide.
We must work with Canada on renewable, affordable, non-destructive energy, and to leave this obsolete, climate changing dirty oil in the ground, forever. If the State Department is truly looking after our best interests and enforcing its Environmental Impact Statement duties, denying this permit is the only choice to make.
1 Such climate-induced crises could topple governments, feed terrorist movements or destabilize entire regions, say the analysts, experts at the Pentagon and intelligence agencies http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/science/earth/09climate.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
2 Pipeline leak brings crude reality to Arkansas http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/01/us/arkansas-pipeline-spill/ There are currently over 720 billion litres of toxic tailings on the landscape in the Athabasca oil sands area. There is currently a lack of publicly available information on the rate and volume of seepage from oil sands tailings ponds, despite known incidents involving tailings seepage. http://www.resilience.org/stories/2009-09-22/environmental-impacts-oil-sands-development-alberta
What does environmental devastation look like? http://www.ted.com/talks/garth_lenz_images_of_beauty_and_devastation.html http://www.nrdc.org/wildlife/borealbirds.pdf Wildlife/birds http://www.nrdc.org/wildlife/borealbirds.pdf Impacts http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5287
3 Estimates by the Environmental Protection Agency found that Keystone would increase annual carbon emissions by “up to 27.6 metric tons, or the equivalent of nearly 6 million cars on the road.” Without the pipeline, tar sands production is estimated to fall flat by 2020. http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/03/03/1663291/states-keystone-report-is-the-tar-sands-pits/
4 While it is entirely possible that Canada could and will choose to ship its oil sands crude to Asia, that would require a another pipeline that some native groups in Canada have opposed in the past. http://science.time.com/2013/03/01/state-dept-build-the-keystone-pipeline-or-not-the-oil-sands-crude-will-flow/#ixzz2MVuHbF48
5 By skipping over refineries and U.S. consumers in the Midwest, tar sands producers will be able to send Canadian crude to the Gulf Coast refineries in tax-free Foreign Trade Zones, where it can be refined and then sold to international buyer--at a higher profit to big oil.
http://priceofoil.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/KXL_undermine_energy_security_2page_Web.pdf
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