This hour protestors are gathering on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, to show their opposition to the Alberta tar sands, and specifically the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline that could be built from Alberta across the U.S. to carry tar sands bitumen to Texas refineries.
I would dearly love to be there, but by the time this event was organized I was committed to helping with all-day events for Moving Planet day this past Saturday, and a sustainability workshop on Sunday. As I live a 5 1/2 hour drive from a direct Ottawa flight, and am a 24 hour drive away from Ottawa, I struggled with the decision about giving up my local commitment to building sustainability or traveling (and burning carbon) to make a very important national statement to our government and to other Canadians. In the end, a friend suggesting a low-carbon alternative. She couldn’t attend, either, but recruited a friend in Ottawa to go. As it turns out, a friend and fellow Citizens Climate Lobby member was in Ottawa visiting her daughter this weekend, and so we were able to negotiate extending her ticket so that she could attend today’s event, and represent both of us. It’s a creative and low-carbon solution, so thanks Kaaren for the idea, and thanks, Val for standing up for all of our children’s future on Parliament Hill today!
The event is being livestreamed here.
Meanwhile, here’s Robert Redford “Punching Back at Big Oil”
When you challenge Big Oil in Houston, you can bet the industry is going to punch back. So when I wrote in the Houston Chronicle earlier this month that we should say no to the Keystone XL pipeline, I wasn’t surprised when the project’s chief executive weighed in with a different view.
The corporate rejoinder, written by Alex Pourbaix, president for energy and oil pipelines for the TransCanada Corp., purported to cite “errors” in my oped. Let’s set the record straight, point by point.
First, the Keystone XL, as proposed, would run from Canada across the width of our country to Texas oil refineries and ports. It would carry diluted bitumen, a kind of crude oil, produced from the Alberta tar sands. On those points, we all agree.
I say this is a bad idea. It would put farmers, ranchers and croplands at risk across much of the Great Plains. It would feed our costly addiction to oil. And it would wed our future to the destructive production of tar sands crude. Click here to read the full article on RSN.org
