TransCanada promises environmental safety if Keystone XL pipeline is approved

TransCanada is playing a shell game with the public and hopes that people are clueless chumps enough to not see it.

Tar sands oil extraction is already an environmental disaster–one of the largest on record. The Keystone pipeline will simply ensure that the disaster continues, at the same time it’s lining the pockets of major corporate polluters with cash.

Vital habitats for moose, lynx, rare wolverines, and caribou are being plowed under, turned into vast wastelands. The oil extraction process produces enormous amounts of toxic sludge, a significant amount of which has already leaked into rivers and water tables. The clear cutting of forest as well as the tar sands oil extraction process itself is a carbon/climate change disaster, at the same time we should be reducing our carbon footprint everywhere we can. If you think we should be reducing our impact on the climate, tar sands oil extraction shouldn’t even be legal.

And last but not least, a leaky pipeline is being proposed to run through the pristine lands of British Columbia:

“The pipeline is a 1,150 Km, $4 billion project running from central Alberta straight across British Columbia to the coastal city of Kitimat. Crude oil is to be piped from the Alberta tar sands to the port of Kitimat for export to Asia and California – via parts of the BC coastline. View the pipeline map.

From Kitimat, the oil would be shipped through the Douglas Channel, the heart of the Great Bear Rainforest, past Gil Island, where a B.C. ferry sank in March 2006, and on to Asia and the US. The capacity of the pipeline is almost fully subscribed by Asian and US customers.

Unless we stop them, hundreds of tankers a year will soon travel through grey whale migratory routes, through feeding grounds for humpback and orca whales, and past more than 600 salmon-spawning rivers. A single oil spill could devastate the coastal communities and First Nations that rely on tourism and fishing, as well as numerous marine and shore creatures such as eagles and other sea birds, wolves, otters, seals and many others. This stretch of coast is also the heart of BC’s commercial fishery.”
http://www.sierraclub.bc.ca/great-bear-rainforest/threats/tar-sands-pipeline-and-tanker-traffic-1

The bottom line is this: we have a class of powerful corporate oil barons that are not accountable to democratic process and in some cases even the law. They’re indifferent to the environmental disasters they have and will cause, and fully expect taxpayers to cover the full costs of their recklessness. There is virtually no limit to their lust for profit.

TransCanada can make all the promises it wants. We will never be convinced. Their record speaks louder than their promises.

Move the pipeline away from the Ogallala. Nebraska has the power to force TransCanada to do this, but until the legislators stop acting as though they are being paid by TransCanada, the entire country is going to risk 1/3 of its agricultural land.

Food prices will go up. Gas prices will go up.
All because some legislators are being paid off. Whether it’s campaign donations, influence, job offers, or money under the table, legislators are betraying America to TransCanada.

You might point out that Nebraska’s governor, both of the state’s U.S. senators and several state lawmakers want the proposed pipeline moved completely outside the environmentally fragile Sand Hills region. This is something the pipeline’s owners say they will not do.