Green Groups Urge Court to Stop Trump Effort to Approve 'Climate-Wrecking, Wildlife-Killing' Keystone XL

A coalition of environmental groups filed a brief Tuesday urging the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to reject President Donald Trump's latest effort to green-light TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline.

"Trump's trying to ram this dirty pipeline down America's throat, but we're not falling for it," Jared Margolis, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement. "He can't just approve this climate-wrecking, wildlife-killing project however he wants and avoid the environmental reviews required by law."

"This case has become about far more than this dirty, climate-destroying pipeline, it is now another chapter in Trump's story of corruption and greed in the face of the law."
—Marcie Keever, Friends of the Earth

Doug Hayes, a senior attorney with Sierra Club, said the Keystone Pipeline "has been a bad deal for the American people from the beginning, and Donald Trump's shameless attempt to bypass our bedrock environmental laws to get it built does nothing to change that."

"We're urging the court," added Hayes, "to protect the American people by ensuring that construction on this dirty tar sands pipeline does not begin without a thorough accounting of the risks it would pose to our climate and communities."

The environmentalists' brief, which calls on the court to uphold the injunction against Keystone construction, comes nearly a month after the Trump administration issued a presidential permit in an effort to give TransCanada the authority to build its pipeline.

As Common Dreams reported, green groups decried the president's move as an egregious attempt to skirt environmental laws.

Marcie Keever, legal director at Friends of the Earth, echoed this criticism in a statement on Tuesday, accusing Trump of "a blatant attempt to circumvent the actions the federal court took to stop construction on the Keystone XL Pipeline."

"When a foreign company can call up the U.S. president to cash in a favor to side-step our judicial system, we will demand the courts respond," Keever said. "This case has become about far more than this dirty, climate-destroying pipeline, it is now another chapter in Trump's story of corruption and greed in the face of the law."