Growing Momentum Against Keystone XL

While Rep. Terry’s measure (H.R. 3, the “Northern Route Approval Act”) passed as expected, this vote was yet another sign that momentum is growing to reject dirty tar sands, protect our communities from disastrous spills, and turn towards cleaner, renewable energy choices. And despite all the theatrics in Congress, the ball remains in President Obama’s court—where it belongs. Both the facts and the political winds support doing the right thing by saying NO to an unneeded tar sands export pipeline that would put our heartland at risk for spills and send us in the wrong direction on curbing carbon pollution.

Just last month, more than 1 million comments from Americans requested that the State Department reject Keystone XL.  Given the anti-environmental makeup of this Congress, the Terry bill was expected to pass by a wide margin, but numbers like these obviously made lawmakers take note.  As NWF president and CEO Larry Schweiger said about the KXL pipeline:

It’s the wrong approach to put a foreign energy company ahead of more than 1 million Americans who have expressed concern for our nation’s wildlife, energy security and public health.

Indeed it is.  The risks of Keystone XL are huge; the reward is 35 permanent jobs in exchange for higher gas prices, oiled wildlife and communities, and another step towards climate calamity.

The Tar Sands Industry’s Plans for Your Backyard

The Great Plains aren’t the only region threatened by reckless tar sands pipeline expansion:

• In 2010, an Enbridge, Inc. pipeline ruptured in Michigan, spilling a million gallons of tar sands oil into the Kalamazoo River. Three years and close to $1 billion later, the cleanup continues. Enbridge is laying the groundwork for pipeline expansions that would dwarf Keystone XL and put the Great Lakes watershed in danger of another spill.  We need to say no to this proposal as well.
• Exxon’s Pegasus pipeline, reversed to carry tar sands oil, spilled into an Arkansas neighborhood in March, forcing dozens from their homes and oiling hundreds of animals including birds and turtles.
• Now, Exxon and Enbridge want to reverse a pipeline through Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine to carry tar sands oil to the international market.  The entire New England delegation voted against Rep. Terry’s Big Oil giveaway bill, and the message from New England is clear: it wants a clean energy future, not oil spills.

And this doesn’t even begin to get at the Florida-sized area in Alberta being mined and leveled to extract this dirty fuel.  Habitat for iconic wildlife—like Woodland Caribou, Gray Wolves, Black Bears, and 190 migratory bird species including the endangered Whooping Crane—is being destroyed, putting these species in peril, polluting rivers, and endangering the health of indigenous communities.

The message that tar sands is a bad deal is getting through.

More and more Americans are coming around to the fact that Keystone XL, while a great deal for foreign oil companies, is bad news for the rest of us. As Elizabeth Kolbert put it in an important new article in The New Yorker:

Once Keystone is built, there will be no putting the tar back in the sands. The pipeline isn’t inevitable, and it shouldn’t be treated as such. It’s just another step on the march to disaster.

It’s past time for Pres. Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry to look at the facts.  We don’t need tar sands oil.  We don’t need more spills.  And we can’t afford to doom our children to the carbon pollution from increased tar sands expansion. People are starting to get it.  It’s time for the President to match his words on climate with deeds.  Saying no to Keystone XL is a good place to start, and the time to start is now.

Every voice counts! Tell President Obama to reject the climate-destroying Keystone XL pipeline.

• It’s the most extreme KXL legislation the House has voted on. That’s really saying something, considering the half-dozen other terrible bills that have popped up over the last couple years. Not only would it remove the decision from the President’s hands, but it would override the authority and oversight responsibilities of the US State Department, the Department of the Interior, and the Army Corps of Engineers. The Environmental Protection Agency, which has an important role to play in the State Department review, would also be ignored.
• It relies upon outdated science. Imagine if your doctor wrote you a prescription based on your medical chart from years ago — inconceivable, right? But that’s essentially what Rep. Terry wants to do for Keystone. The State Department issued an analysis in 2011 for the first Keystone XL application, but TransCanada (the pipeline builder) revised its route and submitted an application for a new project in 2012. Despite this, H.R. 3 would use the 2011 analysis to fulfill legal requirements.
• Just in case there was any doubt about its anti-environment intentions, Rep. Terry’s bill would force all legal challenges to go through one of the country’s most conservative courts, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.
• It’s essentially an earmark, which is to say a favor for a specific company (TransCanada). But it would also set a dangerous precedent for other tar sands pipelines that the industry is pushing around the U.S. — in the Great Lakes watershed, the farm belt, Gulf coast, and even New England.

