~ Forewords ~
Everyone should be protesting against this pipeline – Let them build refineries close to the source and truck the oil to the places that need it. We do NOT need an oil pipeline running from Canada right thru the heartland of America to the Texas Gulf Coast. A leak or terrorist attack would ruin land for a long time – not to mention the water which is growing more scare daily. The refineries in Texas are all OLD and need a great deal of repair so WHY send more product to these old monsters???? Build new refineries in Canada – close to the source of the crude. Since it is China who really wants this and is the mover behind the wells and the pipeline – let them build a pipeline across Canada to the Canadian West Coast and ship it to China from there. No need to ruin America in their games.

This is all part of the infamous Prick Perry Trans Texas Corridor plans that have been beaten back but aren’t buried… they are simply changing costumes. – Granny

WASHINGTON – Eight months ago, John Adams was inside the White House receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom for decades of environmental activism.

But on Sunday, that same activist instinct will take Adams outside 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. — where he will stand with thousands of other protesters circling the White House and demanding that President Barack Obama reject the proposed Keystone XL pipeline to carry Canadian crude from Alberta to Texas refineries.

For Adams, the co-founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council, the protest is a chance to convince Obama that he should “do the right thing” and reject the pipeline — or else risk alienating environmentalists and young voters who helped deliver him to office in 2008.

“Big Oil is pretty tough, and it takes a lot of courage to stand up to Big Oil even if you’re the president of the United States,” Adams said. But “this is an opportunity for him to recognize that he can take us where we need to go and not tie us to the past. We don’t need this dirty oil.”

The 1,700-mile pipeline has become the biggest environmental flashpoint facing the Obama administration and threatens to become a big political liability for the president as he heads into an election that may turn on who can do the most to revive the nation’s ailing economy.

No matter what decision he makes, Obama will anger somebody: either the environmental activists he counts among his base or organized labor, which expects the pipeline to deliver much-needed jobs.

“This issue is going to stay with him no matter what decision he makes,” said Maura Cowley, co-director of Energy Action Coalition, a coalition of students and others that pushes for less dependence on fossil fuels. “It’s now become an issue for young people that symbolizes Obama’s commitment to clean energy, to a clean energy future [and] to the green jobs we want.”

TransCanada Corp. and other project supporters say the pipeline would instantly generate construction jobs in the U.S. — as many as 20,000 of them, according to one estimate. At the same time, they say, it would ensure that the U.S. gets more of the oil it needs from a friendly North American ally instead of the Middle East.

But environmentalists insist that if Obama approves the pipeline, he will be wedding the U.S. to a particularly dirty form of oil for decades to come.

The oil sands crude the pipeline would carry generates more greenhouse gas emissions from production to combustion because of the energy-intensive techniques used to extract it.

Written by Jennifer A. Dlouhy for Hearst, November 4, 2011

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