Opponents of the proposed pipeline argued that allowing Keystone to pass through the U.S. would be assuming a large amount of risk, with little pay off. The majority of this dirty tar sands oil would be exported, but not before passing through America’s heartland. Denying this pipeline would send a clear message that the U.S. does not want dirty tar sands oil passing through our communities.   Here are some of the best quotes from today’s hearing!

Top 10 quotes from the Keystone XL hearing:

1. “We’re screwing our children, grandchildren, all future generations if we think we can use those unconventional fossil fuels.”– Dr. James Hansen

2. “If we don’t approve KXL, much of Canada’s tar sands won’t be developed.”– Dr. James Hansen

Proponents of the Keystone pipeline like to argue that this tar sands oil will be developed regardless. But the truth is that Canada has been exploring other options and is hitting significant opposition. For example, native tribes in western Canada have made it clear that they will not allow a pipeline through their native lands.

3. “The choice is not whether to accepted increased risk by rail or pipeline, but whether to take the oil out of the ground”– Michael Brune

4. “It’s not about the pipeline. It’s really about tar sands oil. It’s carbon that’s the issue” – Senator Tim Kaine

Senator Tim Kaine gets it, this is not about the pipeline, it is about dirty tar sands oil that should remain in the ground.

5. “People say that the Keystone pipeline is a no-brainer. I’m sorry; I guess my brain works differently.”– Senator Barbara Boxer

Senator Boxer gave a strong testimony, citing the vast health impacts as one of the primary reasons to reject the pipeline. Accompanied by nurses from across the U.S., she talked about the health impacts of living near refineries. Often these places will have much higher rates of cancers and asthma, especially in children.

6. “If you are in support of the environment, you are in support of the pipeline.”– Chamber of Commerce’s Karen Harbert

Really?? I think the large majority of environmentalists are going to have to disagree with Ms. Harbert on that point.

7. To which Senator Barbara Boxer responded: “When you said ‘If you are an environmentalist you are in support of this pipeline’, let me just say that is ludicrous on its face, please don’t speak for me, and please don’t speak for lots of folks who don’t see it that way.”

8. “The world is looking at us. you’ve gotta be lowering your greenhouse gas emissions, not increasing.” – Senator Ed Markey

Tar sands is one of the most carbon intensive fuel sources. As we try to limit our overall carbon impact, it is important that we focus on reducing the most carbon intensive fuel sources.

10. “We’re all on the same boat. We will either sink together or find a way to sail together”– Dr. James Hansen

What KXL means for wildlife

We are all in the same boat, no matter your party (or your species!) you will be affected by climate change and dirty fuels projects. Keystone XL pipeline will cut through America’s agricultural heartland, the Missouri, Platte, and Niobrara Rivers, the Ogallala aquifer, habitat for sage grouse and sandhill cranes, walleye fisheries and much more. Migratory birds are especially at risk as many of their migration paths follow the proposed Keystone pipeline route. Habitat disruption in these areas would negatively impact these migrating species as well as the communities in the surrounding areas.

Take action now! Speak up for wildlife species and communities that would be impacted by Keystone XL and dirty tar sands projects.

There was a lot of talk about jobs during the hearing: Republican members expressed concern that EPA regulations will kill jobs in industries such as coal.  But Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D, RI) brought up a good point—what about the jobs that we are already losing to climate change?  Global warming is altering fishing, farming, foresting, and outdoor recreation activities such as skiing.  The people who work in these industries are feeling the heat as climate change alters how they do business.

New Senate Climate Group

Even with widespread scientific agreement on the severity of man-made climate change, there are still people who argue the validity of climate science.  And what is concerning is that so many of them are found in powerful positions in Congress.  This action on climate within the Senate is a positive indicator that we won’t let climate change deniers overpower the concerned citizens and lawmakers who want responsible action.

Congress should support the EPA and the President in their plan to address carbon pollution.  Take action now to show your support for limits on carbon pollution from power plants!

Here’s how NWF’s Jeremy Symons puts it:  “The clearest sign of this election that voters want action on clean energy was the resounding defeat in California of Prop 23, which would have pulled the plug on the state’s best-in-nation plan to reduce global warming pollution.”

The epic battle pitted Big Oil barons like the Koch brothers who poured millions into the campaign against clean energy advocates that included NWF. It’s where we made our stand, mobilizing more than 100,000 members in the state and funded voter outreach. With 95 percent of precincts reporting, Prop 23 went to a resounding defeat by about 39 to 61 percent.  More than a 20 point spread.