Regardless of your opinion of the pipeline itself (and let’s not forget just how dangerous KXL is for wildlife and our climate) this bill is a massive overreach by Big Oil’s allies in Congress. The White House, by law, is supposed to oversee international pipelines, and while we’ve had our disagreements about how well they’ve conducted their review, at least it’s given citizens the opportunity to weigh in. In April, over a million public comments were submitted in opposition to the project — but Rep. Terry’s bill would throw those comments into the proverbial paper shredder and put a big rubber stamp on TransCanada’s application.

As Larry Schweiger, NWF’s president and CEO, put it:

This bill puts the interests of a foreign energy company ahead of more than 1 million Americans who have expressed concern for our nation’s wildlife, energy security and public health. It is a bad bill that caters to polluters, not people.

Given how anti-environmental the House of Representatives has become, we expect this bill to pass, but there are still a number of key Congressmen and women who could vote either way — and how they vote sends an important message about their conservation values. Your voice can help! Call or email your representative and tell them to vote NO on H.R. 3, the Northern Route Approval Act.

To learn more about the threats posed to wildlife and public health by pipelines like Keystone XL, visit NWF.org/tarsands.

Fighting back against Big Oil

Fortunately, New Englanders aren’t known to let themselves get trampled on. Local conservation groups, public health experts and many others has been fighting back against Exxon, bringing widespread attention to the project — enough that we have the support of nearly the entire Congressional delegation from those three states (Senator Ayotte, we’re still waiting on ya). We even managed to get 1,500 people to a rally in Portland back in frigid January, the biggest gathering of any kind in 25 years. Suffice to say, New Englanders care, and we don’t want this dangerous substance pumped through our rivers and forests, threatening species like moose and black bears and contributing to climate change.

The problem is, the US State Department (which is tasked with overseeing the pipeline) doesn’t necessarily notice anything amiss and hasn’t the told the company it can’t proceed without a new permit. The State Department needs to make it clear: if Exxon wants to bring poisonous, climate-wrecking tar sands across Northern New England, the impacts are going to be given a hard look and approval is going to needed. It’s a common sense requirement, just making sure we know the threats and the particulars before giving the green light to Exxon, but State hasn’t gotten involved yet because the company hasn’t made a formal proposal.

And that’s the catch-22: unless the State Department tells them to formalize their plans, Exxon might never get around to filing the paperwork — and they’ve already told regional officials they don’t have to. They’re more than happy to act like the cartoon cat burping up feathers, shrugging its shoulders when you ask what happened to Tweety Bird. But this is real life, and New Englanders want to protect their region and wildlife from spills and climate change.  All risk and no reward does not interest New Hampshire, or Vermont or Maine for that matter.

Mr. Smith (and a bunch more) goes to Washington

New England and DC — culture-wise — may sometimes feel like oil and water, but when actual oil and actual water are in the mix, it’s worth a trip to the nation’s capitol. On Monday, a group from Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont came down to Washington, DC to tell their stories to State Department officials in person. It wasn’t your usual DC lobby trip: Fishermen, retired oil industry lawyers, and a handful of conservationists all made the rounds of Capitol Hill, meeting with agencies and Congressional offices with a simple request: Can someone PLEASE make sure this tar sands plan is carefully reviewed?

Pushing toxic, spill-prone tar sands through Exxon’s pipeline across Maine is an all-risk, no-reward proposition. The health of Maine people, our economy, and our way of life, depend on clean water for drinking, tourism, our fishing industry, and recreation. – Lisa Pohlmann, Natural Resources Council of Maine

We plan to keep the heat on Exxon and the State Department, and our group also got a chance to sit down with (deep breath…) the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, to talk about updating our nation’s safety standards for tar sands projects like the Northeast pipeline and Keystone XL. After Mayflower — and Kalamazoo, before that — we can’t trust the industry to operate safely, or even to tell us what they have planned for our back yards.

It can be hard to tell with federal agencies, but I think State got the message.

Tell the US State Department to protect New England’s wildlife and communities from this dangerous and polluting project. Say “NO!” to the Portland-Montreal tar sands pipeline.

