Keystone XL Pipeline

02 Sep, 2011

Amidst the steady stream of events that gather together as history, there are defining obstacles that shape the bends and plunges we experience as a collective. How we respond to those outcrops defines our identities as individuals and as a whole forever after. Such was the character of the demonstrations in Birmingham in 1963, the March on Washington, the wake of Pearl Harbor, and the events of 9/11. In those rare moments, we either actively participate or passively cast our vote in support of the status quo.

With the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, we face one such defining moment in the history of this country.

As close friend and Yale Divinity student Russ Powell described in a recent article in the New Haven Register, “Keystone XL is a proposed pipeline to move crude oil from the tar sands to oil refineries in Texas. … Keystone XL’s planned route from Canada through six states crosses some of America’s great wilderness and agricultural areas. The pipeline would cross the Oglalla Aquifer, a vast yet shallow water source that reaches across Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. A leak in the pipeline would have disastrous consequences for this aquifer, which provides 27 percent of the water for irrigated U.S. farmland and drinking water for 82 percent of the people who live in the aquifer’s territory. … The Keystone pipeline, Keystone XL’s smaller precursor, has been in operation just one year and already has leaked 12 times.”

In addition to the article paraphrased above, Russ has written an article entitled “Sitting Down So Obama Will Stand Up” for the Yale Daily News which you can find here: http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2011/sep/01/sitting-down-obama-stand-up/

But Russ and many other friends have invested much more than their words and time in responding to this crucial moment. Along with author Bill McKibben and NASA climatologist James Hansen, my dear friends Russ, Kristy Powell, Justin Haaheim and many others were arrested as part of non-violent demonstrations in front of the White House that have been going on for the past few weeks.

For more on these demonstrations, see the following video in which Kristy Powell, Russ’ wife and author of http://onedressprotest.com/, plays prominently:

 

Tar Sands Action: Come Join Us!

While our reaction is important, it is ultimately the president’s decision as to whether the Keystone XL pipeline is built. As Russ writes in the Yale Daily News article, “It’s hard to believe that the choice to permit the construction of a pipeline such as this one would really be President Obama’s to make. Yet because the Keystone XL requires a license from the State Department to be built, that’s just the case. The tar sands pipeline, which the environmental activist and scholar Bill McKibben has called “a seventeen-hundred-mile fuse to the biggest carbon bomb on the planet,” lives and dies with the stroke of Obama’s pen.”

If you would like to take action or just know more about the Tar Sands or pipeline, consider following the links below:

http://act.350.org/sign/tar-sands/

http://act.350.org/call/tarsands_calls/?akid=1211.536798.CuRNJW&rd=1&t=1

This is a unique moment in history. I am proud my friends who have sacrificed their time, energy, reputations, and personal safety for the good of us all. And I am grateful for all who read these words with an open heart and an active mind. As people of faith, we cannot turn our heads at these events that will potentially harm our neighbors and obscure the love of God.