In a few weeks from now you'll find me sitting down at the gates of the White House, with a few hundred like-minded people, waiting to get arrested. Why? Because I believe NASA's James Hansen and a whole cadre of eminent climate scientists when they tell me that if President Obama green lights a new pipeline from the Tar Sands of Alberta, Canada to oil refineries in Texas, he will be guaranteeing our children a future on a dangerously overheated planet. President Obama has the unilateral authority to decide, as early as September, whether to "light a fuse to the largest carbon bomb in North America," to quote the folks at tarsandsaction.org. And we need to raise our collective voices and insist that our president honor his campaign pledge to transition us to a clean-energy economy and put the brakes on the kind of environmentally destructive and energy intensive practices being used to mine Canada's vast pristine forests and bogs for this dirtiest form of petroleum fuel. The development of the 1,700-mile-long Keystone XL Pipeline would invite the full exploitation of the Alberta Tar Sands, the world's largest oil reserve outside of Saudi Arabia and the our country's single greatest source of oil. From August 20th to September 3rd, thousands of Americans from all over the country will take turns joining in peaceful protest with dedicated environmental activists like Bill McKibben, Danny Glover and David Suzuki. They will risk arrest by getting within shouting distance of the White House to demand that the tar sands be left in the ground in order to give the planet a fighting chance to get back to a stable climate. So I'm giving three days of my time to the movement-- not much, given the high stakes. If anyone wants to join me, I'm going down on August 21st. But there are three weeks in which to act. So choose a time that's convenient for you. This issue needs your voice. Click here to sign up: http://www.tarsandsaction.org/sign-up/ |
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