Fortunately for Viking residents and the area’s wildlife, it appears that this accident was contained before it became a full-blown disaster like the one in Arkansas: even so, around 600 gallons of oil are estimated to have contaminated the area. The line that burst goes by the boring-by-design name “Line 2,” but the adjoining “Alberta Clipper” pipeline is also a crucial element of this story. DeSmogBlog has more:

The Viking pump station also receives oil from the Alberta Clipper (aka Line 67 pipeline) that carries heavy crude oil and tar sands bitumen from the Alberta tar sands region south from Hardisty to Superior, Wisconsin and refineries in the midwestern United States. It is unclear whether the product that spilled was tar sands-derived diluted bitumen.

The Alberta Clipper is already enormous — carrying nearly 20 million gallons daily to Midwest refineries — but it’s currently under review for a truly giant expansion that would double its capacity and make it the biggest tar sands pipeline in the United States. That’s right — bigger than Keystone 1, Keystone XL, or the Northeast pipeline, capable of pumping 37 million gallons of tar sands oil every day through the Great Lakes region.

You may be asking yourself, “Enbridge, huh? Why is that name so familiar?” Let’s just say this isn’t the company’s first brush with fame: while producing our report Importing Disaster, we discovered that Enbridge was responsible for more than 800 spills in the US and Canada between 1999 and 2010, totaling almost seven million gallons of oil. The biggest of these, of course, was the Kalamazoo River disaster in 2010, when a pipeline linked to the Alberta Clipper burst and sent over a million gallons of tar sands coursing through the community of Marshall, Michigan. That cleanup effort has taken almost three years and nearly a billion dollars, but the Environmental Protection Agency says that it’s still not finished and recently told Enbridge to get back to work to dredge more oil out of the river.

As NWF’s Beth Wallace has detailed, Enbridge isn’t particularly interested in improving its safety record:

Rather than focus on safety and cleanup, Enbridge is recklessly moving ahead with plans to expand their pipeline network in the Great Lakes region and the Northeast, and to double down on high carbon fuel that is proving nearly impossible to clean from Michigan’s waters.

With this latest leak on their resume, it’s fair to ask what more the company can do to earn anything but a slap on the wrist. A good first step would be for the US State Department (the agency in charge of the Alberta Clipper permit) to broaden their study to Enbridge’s entire Great Lakes pipeline system, because expanding Alberta Clipper means that whole system will be exposed to a massive increase in oil volumes — and with it, an even higher chance of disaster.

Hundreds of species were imperiled the last time an Enbridge pipeline burst in the Great Lakes, and we can’t afford a repeat. Speak up for wildlife threatened by Enbridge’s Midwest expansion plans — tell the State Department to stop Alberta Clipper!

Learn more about the Enbridge pipeline boom at NWF.org.

fails to reflect the full environmental impacts of the proposed pipeline. We strongly encourage the State Department to reevaluate the SEIS and its assessment of the proposed pipeline’s impacts on climate change, our natural resources, our economy, and low-income and minority communities.

This is no surprise to anyone who follows this blog (I know you’re out there) and it echoes official comments from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), released yesterday, that cast serious doubt on the State Department’s analysis and the future of the project. EPA concluded that State had failed to meaningfully consider multiple factors, foremost among them the climate impacts and spill risks posed by the 1,700 mile tar sands pipeline.

>>>Read the full letter from Congress here

A Million Voices Against KXL

It’s not just agencies and members of Congress who think the tar sands pipeline is a bad idea. Capping off the outpouring of opposition, National Wildlife Federation and other groups just delivered over a million comments from the public, telling the Obama Administration “reject the pipeline!” NWF’s Robyn Carmichael has more — and as she puts it, the comments “came from Americans from all across the country and all walks of life, but they carried one common message: that this risky and unnecessary project puts our wildlife, water, land, and communities in jeopardy.”

Thank you to the tens of thousands of NWF members (and many others) who have spoken up for people and wildlife during this rollercoaster campaign. The public comment period for the environmental review is over, but there will be more opportunities to help so stay tuned!

Your donations make a big difference in our efforts to protect wildlife from habitat loss and the effects of global warming.

To learn more about Keystone XL and how you can help, visit NWF.org/tarsands

Coming on Earth Day, it’s welcome news that the agency is trying to protect Americans and wildlife from a huge mistake.

