Sierra Club
This morning, 48 environmental, civil rights and community leaders from across the country joined together for a historic display of civil disobedience at the White House where they demanded that President Obama deny the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline and address the climate crisis.
This morning, 48 environmental, civil rights and community leaders from across the country joined together for a historic display of civil disobedience at the White House where they demanded that President Obama deny the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline and address the climate crisis.
Among the notable leaders involved in the civil disobedience were Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club; Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org; Julian Bond, former president of the NAACP; Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., president of Waterkeeper Alliance; Danny Kennedy, CEO of Sungevity, and Daryl Hannah, actress.
After blocking a main thoroughfare in front of the White House, and refusing to move when asked by police, the activists were arrested and transported to Anacostia for processing by the U.S. Park Police Department.
“The threat to our planet’s climate is both grave and urgent,” said civil rights activist Julian Bond. “Although President Obama has declared his own determination to act, much that is within his power to accomplish remains undone, and the decision to allow the construction of a pipeline to carry millions of barrels of the most-polluting oil on Earth from Canada’s tar sands to the Gulf Coast of the U.S. is in his hands. I am proud today to stand before my fellow citizens and declare, ‘I am willing to go to jail to stop this wrong.’ The environmental crisis we face today demands nothing less.”
“We really shouldn’t have to be put on handcuffs to stop KXL—our nation’s leading climate scientists have told us it’s dangerous folly, and all the recent Nobel Peace laureates have urged us to set a different kind of example for the world, so the choice should be obvious,” said 350.org founder Bill McKibben. “But given the amount of money on the other side, we’ve had to spend our bodies, and we’ll probably have to spend them again.”
“For the first time in the Sierra Club’s 120-year history, we have joined the ranks of visionaries of the past and present to engage in civil disobedience, knowing that the issue at hand is so critical, it compels the strongest defensible action,” said Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club. “We cannot afford to allow the production, transport, export and burning of the dirtiest oil on Earth via the Keystone XL pipeline. President Obama must deny the pipeline and take decisive steps to address climate disruption, the most significant issue of our time.”
Waterkeeper Alliance President Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. smiles as he was arrested in front of the White House today in solidarity with many other environmental leaders.
“It’s unfortunate that civil disobedience is the only recourse against a catastrophic and criminal enterprise that will enrich a few while impoverishing the rest of humanity and threatening the future of civilization,” said Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., president of Waterkeeper Alliance.
If approved, the Keystone XL pipeline would boost carbon pollution tomorrow by triggering a boom of growth in the tar sands industry in Canada, and greatly increasing greenhouse gas emissions.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has estimated that this tar sands pipeline will boost annual U.S. carbon pollution emissions by up to 27.6 million metric tons—the impact of adding nearly six million cars on the road.
Leaders from across the country demand that President Obama deny the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline and address the climate crisis.
However, new research by Oil Change International (OCI) shows that the government’s estimates of the carbon emissions associated with Keystone XL underestimates the full impact of tar sands because a barrel of tar sands produces significantly more petroleum coke than conventional crude, which is more carbon-intensive than coal.
OCI’s research shows that Keystone XL will produce enough petcoke to fuel five U.S. coal plants. The emissions from this petcoke have not yet been included in climate-impact analysis of the pipeline or the tar sands industry and OCI shows that it will raise total emissions by at least 13 percent.
Visit EcoWatch’s KEYSTONE XL and CLIMATE CHANGE pages for more related news on this topic.
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Proud of our leaders in the climate movements to help bring attention to this very important discussion! We need a movement NOW to stop the ecoterrorism that is happening in Western Wisconsin, (frac sand mining) and we need to provide good jobs in the renewable energy industry to off set losses in agriculture jobs. Sadly, many farmers are selling off their lands to frac sand mining interests because of this. This must stop,or we will see the destruction of the substructure of ground that is there to protect our water from pollution..silica is a FILTER for our CLEAN drinking water!
Proud of those people! Way to go!
Can we work on banning fracking while you are at it, please?!?
AGREE.
Yes, fracking is so dangerous, and Obama doesn’t’ seem
to realize it. The gas companies have gotten to him. We must educate him.
