Bill McKibben is leading what may be the largest green civil disobedience campaign in a generation, against the proposed construction of the 1,600-mile long Keystone XL pipeline. The pipeline would transport oil from the Alberta tar sands in Canada to American refineries at the Gulf of Mexico, and many are concerned about the associated impacts on the climate. Digging up new sources of fossil fuels will inevitably increase the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, and the tar sands result in higher carbon emissions than even conventional oil. On 15 June 2011, the Energy and Power Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Panel approved a bill to expedite a decision on the pipeline, possibly trying to rush it through before adequate environmental impact assessments are completed.
The project must be approved by President Obama in order to proceed, and the aim of the protest is to convince the president to reject the project. If the Keystone pipeline is not approved, the tar sands oil may be stuck in place. As McKibben noted,"Alberta is remote, and its only other possible pipeline route — to the Pacific and hence Asia — is tangled in litigation."
McKibben is among those who have already been arrested for this display of civil obedience. We felt that this would be a good time examine the climate impact of the tar sands and proposed pipeline.
Background and PoliticsTar sands (a.k.a. oil sands) are an unconventional deposits of petroleum containing bitumen, which is a very viscous form of petroleum generally known as tar or very heavy crude oil. Alberta, Canada contains the largest deposits of crude bitumen in the world, the biggest of which is the Athabasca tar sands.
There is political pressure in the USA to utilize oil from the tar sands, because although it's not quite a domestic energy source, obtaining oil from our friendly neighbors to the north is considered preferable to relying on sources in the less politically stable and friendly Middle East.
Additionally, gas prices have increased in recent years, and there has been pressure on politicians to take action to counteract the rising costs in the USA. Republicans in particular have frequently called for increasing domestic oil drilling, even though research has universally concluded that this action will have virtually no effect on gas prices. In fact, in the rise in gas prices coincided with increased domestic oil drilling in the USA. But of course, certain American politicians don't seem to care that their claims have no factual or scientific basis. Read the ful report here.
Source: Dana Nuccitelli for Skeptical Science, part of the Guardian Environment Network, guardian.co.uk.
