A Letter from the Organizational Leaders of the Nation’s Leading Environmental and Allied Groups

Endorsements — admin July 20, 2011 at 11:59 pm

We’re honored to post a letter from the executive directors, coordinators, presidents and other organizational leaders of the nation’s leading environmental and allied groups, writing in their capacity as individual citizens, encouraging us all to take part in the sit-ins this August at the White House.

Dear Friends,

We’re the leaders of some of the continent’s environmental and allied groups, and we’re doing something odd here: writing not in our professional capacities, but as individuals, to urge you to consider taking part in planned protests later this summer in Washington.

The demonstrations, which may involve some peaceful civil disobedience, are designed to persuade the administration to block plans for the so-called Keystone XL pipeline. That pipeline will run from the tar sands of the Canadian province of Alberta down to Texas. It raises great risks from leaks and spills along the way, and it damages indigenous lands; native leaders and local farmers and ranchers have mounted spirited protest along the way.

But this is also a national and global issue, because the tar sands are the second-largest pool of carbon on the planet. Anything–like this pipeline–that makes them easier to exploit is a threat to the earth’s atmosphere. The great climatologist James Hansen said recently that if the tar sands go into heavy production it’s essentially “game over” for the climate.

That’s why, on June 22nd, eleven of the continent’s distinguished indigenous leaders, scientists, activists, and environmental writers issued a call to join them in Washington in August. You can read the letter and sign up to get involved at: tarsandsaction.org. They remind us that the president, who will make this decision alone, without Congressional approval, asked people to keep pressure on him after he was elected, because that would make it easier for him to do the right thing.

Keeping that pressure on is part of our job as citizens, and it’s in that role–not in our day jobs–that we’re signing this letter. Thanks for your consideration.

Ashley Anderson/Tim DeChristopher (Peaceful Uprising)
May Boeve (350.org)
Peter Bahouth (US Climate Action Network)
John Cavanagh (Institute for Policy Studies)
Ronnie Cummins (Organic Consumers Association)
Alisa Gravitz (Green America)
Steve Kretzman (Oil Change International)
Katey Lauer (Alliance for Appalachia)
Rabbi Michael Lerner (Interfaith Network of Spiritual Progressives)
Michael Marx (Corporate Ethics International)
Kathy McNeely (Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns)
Asher Miller (Post Carbon Institute)
Kirsten Moller (Global Exchange)
Frank O’Donnell (Clean Air Watch)
Dianna Ortiz (Pax Christi USA)
Reagan Richmond (Southern Energy Network)
Katie Robbins (Healthcare-NOW!)
Nancy Romer (Brooklyn Food Coalition)
Sonia Silbert (Washington Peace Center)
Nancy King Smith (Unitarian Universalist Ministry for Earth)
Rebecca Tarbotton (Rainforest Action Network)
Mike Tidwell (Chesapeake Climate Action Network)
Laura Scher/Michael Kieschnick (Credo Mobile)
Kieran Suckling (Center for Biological Diversity)
Rabbi Arthur Waskow (Shalom Center)
Robert Weissman (Public Citizen)
Bill Whitaker (Oregon Rural Action)
Rev. Lennox Yearwood (Hip Hop Caucus)

Comments (12)

David John Otness

This is it.
Pretty much our last chance to find a heart and soul, let alone redefinition much and ultimately imperatively needed in our true relationship with our only life support system -our one and only Earth.
We as a species have gotten too big for our britches, it is ego which imperils us, rational thought and acts according to rationality’s tenets have been lost to a negative part of our biological composition.
Greed as a need far beyond a sense of generational security is our default.
It is killing not only us ultimately, but hundreds of other species every year.
We presume and are encouraged by the capitalist construct to yearn for more and more- a weak bid to surround ourselves with enough possessions to ward off individual death which in a well-rounded and satisfied mind, is only and merely: natural.
Child-thoughts, undeveloped human thoughts, will we ever cross that bridge?
Not without a habitable planet, of this I can assure one and all.
Clydemiester

This pipeline is backed by the Koch Brothers and they will stop at nothing to get what they want. They are billionaires that just can not get enough money and the pipeline will bring tar sands owned by the Koch Brothers to refineries in Texas owned by the Koch Brothers.

Since not everyone can be in DC at the time I think local protests would also help.
- Rjpbeaumier
  
  Thanks for your suggestion of having local protests. I cannot go to DC because of a lot of family illness. However, I definitely could take a couple of hours off for local protests.
L.D. Gussin

I commend the signers of this letter and I will join the Tar Sands Action.