Thank you Sierra Club and others for doing this. Time is running out. Our halfway measures — too little too late — will not make enough difference to save our planet from tipping into oblivion if we don’t dramatically slow, then stop, the use of fossil fuels in the next few years (unless it’s already too late, which it might be). As a colleague of mine said recently: “The Titanic still would have sunk had it been steaming along just a little slower.” We need to do some dramatic things right now, like not approve the Keystone XL pipeline. Like close the rest of the nation’s coal plants over the next 3-5 years. Like increase our energy efficiency & energy conservation dramatically with common-sense and high-tech measures. Like replace all that coal-generated power generation with renewable energy generation — covering every parking lot, highway right-of-way, and rooftop in the land with solar panels. Like putt up wind turbines in all the remaining resource-rich locations. Like insist that our highly dysfunctional Congressional leadership adopt a comprehensive energy policy that emphasizes decarbonization, stops the century-old legacy of continuous subsidies to the mature fossil fuel industry, and instead gives that same kind of financial encouragement to the renewables industry for just a decade.
This is definitely the great challenge of our time. It is immoral not to address it with every resource at our disposal. Thanks very much to all who engaged in this act of civil disobedience!
YES! Thank you climate caretakers! 2013- The Year of Direct Action, is a lot like the planet earth….heating up FAST! Thank you Ecowatch for on the spot coverage!
I envy these celebs. I’ve had scores of opportunities for civil disobedience and have a
hard enough time as it is obtaining employment because of my record as a whistleblower.
So I can’t afford the luxury of a police record.
YOU GO, GUYS!
Bobby for President please
Thank you to you people for opposing this issue. I have both worked and been at the Tar Sands. I live in a community fueled by gas and oil. That is a story of it’s own, fracking, depleeted nesasary water values, tax’s and rents beyond reason. The oil companys rent entire Hotels and Apartment buildings. They have deep pockets. Pay no attention to Joe average. The bitchumen (dirty oil) that they remove and want to disperse around the world is horrible. In my community Cancer is the single leading cause of Death. My Doctor Harry Neviling, look him up speaks openly about this issue. We have a non Nuclear core that needs fossile fuels to sustain planet earth. The Greedy want these revenues. At any cost to mankind. These products for us as a life form absolutely need to A(stay where they are) and B (need to be left alone)We are killing ourselves by allowing this to continue. We the People MUST STOP THIS NOW!!
Yes, Linda Atkins is exactly right about the ecoterrorism of frac-sand mining in Wisconsin. I’d add, where I live — in the beautifully pristine blufflands along the Mississippi River in southeast Minnesota — has also been under attack by the mining-oil-gas companies, since 2011. This Tuesday will be the first state-level hearing on this issue, and we’re asking for a state-wide moratorium until a comprehensive study (Generic EIS) can be done on the cumulative effects of these strip-mines, thousands of 80,000-lb diesel trucks carrying the frac sand, and processing facilities that use millions of gallons of our precious groundwater and threaten our fragile ground (karst, with fractured limestone and karst geology). See http://www.sandpointtimes.com for more info. I live outside Winona, Minnesota. Ten miles up the road from me the industry proposes to build — at a village of 3,700 souls — a 500-acre facility: including a sand plant (the largest in N. America) and two large concentric rail spurs, and an underground tunnel to convey all this carcinogenic silica sand from mines they want to get permitted to the sand plant, and ship MILLIONs of tons of frac sand to N Dakota, Pennsylvania, etc. All at a cost of $70 to $100 MILLION DOLLARS. We are the front-end of fracking — but most have never heard of the devastating environmental and societal rape going on here in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and also Iowa and Illinois. Check out sandpointtimes.com
