Keystone XL pipeline: it's baaaaaack!

UNBELIEVABLE!

1. from 350.org

Yesterday we saw another twist in the twisted Keystone XL tar sands pipeline saga -- TransCanada announced they’re going to build the southern leg of the pipeline, from Cushing Oklahoma, through Texas to the Gulf of Mexico.

This is bad news, particularly for our allies along the route, some of whose land is being taken by eminent domain – a fight that is breeding some unusual alliances between environmentalists and the Tea Party. We’ll do all we can to help them with the fight, which will play out mostly in Texas itself. It’s obviously tough political terrain, but if you met the folks who caravanned out to Washington last summer, you know that Texans are tough people.

Meanwhile, TransCanada also announced that, as expected, they will re-apply for a presidential permit allowing them to build the pipe across the US-Canadian border. This is the leg that would bring new tar sands oil into the country - the same permit that President Obama denied last month.

There’s no way to stop them from doing this—anyone can apply for a permit. But as we now know, there are plenty of ways to fight it. We’ll be keeping an eagle eye on the process, making sure that the White House keeps its promises to vet not only the route across sensitive aquifers, but also the climate impacts of opening up tar sands oil. If they actually carry out a real review, we think the permit will be denied—but we've also seen how easy it is for big oil's money to compromise the process.

And that big money, of course, continues to operate in the Congress, where some senators still want to revive the border crossing without a Presidential review. We sent them 800,000 messages the week before last, and a vote is delayed for at least a few weeks. These guys are slow learners, so more phone calls and emails wouldn’t hurt.

Here's what I said when I called this morning:

“Tar sands oil is a scam— it’s foreign crude destined for foreign markets. We get the spills, and we get the global warming, and the oil industry gets the profits. (Also, we know that you get campaign donations as well, but that’s not an excuse to endanger the planet.)”

Click here for your Senators' contact information and to report your call.

As Bill McKibben wrote over the weekend, Keystone is one battle among many, and we’ll keep calling on you for more support on other issues too. But this is an important, iconic fight—big oil knows that, which is why they are pushing so hard. And you know it, which is why so far, for once, they haven’t gotten their way,

Articles and sources:
"The Keystone Fight Is Uniting Tea Partiers With Environmentalists" Talking Points Memo, Feb. 27 2012.
tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/02/keystone-opposition-creates-strange-bedfellows-in-rural-america.php
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2. from Credo

Yesterday, the White House applauded news that TransCanada would go forward with building the southern leg of Keystone XL, promising to help expedite the permits necessary to complete the pipeline's route from Cushing, Okla. to the refineries and shipping ports of Port Arthur, Texas.

Breaking up the pipeline in this way is quite simply TransCanada's latest end run around the State Department's formal review process.

President Obama's support for the southern leg isn't a surprise -- he specifically mentioned this project as he was rejecting the full pipeline last month based on insufficient time to conduct a thorough review.

But it is deeply disappointing that, just a month later, he would signal a willingness to backtrack on even that minimal condition, saying he would "take every step possible to expedite the necessary federal permits."1

The southern portion of Keystone XL carries the same risks of oil spills on American water and soil, and brings the tar sands carbon bomb one big step closer to being unleashed across the world. President Obama must insure that the Department of Transportation and the Army Corps of Engineers do not cut any corners in evaluating this project, and consider it's full impacts on the climate.

Tell President Obama: Don't expedite approval of the southern leg of Keystone XL or cut any corners to force this project through.

https://act.credoaction.com/campaign...x&rc=confemail