May 17th, 2013

Julia Trigg Crawford is standing firm, even as TransCanada arrived this week to dig the tunnel for its Keystone XL pipeline. The controversial pipeline will carry diluted tar sands oil, or dilbit, from Alberta to Houston-area refineries. Crawford has challenged the oil concern in court, saying it doesn’t have proper standing to operate in Texas.

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April 29th, 2013

Keystone XL pipeline protesters locked themselves to earth-moving equipment in Spaulding, OK, today, in one of a series of actions against the intercontinental project that would carry diluted bitumen oil from Canada to Texas refineries and ports. Opponents say the pipeline will unleash massive carbon dioxide pollution, accelerating climate change.

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April 18th, 2013

The Keystone pipeline opposition has galvanized, with activists angered not just over the pipeline’s heavy carbon footprint, but the lack of transparency and political influence-peddling around the DC review and permitting for the project. This week, Friends of the Earth filed an FOIA request to bring information to light about what it sees as a corrupted process.

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April 8th, 2013

The Mayflower, AR, oil spill did not involve tar sands oil, but was regular heavy crude from Canada. ExxonMobil is setting the record straight, and so are we. Still, it looks like a gooey mess out there in Arkansas.

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April 2nd, 2013

While details regarding the cause of the rupture and the magnitude of the spill are still coming in, the Mayflower tar sands spill is yet another demonstration of the risks that tar sands pipelines pose to the communities and sensitive water resources they cross. At about a tenth of the full capacity of the Keystone XL tar sands pipelines, the 90,000 bpd Pegasus pipeline rupture offers us a small sample of the risk that tar sands pipelines pose to American communities.

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April 1st, 2013

Several homeowners in a Little Rock suburb were evacuated from their Mayflower neighborhood after a pipeline spilled an estimate 2,000 barrels of tar sands crude.

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January 7th, 2013

Tar Sands Blockade, the group that’s been fighting the progress of the Keystone XL pipeline through Texas, fanned out across the country on Monday, launching protests in corporate offices of TransCanada, the operator of the tar sands pipeline.

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November 19th, 2012

From Green Right Now ReportsTar Sands Blockade, a coalition of landowners and environmentalists opposed to the tar sands pipeline, reported that police have arrested 12 protesters in East Texas for trying to stop the construction of the intercontinental pipeline.

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October 31st, 2012

Dr. Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate for president, has been arrested in Texas while helping protesters of the Keystone XL pipeline.

Stein, who was being detained at the Wood County Jail, was helping resupply members of the Tar Sands Blockade who’re encamped in the trees trying to stop the path of the pipeline through East Texas.

Before being detained by local authorities — joining dozens of protesters who’ve been arrested for civil disobedience against the pipeline project — Dr. Stein issued a statement linking Keystone XL to the climate change that’s causing havoc with the U.S. economy and environment.

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February 22nd, 2012

Some days, there’s so much nonsense floating by. This is when I say we’ve slipped into Upside Down World, where we humans seem willing to push the planet to absurd extremes, risking our survival, because we’re just too stupid, greedy, stubborn or short-sighted to find better ways.
Take Rick Santorum telling his audiences that the earth is here for man, not the other way around.
I don’t think Santorum is stupid or greedy, but like most politicians, he’s working an angle. With this earth/man pitch, he’s obviously trying to appeal to Christians who believe that “man” (I would have once assumed that included woman; not so sure this week) has been placed by God to be above all other creatures, and therefore all things on earth.

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January 2nd, 2012

In Washington, the loudest voices have the biggest pocketbooks. And they’re taking the US on a death march with fossil fuels.
Unlike most advanced nations, where green energy has taken firm root, the US tarries, only half-committed to new energy while guzzling more oil per capita than any other nation. We know this habit is unsustainable. It continues because oil is profitable. And Big Oil peels off some of its largesse to buy acquiescence from Washington.
That’s a crude, but accurate assessment. No pun intended.

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December 17th, 2011

Environmental advocates in Austin issued a torrent of statements today to protest the Congressional fast-tracking of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline.

Gathering downtown, representatives of Public Citizen, Sierra Club and the Sustainable Energy and Economic Development Coalition called upon President Obama and the US State Department to stick by their previous commitment to adequately review the pipeline, a process estimated to take a year or more, and not be cornered into a 60 day review by GOP members of Congress who want the pipeline installed.

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