Stop Keystone XL

A message from CREDO Action:

We're hearing lots of rumors about possible delays and compromises for Keystone XL.

A Reuters article yesterday quoted an anonymous State Department official who said the agency was considering rerouting the pipeline so it would not run over Nebraska's Ogallala aquifer,¹ and according to today's Washington Post, administration officials are meeting today to discuss this.²

There's lots of speculation about what this could mean for the State Department's inadequate Environmental Impact Statement, from tweaking bits and pieces to redoing the whole thing, which could push the decision past the 2012 election.

But the fact remains: Rerouting and delaying the Keystone XL does not solve the problem; that the tar sands pipeline is a fuse to a massive carbon bomb.

There is already more than enough evidence for the President and the State Department to simply declare that the Keystone XL pipeline is not in our national interest, stopping the project. That is what he should do.

But if the game in Washington DC doesn't allow the President to take decisive action, then he clearly has the factual evidence and popular mandate to call for the State Department to start the review process from the beginning and conduct a fair, impartial review. That means hiring a contractor that is independent from oil companies to conduct the environmental review, mandating that the global warming impacts of the pipeline be included this time, and declaring that the assessment be free of the influence of lobbyists.

Tell President Obama: Say NO, or start over clean. Click here to automatically sign the petition.

The biggest problem with Keystone XL has always been that it will speed the development and extraction of the Alberta tar sands, one of the largest pools of carbon on the planet.

So delaying and/or rerouting, but ultimately approving, the Keystone XL would still be "game over."

This is underscored by a report released yesterday by the International Energy Agency, which said that "the door is closing" to stop irreversible warming. ³

In order to stop accelerating global warming, we must immediately stop investing in new infrastructure to burn and extract fossil fuels, which will lock us into global warming pollution for decades to come.

The best thing for President Obama to do is just say no. He already has the power to do that. If he is not willing to, then the least he can do is to ensure a clean evaluation process, free from conflict of interest, that takes into account the global warming impacts of Keystone XL, as the first sham review failed to do.

Tell President Obama: Say NO, or start over clean. Click here to automatically sign the petition.

Thanks for fighting the Keystone XL Pipeline.

Michael Kieschnick, Becky Bond and Elijah Zarlin
CREDO Action from Working Assets

1. "State Dept eyes rerouting Keystone XL pipeline," Reuters, November 9, 2011
2. "Proposed Keystone pipeline route may be reassessed," Washington Post, November 10, 2011
3. "World headed for irreversible climate change in five years, IEA warns," The Guardian, November 9, 2011