Over 140 people – including NASA’s Dr. James Hansen have been arrested thus far in the on-going action ignited this summer by the Keystone XL pipeline problem. President Obama has got a decision to make – after all, he is The Decider du Jour. It’s up to Obama to deny the permit for a massive new oil pipeline. Hansen puts it this way, “If Obama chooses the dirty needle it will confirm that the President was just green-washing all along, like the other well-oiled coal-fired politicians, with no real intention of solving the addiction.”
This “presidential permit” we see before us is for a Canadian company, TransCanada, to begin construction of the Keystone XL, a 1,700 mile pipeline from the Canadian tar sands to refineries on the Gulf of Mexico.
Earlier this summer, Dr. Hansen and twenty other leading scientists sent a letter to the White House urging the President to prevent the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, writing: “If the pipeline is to be built, you as president have to declare that it is ‘in the national interest.’ As scientists, speaking for ourselves and not for any of our institutions, we can say categorically that it’s not only not in the national interest, it’s also not in the planet’s best interest.”
- KBOO