Yet I’m sorry to not see listed the leaders of Sierra Club and Greenpeace USA. I’m also sorry to not see listed the leaders from key environmental groups like Natural Resources Defense Council and Environmental Defense Fund, and key energy efficiency groups like American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE). What could be more central to ACEEE’s mission statement than stopping fossil fuels from broadening its rule over the economy? Without political brakes on oil and coal development we can’t have an “energy efficient economy.”
- http://www.facebook.com/Wincenty.pawlowski Vincent Pawlowski
  
  I am perfectly fine with the big enviro groups that gave us The Waxman/Markey ACES bill not joining in. In 1977, when I first learned about the “enhanced greenhouse effect”, carbon pollution was a minor technical problem that 34 years of R&D could have solved. Instead of choosing renewable energy we moved from electricity from oil to coal, a solution based on economic factors, ignoring environmental ones. Global warming became a political problem in 1980. That was when big environmental groups could have helped.
  
  Climate change became a social problem about 1989 when authors like McKibben and scientists like Hansen began to speak up, and were ignored. By 1992′s Rio Earth Summit, the North-South injustices became clear. That was when Oxfam and other social justice groups started paying attention.
  
  In 2000, climate justice became more widely recognized as a social justice issue. By the 2009 Copenhagen meeting, developed countries had found ways to subvert the demands of the Global South for climate equity. Despite Obama’s last minute bullying, no agreement was reached.
  
  Now, climate justice is social justice. Moral problems are typically the province of churches and other social justice organizations. The big enviro groups had their chance. Let us take the lead. They can follow, as Sierra Club will with its Beyond Coal campaign, financed by $50 million of Bloomberg’s money. I am ready to help build this movement at the Tar Sands Action 8/20-9/3 and Moving Planet on 9/24, and so on.
  
  What will you do?
http://www.facebook.com/Wincenty.pawlowski Vincent Pawlowski

I am marching because I am fed up. I wanted to be a solar power engineer in the 1970′s. By the time I got near graduating after 1980, renewable energy research grant money had disappeared. They took away my career when my advisor lost his grant. Imagine how fossil-fuel free we would be if thousands of people in this country had been working for 35 years on renewable energy.

Why are you marching?
- Rjpbeaumier
  
  Vincent, thank you soooooo much for marching. I truly wish I could to to Washington, D. C. but I have a family with quite severe health problems.
Anonymous

I posted (a longer version of) this the other day–but then it disappeared..? Musta been a server error? You wouldn’t have deleted it right? Not someone who values free speech as much as you do…? Because surely you don’t delete posts just because they have a different point of view from yours? So for your convenience here it is again:

I concur with the concerns on climate change but going after this one pipeline strikes me as misguided and pointless. If the Keystone is not built, Canada will simply be forced to build a pipeline to the westcoast and export this oil to whomever via the Pacific ocean, an outcome happily supported by you guessed it–China. It will not make any difference to C02 levels overall because the resource will still be exploited. All it means is the US will have to import the equivalent oil from somewhere else such as Middle East or Venezuela. Please remind me–how does that make the US or the world a better place?
- Ed Griffith
  
  Please remind me–how does that make the US or the world a better place?
  
  -This is tar sands oil which is extremely damaging to the immediate environment and far more carbon intensive to mine. See the pictures, the aftermath looks like a wasteland.
  -It uses huge amounts of water.
  -The resource will not still be exploited as natural barriers prevent the pipeline from going through Canada.
  -The sustainable jobs from developing renewable resources are much better and permanent. This is not guess work, it has already been proven by countries that have been doing it for decades.
  -If you are truly a tired taxpayer, then you know that in the US government grants, gifts, and tax breaks are 8 – 12 times as much for fossil fuels as for renewable energy.
  -Are you for a level playing field between renewable energy and fossil fuels or do you want continued socialism and subsidies for fossil fuels only?
  -How much do you get paid as I have seen this nonsense in other blogs?
  - Anonymous
    
