TransCanada yesterday unveiled its proposed alternative routes—including a preferred alternative route—through Nebraska for its Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline to the state’s Department of Environmental Quality.
The Keystone XL pipeline would pump up to 830,000 barrels per day of the world's dirtiest oil from beneath Canada's boreal forest through the United States' heartland to oil refineries and international export ports on the Texas Gulf Coast. Along the way, it would endanger vital water…
Yesterday, President Obama shamelessly stood in front of piles of Keystone XL pipe near Cushing, Oklahoma, touting his ‘all of the above’ strategy to solving our energy woes and the climate crisis. Scratch that last one—he didn’t mention the word ‘climate’ even once.
But he did issue a memorandum to federal agencies not only to build, but to expedite the approval of the southern leg of the Keystone XL tar sands oil…
Wow. In 24 hours, the environmental movement and our progressive allies came together to send a huge, jarring wake-up call to senators wavering in the face of Big Oil’s threats and campaign coffers: reject any attempts to revive the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline—or face hundreds of thousands of people ready to hold you accountable.
On Tuesday afternoon, our broad coalition delivered more than 802,000 messages to the Senate, including more…
UPDATE Tuesday, 10:30 a.m. EST: We've smashed through our initial goal of half a million and are now over 672,000 messages to the Senate! Unfortunately, some of Big Oil’s bought-and-paid-for friends in the Senate are putting the heat on as well: on Monday afternoon, a group of senators closely tied to Big Oil filed an amendment to the transportation bill that would ram through approval of Keystone XL. A vote could come as early as…
If you’d have asked me in the fall of 2009, when Friends of the Earth was first contemplating going all in on a campaign to stop the Keystone XL pipeline, whether I thought we could force President Obama to reject TransCanada’s application for a permit, I would have said, “probably not, but we’ll put up a good fight.”
At the time, the environmental movement was fractured and demoralized after having tried and failed to…
The writing is on the wall for rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline. But given recent oil industry efforts to make it appear otherwise, I thought it might be useful to provide a reminder that leading Obama administration officials and their allies are on the record: the rushed and arbitrary deadline required by December's payroll tax bill must lead to pipeline rejection.
The State Department said in a statement that, "Should Congress impose an…
The State Department continues to stonewall on disclosing aspects of its internal conversations about the proposed Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline, more than a year after Friends of the Earth and several allies filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking documents related to the pipeline review.
Today, as the agency's Office of Inspector General reportedly nears the end of an investigation into potential wrongdoing, we are making public the…
At the end of every year, we tend to pause and reflect about the past 12 months, stopping to examine trends and to remember important events -- usually in list form. And with all the year in, worst of, best of, top five and top ten lists appearing throughout the internet and in newspapers, I couldn’t help but think of what my favorite moments were as a staffer at Friends of…
Lately we’ve all been hearing a lot about Occupy Wall Street (or Occupy Oakland, DC, San Francisco, and many places in between). Many are calling it the Tea Party of the Left, with its focus on unemployment, corporate greed and crony capitalism. I just call it opportunity.
I recently spoke to my father about Occupy Wall Street. He’s not particularly political, and is a retired teacher and farmer living in a conservative part of rural…
Despite conclusive evidence that the State Department has overseen a corrupt Keystone XL tar sands pipeline review process, the Obama administration indicated last Thursday (November 10) that the department will remain in charge of the new environmental review of the proposed pipeline.