The State Department's official public comment period on Keystone XL Pipeline is now open -- and it's a crucial opportunity for us to flood them with comments. We'll take your comments and deliver them directly and immediately to the State Department.
Keystone XL is critical to the expansion of the tar sands -- the world's largest industrial project. To see the Energy Reality of the tar sands, click here: http://www.energy-reality.org/action/topics/stop-keystone-xl/
Click the talking points below to insert them into your letter:
Keystone XL will contribute dramatically to climate change. The State Department confirmed that tar sands fuel is up to 19% more greenhouse gas intensive than conventional fuel, and the tar sands industry admits that Keystone XL will lead to more tar sands production.
The total carbon pollution impacts of Keystone XL are the equivalent of putting 9 million cars on the road when considering the total emissions of tar sands and refining processes.
Contrary to claims made by supporters of the pipeline, the pipeline could end as many jobs as it creates with toxic spills in farmland or water resources.
Only 10% of the created jobs would be filled by local people living in communities along the route.
Building a new pipeline now will lock us in to higher carbon emissions when we should be rapidly investing in renewable energy that cannot be exported and will provide a secure energy future.
Processing heavier, dirtier tar sands oil will increase the amount of toxic pollutants in communities near refineries that are already suffering from high rates of asthma and cancer.
New data suggests that the current analyses of the impacts of tar sands under-estimate the climate impacts of tar sands pollution by at least 13% because they don’t account for a high-carbon byproduct of the refining process used as a cheap alternative to coal: petroleum coke.
The pipeline's risk to water has not changed at all with the new route. It still crosses the Sandhills and the Ogallala aquifer, and this was the reason that Gov. Heineman, Sen. Johanns and President Obama rejected the route the first time around.
The pipeline will cross more than 1,000 water bodies across 3 states and 875 miles threatening drinking water for people, farms, and ranches with a devastating tar sands spill.
This pipeline poses an unacceptable risk to water. TransCanada’s first Keystone pipeline spilled 14 times in the U.S. in its first year of operation, and Enbridge, another pipeline operator, suffered a spill of more than one million gallons in the Kalamazoo River in 2010.