Twitter
StumbleUpon
Facebook
Delicious
Digg
Newsvine
Google
Yahoo
TechnoratiYoung Climate Activists Call On Clinton to Stop Tar Sands Pipeline
The Avaaz Action Factory is at it again. This time its target is Secretary Clinton; its quest is to get her to stop a new pipeline that would send Canadian tar sands oil into the US.
Yesterday, during morning rush hour, these young and creative activists showed up at the State Department in full costume, complete with a kiddie pool full of a tar sands mixture. Their banner read: "Clinton be a Leader. Say No to Tar Sands, Stop Global Warming."
The activists then put on a little play. In the kiddie pool was a dirty tar sands villain and a young woman, dressed as Secretary Clinton, had to choose whether to battle the villain and save the earth. She chose wisely.
The Problem with Tar Sands Secretary Clinton can stop a new pipeline that will bring tar sands oil to the US. Alberta's tar sand reserves are now estimated to contain more than 175 billion barrels of crude oil, but to get to the huge reserves, excavators must remove the topsoil and then take out the underlying tar sands by lifted them into dump trucks. The tar sands are moved to an extraction site, where they are steamed to get to the oil. The process is so carbon intensive that to create oil from the tar sands emits at least five times more carbon dioxide then does the effort of processing "sweet crude" oil.
Avaaz Action Factory wants you to take action. Here's what they recommend:
What you can do: Call the US State Department at (202) 647-4000 and ask for Secretary Clinton's representative and ask her to turn down the Clipper Pipeline and say no to dirty energy expansion.Then post to your facebook wall or tweet: I just called Clinton asking her to stop prevent a dirty #oilsands pipeline into the US. http://bit.ly/2H68qf
Today's action is part of a much larger effort involving the Rainforest Action Network, the Sierra Club and many more groups fighting to stop tar sands extraction.
More on Tar Sands:
Tar Sands: The Most Destructive Project on Earth
National Geographic Slams Tar Sands - Canadian Politicians Pissed
Tar Sand Investments Could Be Oil Industry's Version of the Sub-Prime Meltdown
6 Comments so far
Show AllAmericans might not worry about the loss of boreal forests, the toxic lakes of the processing water, the hectic frontier atmosphere of Fort McMurray. After all, it is away up there in Canada. But this is massively contributing to climate change. The tar sands operation is one of the worst emitters of carbon dioxide.
Tough project to stop. People want so badly to buy into the hope that something will come along so that motorized transportation won't have to stop. Tar sands (along with switch grass and biodiesel and Drill, Baby, Drill elk be damned) promise that maybe what Jim Kunstler calls the Happy Motoring lifestyle won't really have to come to an end (along with our so-called civilization).
If President Obama provided leadership by putting out in ringing JFK tones a goal of "freeing us from foreign oil and bringing the earth safely back to us by the end of the next decade," a national goal that took priority over "saving" the too-big banks and "winning" the war in Afghanistan, that might help. But now that he's been office a few months, he appears less and less likely to go that route.
Obama doesn't have the freedom of action to ring like JFK. The nation is running a huge deficit, and has serious problems with the national debt ballooning pretty much out of control.
Furthermore, how would you go about eliminating 12 to 14 million barrels per day of imports?
Good point and good question. How indeed? If there isn't a way, then the future is sure to live up to my name/handle.
You two have posted the answer to the question these kids are asking.
I HOPE I haven't posted the answer. If I have, I'm unaware of it; please elaborate. The only "answer" I have to these young people is accept the fact that "The End Is Near" and I don't WANT them to accept that as fact. Don't listen to me! I pray every day to the deity I don't believe in that I'm wrong wrong wrong.