Californians also sent Barbara Boxer back to Washington to chair the Senate Envrionement committee, which is good news for defending America’s clean air, clean water and clean energy laws.

There will be big challenges ahead, and defensive battles.  We’ll need to be vigilant and ready to mobilize.

Here’s how NWF’s Symons puts it:  “There will be new faces in Washington, but clean energy and the environment are mainstream issues that resonate with voters today more than ever.  As they did after the 1994 elections, polluters will probably push the new Congress to overreach and roll back environmental protections.  But that would backfire today just as it has backfired then.

“The real appetite in the new Congress will be for bipartisan, bite-sized pieces of energy policy that protect our environment and grow our economy. “

His appearance at the talks is considered especially important given that healthcare continues to dominate the Senate. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has promised to move forward with healthcare reform hoping to hold votes in December. The timing of these votes could directly interfere with the Copenhagen meetings, preventing Senate climate leaders John Kerry (D-MA) and Barbara Boxer (D-CA) from traveling to Copenhagen and build support.

Obama’s announcement also coincides with the announcement of a provisional greenhouse gas emissions target for 2020 in the range of 17% below 2005 levels. These levels will be placed on the bargaining table at Copenhagen and closely parallel with levels included in the House climate bill passed earlier this year, as well as the Senate bill that will likely reach the floor in the spring.

Possibly due to the youth campaigns that have urged Obama to action,the White House will host a Clean Energy Economy Forum with youth leaders from around the country on Wednesday, December 2 from 4:00-7:00 pm. Campus Ecology’s own Praween Dayananda will be in attendance, along with Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, Labor Secretary Hilda L. Solis, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa P. Jackson, and other Administration officials. The forum will address the benefits of the clean energy economy for younger generations and the role young Americans have in being leaders in and benefiting from those opportunities.

The forum will be webcast live here, and will also be open to the public through a Facebook application which allows the public to watch and discuss the event live. The White House will be keeping up with the chat, taking questions, and incorporating feedback from chat participants during the event.

Carbon dioxide pollution knows no political boundaries. Decarbonizing every economy around the world must be our common goal.

In a few weeks, National Wildlife Federation will send a team to the United Nations Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen to support world leaders striving to create an enforceable global agreement to cut carbon dioxide pollution. We will be demanding that assembled leaders produce a roadmap–with every nation participating this time–to collectively curb this massive pollution threat before it’s too late to avoid catastrophic climate changes that will spell unprecedented losses of wildlife all over the world in every ecosystem. We will demand firm reductions and timetables that match the best available science and we will press for the establishment of specific, enforceable targets proportional to each country’s contributions. Here are some of the key elements to a global deal.

Bold and verifiable goals

The 20 largest emitters known as the G-20 produce eighty percent of the carbon dioxide pollution. They include Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, United Kingdom and the United States. These nations must lead the way and be accountable to cut their emissions on an aggressive timetable. Discussions leading up to Copenhagen have been marked by wrangling about who should do what and which countries should make the biggest emissions cuts. The U.S. and China together, now represent more than 40 percent of annual emissions so we both must do our fair share to cut future emissions. Copenhagen will fail unless scientifically-sound 2020 emissions targets are established for each of these countries and to establish a firm date for industrialized nations to begin cutting overall emissions. The actual atmospheric declines should start by no later than 2015 to minimize the real risks of runaway global warming.

Skipping 20th century mistakes

Many developing nations are rightfully looking for ways to build their own economies to provide for their people. It is critically important that we help them build clean energy economies, while avoiding fossil-fuels that increase global emissions. Instead, we need to help them adopt and deploy new, clean energy technologies to meet their needs. In other words, we want to help developing nations to go from the 19th century right into the 21th century bypassing our 20th century mistakes.

Think of it this way, many of the world’s poorest people have never made a phone call, if and when they do, it will be on a cell phone. When they get their first lights, they will be solar or wind-powered. They will be able to stop burning wood and dung for cooking and replace these soot-producing stoves with solar cookers.

Protecting Forests

Deforestation and continual degradation of forests represents about 20 percent of the total human-caused atmospheric carbon dioxide as trees remaining tropical rain forests, are vital stores of carbon. We must forge a global deal that helps developing countries protect remaining uncut forests by providing financial incentives to reduce future deforestation and degradation. Properly executed, this will help mitigate climate change, provide protection for extravagant biodiversity in rainforests and help the poor develop in sustainable ways. All of this must be sensitive to and address various social, institutional and political drivers that trigger destructive forest losses.

