Somewhere between 40,000 and 50,000 people showed up for the Forward on Climate rally in Washington DC yesterday, gathering from some 30 states.
And thousands of people also held rallies in 18 cities from 4000 people in San Francisco to 500 in Philadelphia.
In Washington, DC, they braved very cold weather and strong winds, while President Obama played golf in Florida with two oil and gas executives.
One of the speakers, Rev. Lennox Yearwood, compared the rally to Martin Luther King’s 1963 March on Washington for civil rights, but, while "they were fighting for equality, we are fighting for existence."
The New York Times points to the difficulty of the decision facing Obama on his approval of TransCanada’s tar sands pipeline.
The environmental community has drawn a line in the sand on this decision – if he approves the pipeline, all his rhetoric about addressing climate change will be just words.
There is no question that anyone serious about addressing climate change would reject the pipeline, because it will provide Canada with a direct market for expanding tar sands extraction – the dirtiest oil on earth.
Also, the huge expansion of natural gas fracking in the US has already reduced the need for imports.
Today, the US imports 2.3 million barrels of tar sands oil every day from Canada, twice what we import from Saudi Arabia. Approving the pipeline would add another 700,000 barrels a day – two thirds of what we import from Venezuela.
If Obama approves the pipeline, he’ll frame it as a way to make the US energy independent, which indeed it would do. He can argue that it’s much better to get our oil from our closest ally, Canada, than from volatile countries like Venezuela and the Middle East.
Several unions favor approval because of the supposed jobs it would create (those numbers have been wildly exaggerated and of course, would be short term jobs), and then there’s Exxon, Chevron, Koch Industries and others that have major interests in tar sands.
Rift With Canada
But the biggest problem for Obama in rejecting the pipeline is the strain it would put on the US relationship with Canada – our closest trading partner.
Under ultra-conservative Prime Minister Harper, tar sands extraction has become vital to Canda’s economic growth. He’s thrown out the country’s most important environmental laws to clear the way for all out tar sands development. Government officials say US rejection of more tar sands would be "unneighborly" and could bring retaliation.
Canada and the US expect each other’s support on critical issues, Gary Doer, Canada’s ambassador to the US, told the NY Times. While there might not be overt retaliation, it could affect trade decisions, such as whether Canada buys American fighter jets.
Over the past decade, Canada has invested over $100 billion to strip mine its boreal forest and convert it to tar sands and all of that oil goes to the US.
If the US says NO to the pipeline, Canada will look to China and elsewhere – it’s already pushing additional pipelines from Alberta to the west coast and to the US east coast through Maine. The west coast pipeline looks dead in the water because it runs through First Nation territory and furious opposition is growing to carrying tar sands through Maine.
"The shortage of pipeline capacity has produced localized supply gluts, forcing the price of Canadian crude well below American and international benchmarks. If the Keystone pipeline is not completed, energy experts say, weak prices will make the economics of future oil sands projects questionable."
Even if Obama shows the courage to reject the pipeline, Canada says their tar sands will arrive in the US anyway – by turning natural gas pipelines into those that carry tar sands, and by rail, truck and barge.
If TransCanada’s pipeline gets the go-ahead, tar sands production will double – from 3.2 million barrels a day after the pipeline is built to 6.2 million barrels a day by 2030, according to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.
That would be the END GAME for humans’ ability to address climate change.
Significantly, opposition to tar sands now transcends the environmental community. Progressives, including labor and civil rights groups, have joined to fight corporate power.
Here’s the background on tar sands impact on climate change which is even worse when you add in the most recent research on petroleum coke.
Read the New York Times article:
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In your article you state to strip mine a boreal forest. If one has no objections to doing that, something is wrong with their morals.
I would like to see more facts given about what happens to the waste products that are created in the refining process that extracts oil from tar sands. We have a big problem with the Suncor refinery in Denver..it has been leaking carcinogenic benzene into surface waters from leaking underground storage tanks on its property. Suncor currently gets alot of its product from the Canadian tar sands and plans to increase that in the future. We will be faced with finding storage/disposal sites for high level toxic wastes from the tar sands.
The peat moss of boreal forests stores a tremendous amount of carbon dioxide, much like the vegetation does in a tropical rain forest. Strip mining boreal forests will do as much climate change damage as destroying the Brazilian rain forest will, and then there is additional climate damage done by refining, transporting, and consuming the final product too. The IEA forecast an unlivable rise in global temperatures of between 5-6 degrees celsius by mid-century if the projected rise in energy demand by then is supplied by oil. What is more important, increased oil industry profits for the next few decades or human survivability on the only planet we have within our children’s lifetimes???
Did Canada consult with the American people before they started strip mining boreal forest? Did the US government us if we wanted to destroy ancient eco systems down to the soil fungi. The US should have taken action against Canada even starting the oil sands extractions.
If the US would use the billions of dollars being spent on this pipeline and massive subsidies to to the oil and coal industry to fund the conversion to sustainable energy there would be more jobs distributed more equitably across the country.
Send the oil to China! Obama does not want it!
The peat moss of boreal forests stores a tremendous amount of carbon dioxide, much like the vegetation does in a tropical rain forest. Strip mining boreal forests will do as much climate change damage as destroying the Brazilian rain forest will, and then there is additional climate damage done by refining, transporting, and consuming the final product too. The IEA forecast an unlivable rise in global temperatures of between 5-6 degrees celsius by mid-century if the projected rise in energy demand by then is supplied by oil. What is more important, increased oil industry profits for the next few decades or human survivability on the only planet we have within our children’s lifetimes???