Civil Disobedience

Did you know that the southern portion of the Keystone XL pipeline is being constructed as we speak in East Texas? The Gulf Coast Pipeline will be carrying Canadian tar sands from Alberta to Port Arthur, TX if the northern portion is approved the U.S. State Department and President Obama.  If you don't know what tar sands are, well, here's a short description.

TAR SANDS
A type of unconventional petroleum deposit. The oil sands are loose sand or partially consolidated sandstone containing naturally occurring mixtures of sand, clay, and water, saturated with a dense and extremely viscous form of petroleum technically referred to as bitumen.

The heavy crude oil or crude bitumen extracted from oil sands is a viscous solid or semisolid form that does not easily flow at normal oil pipeline temperatures, making it difficult to transport to market and expensive to process into gasoline, diesel fuel, and other products.
In other words, its difficult to extract, its difficult to transport and its difficult to refine. Its carbon footprint is huge, larger than regular oil and gas extraction.  And, due to its nature, if it spills out of the pipeline, its very difficult to clean up.

Extraction areas within the pristine Canadian boreal forests

The Keystone XL pipeline has caused the largest environmental protest of the last 20 years. People from all over North America (from landowners in east Texas to indigenous peoples in Canada to Native Americans in the US) and beyond realize the massive environmental effects of this entire process and are doing something about it. An organization called The Tar Sands Blockade was created to combat pipeline construction.

The process of extraction,which eliminates millions of acres of boreal forests, to the intensive refining process in Port Arthur, will create a huge carbon footprint. Greenhouse gas emissions could be up to 240 billion metric tons of carbon. 

Its so bad that even the Sierra Club has lifted its long-standing prohibition on civil disobedience.

So, what can you do? Click on these links to make a difference.

http://www.dirtyoilsands.org/action

http://www.nrdc.org/action/

http://www.tarsandsaction.org