This isn’t a new position for EPA — at several key points during the Keystone XL saga, officials have made it clear that their colleagues at the State Department need to go back to the drawing board. Partly, this is due to the fact that State isn’t used to leading big environmental studies; it’s only a quirk of the system that put them in charge of Keystone. But with a decision this important, with so much riding on a thorough analysis, we can’t afford growing pains.

Americans speak out

In addition to the environmental review, the government is also conducting something called a “National Interest Determination,” which will help decide whether or not Keystone is a good idea, based not just on environmental factors but also on things like diplomacy, energy security, and jobs (or lack thereof). Americans are already letting the White House know what they think: on Tuesday, a coalition of conservation groups, indigenous peoples, public health advocates and landowners along the pipeline route will deliver over a million comments from the public opposing construction of this risky project.

As NWF’s Jim Murphy put it in the Los Angeles Times:

“The Environmental Protection Agency’s letter shows that despite multiple tries, the State Department is incapable of doing a proper analysis of the climate, wildlife, clean water, safety and other impacts of this disastrous and unneeded project. President Obama has more than enough information to determine the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline is not in America’s national interest and he should reject it.”

President Obama gets to make the ultimate decision, but John Kerry (the U.S. Secretary of State) is a long-time champion against climate change, and could still sway his agency’s ultimate recognition. A million anti-Keystone comments, plus a timely assist from EPA, could tilt the balance in our favor.

Your donations make a big difference in our efforts to protect wildlife from habitat loss and the effects of global warming.

To learn more about Keystone XL and how you can help, visit NWF.org/tarsands

National Wildlife Federation board member David Carruth, an Arkansas resident who has spent the last few weeks assisting in the response to the disastrous Pegasus pipeline spill, will be speaking at a press conference to highlight the dangers of tar sands for wildlife and public health. And David, along with Nebraska Wildlife Federation president Duane Hovorka, will testify at the hearing. adding their voices to the hundreds of attendees telling the State Department to deny the pipeline.

You can watch a live stream of the event here, and I’ll be back with a recap of the hearing later this week so stay tuned. If you haven’t already sent a message to the White House, NOW IS THE TIME! The public comment period closes on Monday, April 22 so tell the President and Secretary Kerry “NO KXL!”

Speak up for people and wildlife at risk from tar sands — Tell the White House to say NO! to Keystone XL.

Far from being inevitable, the development of land-locked Canadian tar sands is almost entirely dependent on selling oil beyond North America. As the industry has repeatedly stated, without major infrastructure like Keystone XL giving this product access to world markets, the fragile economics propping up tar sands extraction will begin to crumble. In fact, RBC Dominion Securities recently warned that without Keystone XL, tar sands production growth could be reduced by almost 19 million gallons per day by 2017.

We are already seeing diminished capital investment in the Alberta oil patch due to the high level of uncertainty over the White House’s Keystone XL permitting decision, proving that this particular project is a linchpin for the industry. Other major pipeline proposals face significant legal and political obstacles in Canada, and appear increasingly likely to be stalled indefinitely. Moreover, Keystone is the largest proposal to date, and by itself would support an increase in tar sands production by 36 percent, which makes it a significant driver of climate change even if no other projects move forward.

Here’s what the industry and other experts have to say:

Western Canada’s oil industry faces a serious challenge to its long-term growth. Production growth will become constrained unless more pipeline capacity is built to access new markets.

TD Economics, Special Report – December 17, 2012

If we can’t attract world prices, then we will ultimately curb energy development.

Al Monaco, Enbridge, Inc. CEO – March 7, 2013

We’ve seen a lot of companies based out of Alberta making (spending) decisions that are quite different in the last half of (2012) compared to what they were in the first half of the year…We can no longer continue to rely on oil and gas for 30 per cent of our revenue. It’s a fundamental change.

Alison Redford, Alberta Premier – January 25, 2013

Oil sands projects display some of the highest break-evens of all global upstream projects. The potential for wide and volatile differentials could result in operators delaying or cancelling unsanctioned projects.

Wood Mackenzie, International Energy Research Firm – June 2012

“There’s a lot of that oil out there in the market. There’s plenty of capacity in the Pacific Rim/Asian markets for heavy oil like ours, but it’s not infinite and it’s certainly competitive.” And “If we can get our products into the market in that stream we’re going to be competitive…The equivalent of being late is you have to take a bigger and bigger discount on your product, or switch and start supplying a more higher valued-added product.”

