Over 1,000 Arrested While Protesting the Keystone XL Pipeline
Over 1,000 people were arrested while protesting the Keystone XL Pipeline in front of the White House. Photo by Shadia Fayne Wood.
One of the largest acts of civil disobedience in the environmental movement is underway as over 1,000 people have been arrested in front of the White House while gathering to oppose the Keystone XL Pipeline. The pipeline, which will extend from the Athabasca tar sands of Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, is a threat to our environment and threatens the drinking water of millions of people in its path.
The pipeline is especially threatening because it will run from the tar sands in Alberta, Canada through the Ogallala aquifer—one of the world’s largest supplies of fresh water—as well as major rivers that supply substantial agricultural water to farmers and drinking water to millions of Americans.
The project got the attention of Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman, who found the issue critical enough to write a letter to President Obama saying that he didn’t want the pipeline coming through his state.
Food & Water Watch’s Board President and international water activist Maude Barlow has been instrumental in the movement against the Keystone XL pipeline. She’s been fighting to oppose it because of the disasters it’s already caused in Canada, and the disasters waiting to happen if it’s built in the U.S. She has joined with other key movement leaders and scientists, including Bill McKibben, Naomi Klein, James Hansen and David Suzuki to call for direct action to stop this pipeline, which Bill McKibben calls the “biggest carbon bomb on the continent.”
The only people that stand to benefit from this pipeline are the big oil and gas industry folks who will reap huge profits from the tar sands oil, while the rest of us are left with environmental disaster and undrinkable water.
Add your voice to the over 250,000 people that have already spoke out against the pipeline.
Another threat to the water is hydrofracking. The industry has no good way to dispose of the poisonous chemicals and radioactive portions left behind after they frack. Also, there are a multitude of accidents in PA already, which have caused wells to become poisonous, tap water to be able to be lit on FIRE, and several deaths. This in a state where fracking has only just begun.