No to a New Tar Sands Pipeline. NYTimes editorial, 4/2/11. “Later this year, the State Department will decide whether to approve construction of a 1,700-mile oil pipeline from Canada to the Texas Gulf Coast called Keystone XL. The underground 36-inch pipeline, built by TransCanada, would link the tar sands fields of northern Alberta to Texas refineries and begin operating in 2013. The department should say no…
“The environmental risks, for both countries, are enormous. The first step in the process is to strip-mine huge chunks of Alberta’s boreal forest… The E.P.A. estimates that the greenhouse gas emissions from tar sands oil -- even without counting the destruction of forests that sequester carbon - are 82% greater than those produced by conventional crude oil. The project poses a major threat to water supplies on both sides of the border... Operations in Alberta have already created 65 square miles of toxic holding ponds, which kill migrating birds and pollute downstream watersheds, a serious matter for native communities… Political pressure to win swift approval has been building in Congress... From all of the evidence, Keystone XL is not only environmentally risky, it is unnecessary.”
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