Michal Moore, Professor of Energy Economics at the University of Calgary – February 7, 2013

Access to this crucial [Asian Pacific Basin] market will depend critically on the outcome of the pipeline approval process, and also the cost to ship from Canada. If Canada does not approve of the Pacific coast pipeline expansions, or takes too long in doing so, it could find its crude unable to effectively penetrate the world’s most promising oil export market.

David Hackett, et al., University of Calgary School of Public Policy, “Pacific Basin Heavy Oil Refining Capacity” – February 2013

If you look at the volume projection going out to 2020, you start saying Northern Gateway’s not going to happen, Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain will be delayed.

Michael Formuziewich, Portfolio Manager at Leon Frazer & Associates – February 7, 2013

Pipeline capacity out of Western Canada is adequate for the short term, but substantial progress must be made on this front in 2013. Progress, or lack thereof, will have a big impact on sentiment towards Canadian oil producers. We estimate that pipeline capacity out of the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin could effectively be full in the 2014 time frame, suggesting little room for error/politicking in bringing on new pipeline capacity.

Andrew Potter, CIBC oil and gas equity analyst – December 17, 2012

KXL is likely, therefore, to be moving Canadian bitumen before any of the other major pipeline projects considered in this report. In fact, with KXL in place and operating at capacity, bitumen production could increase substantially and have a major effect on the overall supply/demand situation throughout the North American continent.

Canadian Energy Research Institute – July 2012

Growing conventional oil, including tight oil, and oil sands production has created an urgent need for additional transportation infrastructure. New pipelines, expansions to existing infrastructure and increased transportation by rail are all required to meet this need for capacity. Pipelines continue to be the dominant mode of transportation for crude oil but it takes time for pipeline infrastructure to be built or expanded.

Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers – June 5, 2012

Unless we get increased [market] access, like with Keystone XL, we’re going to be stuck…We’re heading into the same situation with crude oil as we did with natural gas, in that we’re going to hit a wall at some point in time and our production is going to be the one backed out of the system, like natural gas has been backed out of the U.S. system. I think it will have a dramatic impact.

Ralph Glass, Vice-president, AJM Petroleum Consultants – June 8, 2011

If there was something that kept me up at night, it would be the fear that before too long we’re going to be landlocked in bitumen. We’re not going to be an energy superpower if we can’t get the oil out of Alberta.

Ron Liepert, former Alberta Energy Minister – June 8, 2011

It’s fair to say that development has already slowed because of the [price difference between Canadian oil and other benchmarks]. Companies are certainly going to wait and see what the decision on Keystone is before moving ahead with development.

Robert Schultz, Professor of Business at the University of Calgary – March 7, 2013

If President Obama approves Keystone XL, Americans would get all of the risk of a pipeline without any benefits to energy security or gas prices — not to mention the project’s serious implications for climate change and wildlife in Canada and the US. Tell the White House to say NO! to this dangerous and dirty project.

Speak up for wildlife like Woodland Caribou — tell President Obama to reject Keystone XL.

Sometimes it’s easiest to let the opposition speak for themselves, so here’s what our “friendly neighbors to the north” really hope to gain from their pipeline:

I am very serious about selling our oil off this continent, selling our energy products off to Asia. I think we have to do that.

Stephen Harper, Canadian Prime Minister – February 10, 2012

Well, not all of it’s going to be exported.

Lee Terry, U.S. Congressman – February 7, 2013

For Alberta, the strategic imperative is that we get our products to the ocean, so that we secure global prices for our products. The solutions are additional pipelines to the West Coast, to the East Coast, to the Gulf Coast, and also train-car delivery of bitumen and oil products to the coast.

Ken Hughes, Alberta Energy Minister – January 3, 2013

We have a duty to ensure that our resources, especially Alberta oil and gas, get to new markets at a much fairer price. We absolutely must find ways to get Alberta oil to multiple customers around the world and get a competitive price.

Alison Redford, Alberta Premier – January 24, 2013

Any effort to restrict market forces on commodities like oil and natural gas is a North Korean style model of economics and has no place here in America. Having the flexibility to export more should there be an occasional surplus of supply would go a long way to help reduce our trade deficit.

John Felmy, American Petroleum Institute Chief Economist – February 3, 2012

Long term, our strategy has always been to get Canadian heavy crude to the U.S. Gulf Coast.

