Ellen Cantarow, a Boston journalist who has written on Israel, Palestine, and women's issues, was the first member of the four-person panel to speak. She explained that the tar sands deposits are located in a forested and environmentally sensitive area of Alberta, Canada, near the Athabasca and Peace Rivers. A proposed 1,600 mile-long pipeline called the Keystone XL would carry the sticky substance called diluted bitumen through the Midwest, linking the deposits with refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast.
The tar sands deposits are, she said, “the second largest pool of carbon in the world" and have made Canada the “U.S.'s number one exporter of oil. The oil," she stated, “can be wrenched from the earth with an expensive and wasteful process."
Cantarow showed a slide of a devastated, lunar landscape and explained that “this industrial process removes the boreal forest."  An existing pipeline that carries the so-called "dilbit" to the Midwest she stated, “has sprung twelve leaks," including one that spilled into the Kalamazoo River. If fully exploited, she claimed, the additional carbon would raise current levels in the earth's atmosphere from 390 ppm to nearly 600 ppm.
It's “game over" for the environment, she stated, quoting NASA chief climate scientist Dr. James Hansen.
“Cool JP" Green Block leader Carolyn Nikkal addressed the crowded church next. Nikkal, who said she had her cane taken from her by police at the protest, expressed her concerns about the toxic substances that extraction of the sands produces, and the catastrophic consequences of the pipeline on water resources as well as wildlife such as fish, moose, caribou and water fowl, that lie in its path. Read the full report here.
Source: by James Morgan, Jamaica Plain Patch.
