On Tuesday night, January 13 I joined hundreds of others outside Seattle’s Federal Building to join hands and surround the building in protest of the Keystone Pipeline that was recently passed by the new republican controlled congress. President Obama has said he will veto the bill, but this protest was enacted to make sure he listened to the will of the people and not the will of the few who stand to profit from the pipeline.
I estimated the crowd to be three to four hundred strong. Maybe more. This is a decent turnout, but when you think that 50 thousand congregate to watch a football game or that last year an estimated 700 thousand congregated in downtown Seattle to honor Superbowl winners, the Seahawks, in a victory parade, this is a sad testament. More people care about football than care about the health of the planet they live on.
After an hour of singing protest songs and explaining the danger of this pipeline, everyone then surrounded the entire Federal Building, holding hands. Some held a lit up sign saying “Climate Justice Now,” while another group stood on a six-foot wall and held a sign saying, “Obama, stop the pipeline or the people will.” A projection with the words, “Obama: Reject Keystone XL Now!” lit up the side of the building with letters two stories tall.
The tar sands oil is three times heavier than conventional oil, and the pipeline would carry 181 million metric tons of CO2 every year. That’s more than three times the greenhouse gas emissions of conventional oil production. Communities downwind and downstream of the refineries using tar sands oil would be exposed to extremely toxic chemicals. The pipeline is slated to run right through tribal lands and the Rosebud Sioux said they consider approval of the KXL to be an “act of war.”
Only those with heavy financial investments in KXL want the pipeline to go through. Citizens don’t want it. The oil would be shipped to China and would have no benefit for anyone in the US. The jobs created would be few and short lived. Further, we are supposed to be decreasing our reliance on fossil fuels in order to combat global warming. There simply are no good reasons to build this pipeline and people need to wake up and smell (in this case) the oil. If you can make it out to a football game you should be able to make it to any event that ether saves democracy or saves the planet. We have but one planet to live on. If we destroy this one there is no turning back. Global warming is on the verge of being irreversible and if we don’t all join hands to combat it we are all doomed.
