Friends- We only have 2 hours left to say not to the KXL Pipeline. Sharing this excellent except from Pat Almonde I will provide a link in comment box. Dear Secretary Kerry, The undersigned environmental and social-justice organizations represent many thousands of people, in New York City and throughout New York State, who are working to promote a clean energy future and to stop the headlong fossil-fueled rush towards planetary suicide. Together with the undersigned individuals, we write to add our voices to the already massive public opposition to the proposed Keystone XL pipeline (KXL). Executive Order 13337 gives you broad discretion in determining whether the construction of KXL would “serve the national interest.” You are to solicit and consider, at a minimum, the views of the Secretary of Defense, the Attorney General, the Secretary of the Interior, the Secretary of Commerce, the Secretary of Transportation, the Secretary of Energy, the Secretary of Homeland Security, the Administrator of the EPA, and the public. You are not bound by – or even required to give any special weight to – the final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (FSEIS) prepared by an outside contractor for your Department. This is just as well, because the FSEIS is inadequate and biased, and we join with the many experts, elected officials, and others who now call on you to reject it. The President has said that “our national interest will be served [by KXL] only if [it] does not significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution. The net effects of the pipeline’s impact on our climate will be absolutely critical to determining whether this project is allowed to go forward.” The FSEIS’s conclusion that the construction of KXL will not result in a net increase in carbon pollution is based on the premise that development of the Alberta tar sands – the source of the oil that KXL is intended to carry – is somehow inevitable. This premise is self-evidently false. By assessing the climate impact of the pipeline only in the context of the supposedly inevitable development of the tar sands, the FSEIS cynically twists and misuses the President’s criterion and, in effect, assesses nothing at all. In deciding any course of action, one balances projected benefits against projected harms. Assuming you do that for KXL, you must conclude that construction of the pipeline would not be in the national interest. Indeed, even its proponents effectively concede that, in their best case, the pipeline’s actual benefit to our country will be only a handful of permanent jobs. KXL will not reduce domestic fuel prices or our dependence on unstable, foreign sources of oil; it is not even intended to accomplish either of these goals. When balanced against such a miniscule benefit, the pipeline’s many disastrous harms clearly tip the scale. Thus, even if it were true that KXL would not “significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution,” the pipeline still could not reasonably be seen as serving the national interest. Climate change, to which KXL would contribute, is an issue of national security and of our leadership in the world – but finally, it is a moral issue. As you yourself have recently said, we have a “moral responsibility … to leave future generations with a planet that is clean and healthy and sustainable.” Approval of KXL would be utterly incompatible with our duty to fulfill that moral responsibility. The pipeline must be rejected. Mr. Secretary, we the undersigned know you to be an honorable man. We know that you have long been a champion of the environment and a trusted colleague in our fight to save this, our only planet. We call upon you to live up to that legacy and those standards, and to recommend that President Obama reject KXL. Please see the attached letter for our full argument. Yours, Patrick Almonrode, Esq. for 350NYC.org
Posted on: Sat, 08 Mar 2014 02:49:42 +0000
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