“Mr. President, we have heard what you’ve said on climate; we have loved a lot of what you’ve said on climate,” said Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club. “Our question is: What will you do?”
For many of the rally leaders, the first test will be whether the president and Secretary of State John F. Kerry approve a construction permit for the northern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would carry crude from the oil or tar sands of Alberta to refineries on the Gulf Coast of Texas.
The energy-intensive methods needed to extract that crude emit more greenhouse gases than oil production methods from conventional reservoirs. ...WaPo
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Very early, before dawn on Monday, December 3rd, Glen Collins, Matt Almonte, and Isabel Brooks climbed into a mile long segment of the Keystone XL pipeline and barricaded themselves inside. At sunrise, they were shocked to find light shining through a weld precisely where they were resting. ...
... Public accounts from multiple TransCanada pipeline inspection whistleblowers have revealed that this type of reckless and dangerous circumvention of pipeline weld inspection is commonplace on TransCanada’s pipeline construction sites. Almost concurrently, pipeline welding engineers and inspectors for TransCanada, Evan Vokes and Mike Klink, were raising concerns to their superiors about systemic negligence and malfeasance in the corporation’s internal inspection and auditing process.
In a December, 2011 editorial to the Lincoln Journal Star, Klink warned, “When I last raised concerns about corners being cut, I lost my job — but people along the Keystone XL pathway have a lot more to lose if this project moves forward with the same shoddy work.” ...tarsandsblockade.org
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The president wasn’t home, however. He was in Florida playing golf with Tiger Woods and Jim Crane, a Houston businessman who owns the Houston Astros as well as the residential compound where Obama is spending the holiday weekend. ..WaPo
Not having TV, I didn't realize how huge the rally in Washington was until I saw this.
Credit: 350.org
That photo comes via Think Progress. Rebecca Leber writes:
On Sunday, an estimated crowd of 35,000 people joined the Forward On Climate rally in Washington, DC, where protesters delivered a clear message to President Obama: Take immediate action on climate change by rejecting the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. Organizers of the rally described as the “largest in U.S. history” also called on the president to issue overdue Clean Air Act standards to limit carbon pollution from power plants. ...Think Progress
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