What I do not understand is how they can be arrested for trying to bring a DEADLY, TOXIC issue of FRacking Pipelines, etc. to the forefront to protect our air, water, soil, earth, the health of our children and the health of our Nation and World. Yet a few miles from my home near a friends home and property, they are dumping truck load after truck load of toxic waste water from the Frack well sites and dumping it directly into the swamp near her home. That is a form of “US CHEMICAL GENOCIDE” that is happening across the US and the Gas, Oil and Mining Companies are getting away with it. THIS is a MAJOR CRIME and the Oil, Gas and Mining Companies are getting away with it with the BLESSINGS of the Politicians. I know what it is like to live with lungs full of toxic petro chemicals and solvents and difficulty breathing and the same deadly toxins flowing through my veins and every organ. If you could see my swollen and discolored feet today filled with toxic edema from these toxic chemicals you would be shocked, the same thing happens to my arms and I have to have them in a sling as the pain is so horrific. I see Chesapeake Energy gave three families 1.6 million dollar settlement, that is about $500,000 per family and an INSULT to them. That won’t even touch the life of HELL Chesapeake caused for those families while they pulled billions of dollars worth of gas from their property. There is a Summit in Beroun, Czech Republic March 6-8, they are gathering people from around the world to formulate a WORLD/GLOBAL BAN FRACKING TREATY to be enforced world wide. They see what is happening in the US which is affecting the world and since the US won’t do anything to stop the Toxic Fracking they are going to do it. The Gas Companies promise they will dispose of the toxic water safely. In Michigan where can you dispose of 21 million gallons of toxic waste water ????? There is NO WAY they can take that much water from the earth for fracking and poison it, then expect to find a “well” to put it in for “safe” storage. THEY CAN’T do it, thus they are dumping it any place they want, rivers, streams, roads, swamps, sewers, storm drains, piping it from one state to another, etc., poisoning every thing AND they are getting away with it and no one is being arrested for an ACTUAL CRIME being committed. It is happening in EVERY State where fracking is going on. The Government is NOT going to fix this, the PEOPLE have to. As Plato said: “The price of apathy is to be ruled by evil men” and Washington Congress is full of them as is in each State across the Nation. Do NOT be Apathetic people, fight back. If you want my story I will send it to you to help in this fight. gfrms@charter.net Gerry Seger, Michigan
Thanks to all who sit down and stand up for our Earth! This is our and our children’s future. Please government representatives we have elected, stop bowing to the demands of the fossil fuel industry and its obscene profits and represent your citizens. The Earth needs you to go renewable now. Please before it is way too late.
Those of you who can, come to DC on the 17th of FEB to back these people up with your protest of the KXL.
We’ll ban of Fracking next. The Planet is seriously threatened by all of these polluters and the politicians they have bought and paid for. We must stand up NOW, for every state in the union, and every person in harms way.
The Energy Industry has become a mafia like presence, full of greed and corruption, buying political votes and throwing their enormous, corpulent weight around and thinking- and acting- like they can do anything they want. And up till now, they have been allowed to, but this grassroots movement is going to put a stop to that! There are thousands of people stepping up to the plate to shut them down and make them accountable and show them that our country’s beauty and natural resources are not theirs and our citizens’ health is not for sale. I don’t know how anyone decent could ever work for a fossil fuel company and still sleep at night… which is why they don’t- the energy companies are obviously full of people who have no morals, no conscience, obviously no concern for the environment, wildlife, or even their fellow Americans’ health.
” When we come into this world, we have a bowl of light. For every sin against ourselves and others, a rock is placed in the bowl. As time goes on with this behavior, you will soon have a bowl of rocks blocking out the light. There are men and women that control corporations and government, carrying within themselves bowls full of rocks” Hank Wesselman -Shaman
We are the lightbeings, they that oppose. So I choose to support this effort by reducing fuel consumption by driving less. No vacations this year, no buying products or packaged products made from petrochemicals. I will make a sincere effort in reducing my carbon footprint.
Thank you for your sacrifice and bringing awareness to this matter.
Takecare
Caretaker
Get ready Washington! 20 thousand of us will be marching, along with these 48, on Sunday! Enough is enough!
This pipeline has got to be stopped – among those arrested were some with a camera who got proof that the pipeline has cracks, but they were arrested before they could get the word out, and the flawed pipe went into the ground
http://action.sumofus.org/a/kxl-hole/129/296/?akid=1316.195903.fLKfTD&rd=1&sub=fwd&t=3