Bill Klesse, Valero CEO and Chairman (Valero is a major refiner contracting for Keystone XL) – March 10, 2011

“Main products [of Valero’s Port Arthur, TX hydrocracker project] are high-quality diesel and jet fuel for growing global demand for middle distillates” and it is “Located at large, Gulf coast refinery to leverage existing operations and export logistics.”

Valero investor report slideshow – September 15, 2012

Is it all going to be used in the U.S. by U.S. consumers? No. Most of it will be, but it will be available for export.

Charles Drevna, American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers President – January 31, 2012

 “No, I can’t do that.”

Alex Pourbaix, TransCanada’s President for Energy and Oil Pipelines (Response to Rep. Ed Markey’s question of whether he would support an export ban on Keystone XL’s refined products.)– December 2, 2011

Shippers on the Keystone XL Pipeline have contracted for access to the [US Gulf Coast] market for their oil sands production and refining needs. Not only will this directly benefit these shippers, it will also provide a benefit to all [Western Canadian] heavy crude producers by increasing the price they receive for their crude, as well as providing significant pipeline capacity to an alternative market.^[x]

1. The Supplemental EIS is mostly bad news. Few of the things we hoped would be included — such as climate impacts and threats to endangered wildlife like whooping cranes and woodland caribou — were seriously examined.
2. Remember all of those problems with tar sands pipeline spills? Apparently the State Department decided they weren’t worth paying much attention to, even after the biggest inland spill in U.S. history, spill risks aren’t adequately addressed in the SEIS.
3. Once again, Tribal communities are being left out of the conversation. The federal government is required to “meaningfully consult” with tribes on issues that affect them, but the SEIS ignores the concerns of Native American groups despite widespread opposition to the project.
4. Legal experts believe the State Department should have re-evaluated the entire project in light of new information that’s come up over the last year. For example, back when KXL was proposed, the US wasn’t producing nearly as much domestic oil as it is now. When the point of a review is to evaluate “purpose and need,” you would think they would actually evaluate whether we need it.
5. In a rare bit of good news, the SEIS acknowledged that tar sands oil is fundamentally different from conventional oil.

Where Does That Leave Us on Climate?

There are lots of problems to pick apart here, but let’s tackle the big one: climate change. President Obama has cast himself as the leader who will bring us back from the edge of planetary catastrophe, which makes this Keystone report even more baffling. The pipeline alone is bad enough (the greenhouse gas equivalent of 4.6 million cars) and we know that if it’s built, it will drive more tar sands mining. Crazily, the State Department is figuring that Keystone XL would just be one of many pipelines coming out of Canada in the next few years, and therefore can’t be held responsible for the resulting climate catastrophe. But in fact, Keystone is the linchpin for future development in the tar sands region. Mostly as a result of the campaign against Keystone, we’re already seeing that oil companies are slowing investments in the tar sands — the self-fulfilling prophecy of “more development –> more US oil imports” is being proven wrong in real time.

And if Obama rejects the project, it makes it that much harder, politically and economically, for the next company to build a pipeline through the U.S.; precedent will have been set. In other words, the State Department has fundamentally ignored its own role in how this scenario plays out. If they allow pipelines to get permits, the tar sands will be developed. If they reject the permits, the oil industry will really struggle to get its dirty product out of Canada. Just take a look at the cage match they’re fighting over the “Northern Gateway” pipeline, the Canadian equivalent of Keystone XL, which is going nowhere fast, thanks to steadfast opposition from First Nations (tribal) groups and tens of thousands of other citizens north of the border.

According to Jim Lyon, NWF’s vice president for conservation:

If Keystone XL wouldn’t speed tar sands development, why are oil companies pouring millions into lobbying and political contributions to build it? By rejecting the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, President Obama can keep billions of tons of climate-killing carbon pollution locked safely in the ground.

NWF will be coming out soon with a more detailed analysis of the report, but right now we’re incredibly disappointed with what the State Department has put forward. Fortunately, we still have a chance to make our voices heard — there will be a 45-day public comment period, and you’d better believe we’re going to get loud. As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, this decision is ultimately President Obama’s to make, and we need him to stop the madness now. Keystone XL would take our climate to the point of no return. If he cares about his legacy, his kids, wildlife, or the billions of people around the world who are facing the looming specter of climate change, he has to say NO to this pipeline. There is no other option.

Speak up for people and wildlife! Tell President Obama to reject the Keystone XL pipeline and protect our planet.