    Ed, thank you for your response to my post but I feel the need to point out that you completely skated around what was really my sole point–that the tar sands will be exploited whether this pipeline to the US is built or not–it’s quite irrelevant in fact. If it doesn’t go to the US it will simply go somewhere else–and the Pacific Ocean is actually much closer. The only thing that will stop tar sands development is if the price of oil drops below $50-$60 per barrel and or it becomes uneconomic either by high production costs or possibly by taxes (see below). I’m not saying the exploitation-inevitability is a good thing, just an unfortunate fact of life. I don’t necessarily take exception with your several points–other than the last one–but they are all quite clearly beside this point. Blocking the XL Keystone is pointless, that’s my point, but you don’t seem to be able to hear that and instead talk about a bunch of other stuff. BTW it is somewhat insulting to suggest I must have some financial incentive to hoId this view. Of course I want to see fossil subsidies dropped and alternatives encouraged. In fact I I live in the first (and still the only I think) N. American jurisdiction (BC, Canada) to bring in a carbon tax, and I’m proud of it. I supported that strongly even though it meant voting for a party I had previously avoided for decades (they were not previously known for their environmental sensibilities–this was kind of a surprise one-off). The carbon tax ended up my single vote-deciding issue because I did not want to see the first gov to bring in a carbon tax to be defeated immediately after at the polls, for the ominous signal that could send to other jurisdictions that might be considering it in the future. I am not a huge cap and trade fan (although I suppose it MIGHT be better than nothing, not entirely sure) because I am suspicious of the fact that big corps support it generally (must be an opp to make money there somewhere?) and they can carry on business as usual by buying credits or companies that have them or had created them out of thin air as it were. Too subject to manipulation and gummint corruption/mismanagement in the carbon credit creation and project approval process is my main concern. A significant and escalating carbon tax is clean, simple and definitely the way to go imo, it should be worldwide and it has to be big enough to actually skew behaviours and outcomes. (So I guess I’m not really all that tired of paying taxes after all , maybe that is a misleading handle!) I don’t nor have I ever worked for an oil company or PR firm etc–rather I am a retired college Chemistry instructor known locally for activism against uranium mining years 30 ago and for better air quality recently. I grew up in a town (in SE Sask) surrounded by miles and miles of waste spillpiles from lignite coal strip mines. So I know what ugly surface destruction down to 90 feet deep looks like –mountains of the moon. I just think this particular protest effort is largely wasted and ineffectual by targeting the wrong thing. Sorry if it isn’t what you wanted to hear.
    - Anonymous
      
      Oh I guess I do disagree with (at least) one other point–”The resource will not still be exploited as natural barriers prevent the pipeline from going through Canada.” Totally wrong and another misconception/wishful thinking notion–where do you guys get this stuff? For example, a few years ago I watched the construction of a natural gas pipeline through southern BC including my town–and they can go up and down impossibly vertical mountains over rivers etc no problemo I was amazed–they have all this stuff figured out to the nth degree, believe me. The pipeline companies have already confirmed as well, that the route from Edmonton to Rupert is quite feasible (and they even want to build it regardless of Keystone XL!) so why would you claim otherwise? This is another red herring. There are native land claims issues that may be troublesome sure but remember the natives stand to do very well for their piece of the pie when the pipeline is built as long as they don’t get too greedy and kill the goose laying the golden egg entirely, and they know it. That’s what some say happened with the Mackenzie Valley pipeline to bring Alaska/Northern Canada oil/gas south to US and there are a bunch of native people who have suddenly done a 180 and become the biggest boosters of the project–as soon as it was shelved! So don’t count on them to block it either–I would bet you good money that their objections cheerfully evaporate once the coin is right–sorry to be so cynical but that’s how these things tend to go.
      - Anonymous
        
        And Ed I suppose I should mention that I don’t own pipeline stock, or any other pipeline interest–at least not yet haha! In fact except for a small amount of labor sponsored venture capital funds involved in small tech ventures mostly (that I am shortly going to get out of) I don’t own any stocks of any kind at all. I guess I have an economic stake in general stuff through my college pension but I have no idea what they are specifically involved in, other than they claim to be well diversified and I just take their word on that! But I doubt the XL would have any effect either way. Actually the pipeline I I find the most inevitable for the US market is not the Keystone XL but one that has not even been talked about never mind proposed yet as far as I know–the ginormous Bakken oil shale of Montana North Dakota and to a lesser extent Sask and Alberta. That’s a whole ‘nother story. Short version: Bakken oil is light sweet and low sulfur, hence easy, and clean to refine (and cheap per barrel though not necessarily low e-impact to extract–it has to be fracked like the controversial gas shale of eastern US), and is growing in reserve estimates like crazy. It could also help US with energy security but like any (big) oil find will inevitably have a negative impact on global CO2 levels once burned. I wonder if there will be as much opposition to southern bound pipeline(s) for Bakken oil as for tar sands now, once folks realize just how extensive it also is. Because it really comes down to the same thing ultimately…more and more and more carbon into the same old atmosphere. You see peak oil got it all wrong and mislead us–it’s not the imagined limited supply of carbon we are most up against unfortunately, it’s the demand and thus the output that is gonna get us first I’m afraid. And trying to fix the carbon problem by messing up its transport, like the pipeline protest effort, is a lot like the Titanic deck chair shuffle illusion. Beware of the tantalizing allure of wishful thinking, always..