04 Nov 2011

Is oil the answer?

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“Remember when President Obama said, Let us be the generation that ends the tyranny of oil? Man, that was great. Except, I just checked, and right now, Big Oil is still pretty much running the show. But — Mr. President, — you’ve got a fabulous chance to turn that around and make good on your word!” ~Julia Louis-Dreyfus

One year from the next election, nearly 10,000 people are expected in DC on November 6, 2011 to encircle the White House to ask President Obama to reject the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. The demonstrations purpose is to show President Obama he has the support he needs to stand up to Big Oil and stop the pipeline. Will you be there?

TransCanada is attempting to obtain U.S. regulatory approval to build the Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta, Canada to Texas. This pipeline will transport diluted bitumen (DilBit), a viscous, dirty, corrosive form of crude oil and the least refined product they can push through a pipe across Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas.

On a side note: what were you thinking Harper, digging up the tar sands in Fort McMurray, Alberta? Money. Money. Money. That’s right money always comes before the people, and our ecosystem.

To be able to extract the tar sands, the oil companies have to dig up beautiful forests in Alberta which provides habitat for large populations of migratory birds, wolves, grizzly bears, lynx and moose. Even though the Canadian government requires the oil companies to replant the trees, I am pretty sure that is no comfort to all the animals that will and have lost their homes already.

Mining and extracting the tar sands destroys enormous swaths of important ecosystems, produces lake-sized reservoirs of toxic waste, releases toxic chemicals into our air when it is refined in the U.S., and emits significantly more global warming pollutants into the atmosphere than fuels made from conventional oil.

The production of synthetic crude oil from tar sands causes three times the greenhouse gas emissions of the production of conventional crude oil per barrel and tar sands – over its entire lifecycle – has 20% more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional oil.

Also, because tar sands oil is heavy and full of impurities, it requires additional carbon-intensive refinery processes. Thus, replacing 900,000 barrels per day of conventional oil with tar sands oil would result in approximately 38 million metric tons of additional greenhouse gas emissions per year, equal to adding over 6 million cars to the roads.

Transporting this dirty fuel to U.S. markets has also proven to be extremely dangerous, unpredictable and uncontrollable. Do we really need another BP disaster in the middle of the United States? I thinking no. Have we not learned anything from the past?

I am hoping the President stands up to Big Oil and refuses the permit. We need to reduce our dependency on oil and stop destroying our beautiful ecosystem at the same time. We need to put our money into renewable resources. If we keep digging and digging and digging and not think about the consequences of our actions we will be left with nothing.

Come on Mr.President- you have thousands of people counting on you to do the right thing. Let’s stop this MEGA STUPID, MEGA PIPELINE!