Storing Carbon in Second-Growth Forests and Agricultural Soils

Because it will take time to transition large coal-fired power plants and industrial facilities, we must invest in carbon offsets that fund farmers who increase their carbon storage in soils and pay forest landowner for delaying timber harvests by 30-40 years to get additional carbon storage from older trees.

The December meeting will bring together world leaders and their environmental ministers to forge an agreement to succeed the Kyoto climate change treaty that expires in 2012. Many of us were hoping that the election of Barack Obama signaled to the world that the US would now play a strong leadership role in Copenhagen by tackling climate change with a new law that would set a firm foundation for U.S. action. President Barack Obama went to Copenhagen in October in a failed attempt to support Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games, it is yet to be seen whether or not he will return as a world leader determined to forge a climate agreement that protects the future of all children.

The U.S. House of Representatives under the able leadership of Speaker Pelosi has passed a foundational bill that will enable President Obama to lead. As of this writing, the Senate has not matched the House action. It is unclear whether the U. S. Senate will pass a bill in time to help shape the President’s role in the treaty decisions ahead. I remain hopeful that Senator Kerry and Senator Boxer can reach out to the Republican Senators and those swing Democrats from high-carbon states to forge a deal.

We are running out of time to save the planet, and the Copenhagen summit is a terribly important milestone. You should urge President Obama to lead the charge for a global deal and urge your Senators to act now to pass climate legislation to create millions of clean energy jobs, make our world more secure and to give wildlife this last chance.

Faced with the GOP plan, [Senate Environment & Public Works Committee Chair Barbara] Boxer said the Democrat majority on the committee decided to “reach our hand across the aisle” and accommodate some of the GOP concerns.

Boxer will begin the markup as planned Tuesday, but will extend the deadline for amendments until “the close of business” that day, allowing Republicans who have boycotted the process to participate past the original deadline.

In addition, Boxer said she’ll pause the markup process tomorrow afternoon and invite an EPA official to come before the committee and answer any and all remaining questions about the cap-and-trade bill Republicans may have.

Now that Boxer has addressed their concerns, will Republicans come to the table to negotiate the real reform America has been waiting for? We’ll find out on Tuesday.

Responding to the Republican complaints, Boxer insisted that she is holding “an unprecedented number of legislative hearings” on the climate bill, with more than 50 witnesses who have been asked to offer their comments after reading the entire 923-page proposal.

“We have an analysis that I’d say is one of the most thorough ever done,” Boxer said.

The California Democrat said U.S. EPA took two weeks to study her proposal, and she also lumped in the five weeks that the agency took this spring to analyze H.R. 2454 (pdf), the House bill written by Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.).

Have you contacted your senator to urge them to pass strong clean energy & climate legislation this year? It only takes a minute through our Climate Action Center. From polar bears to panthers, wildlife will thank you for it!

As a founding member of BICEP (Businesses for Innovative Climate and Energy Policy), being a board member of the Chamber just didn’t quite work for Nike. After all, the Chamber says global warming is a good thing … because we’ll have fewer cold days. Try telling that to cold-water fisherman in Montana or a skier in New Hampshire.

The Chamber isn’t working for a lot of companies, including three utilities, PG&E, PNM Resources and Exelon who have said “see ya” to the Chamber in the last few weeks. And on Monday, Apple headed for the door as well, telling the Chamber it would prefer the group take a more “constructive role” in addressing the climate crisis.

This week, nearly 200 business leaders are on Capitol Hill to tell Senators that passing climate and energy legislation is good for business. Included in the group is John Rowe, chairman and CEO of Exelon. He sees the passage of climate and energy legislation as the ticket to a faster investment stream that will create more jobs in a low-carbon economy.

Also this week, 28 companies, including Johnson & Johnson, GE, Weyerhauser, United Technologies, and Duke Energy, are launching their own advertising campaign to support climate and energy legislation that caps the carbon pollution that causes global warming. The ad campaign’s headline says it all: America’s Energy and Environmental Future is in Our Hands.

The bill, which is still being revised, would make it easier for businesses to compensate for their carbon pollution by expanding the available pool of domestic offsets by 40 percent compared with the House-passed climate bill authored by Reps. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) and Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.). It does not specify how pollution allowances will be allocated, which is sure to be a key battle as the bill moves forward. […]

The Senate bill also will emphasize transportation efficiency, with provisions targeted at getting communities of 200,000 or more to plan for more public transport and bike paths. It also will preserve the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate large sources of greenhouse gases, such as coal-fired power plants.

The bill is due to be released at an event on Capitol Hill at 11:30am. More details later today!