“We’ve always said from the beginning, when we started the protest: What we want is for President Obama to live up to the words that he’s spoke about climate change, the words he spoke in the 2008 campaign”.
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Seven years have passed since project Keystone XL was created and it has been a war cause between oil companies and Republicans, on a side, and environmentalists and liberal activists, on the other side.
Keystone XL would have linked existing pipeline networks in Canada and the United States to bring crude from Alberta and North Dakota to refineries in Illinois and, eventually, the Gulf of Mexico coast.
“It continues to be absolutely mind-boggling that President Obama and his administration will not approve the Keystone XL Pipeline”.
But Obama, with one eye on the upcoming global climate change summit in Paris, said Keystone “would not serve the national interests of the United States” and could prove an environmental hazard. The main goal on the White House’s agenda is to broker an worldwide comprehesion committing every country to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
By contrast, Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, said “the Canadian tar sands are a serious problem for climate change”.
“I’m not against rail cars”, Briggs said.
“Today’s victory was probably the first time citizens have been able to effectively stand up to big oil and block a huge project, President Obama became the first world leader to to say here’s something big we’re not going to build because of its effect on the climate”, said McKibben. In December 2011, the company laid off 60 temporary workers after the Obama administration put the project on hold because of environmental objections raised by officials in Nebraska. President Obama’s decision to reject Keystone XL because of its impact on the climate is nothing short of historic – and sets an important precedent that should send shock waves through the fossil fuel industry.
“I don’t think that they are in great appreciation of what we do out here to be able to pay our taxes that it’s just more, more, more so we can spend more, more, and more and That’s how our government seems to function”.
Environmentalists had sought to block construction of the pipeline because it would have provided a conduit for petroleum extracted from the Canadian oil sands.
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August 26, 2011 – The State Department issues its final environmental impact statement determining “there would be no significant impacts to most resources along the proposed project corridor”. However, the attorneys say they will keep moving forward with the eminent domain constitutionality question in Holt County District Court. Also, the plan could be looked at with new eyes in 2017 should a Republican get elected in the USA presidential race and win the White House. In that context, he said Firday, the USA must “lead by example”.
