Friends of the Earth is fighting to secure the Obama administration's veto on a massive proposed pipeline called the Keystone XL, which would carry extremely polluting tar sands oil from Canada through six U.S. states to refineries in Texas.
The State Department is in charge of reviewing the project, and we are working to hold the agency accountable for breaching its responsibility to conduct a thorough and rigorous environmental review of the project…
Ernie Fellows is a 65-year-old retired rancher living in Mills, Nebraska, a remote community that sits atop the Ogallala Aquifer along the South Dakota border. Fellows has spent his entire adult life raising livestock and tending to the land he inherited from his family. His grandfather bought the ranch in 1937, and when Ernie came of age, he was charged with taking over. "I took that to mean that I need to be a good…
Theresa Landrum, 56, is a native Detroiter and has lived on the same block in the city's southwest side since she was born. Her neighborhood, known by its 48217 zip code, is the most polluted area in the state of Michigan and is home to some of the most toxic facilities imaginable. Yet expansion of this dirty industry continues -- Marathon Oil's Detroit refinery, for example, is planning a massive $2 billion expansion to increase…
Karla Land settled in Channelview, Texas in 1979. She was born and raised in Texas, leaving the state for college and to pursue her passion for scuba diving in the Bahamas. She returned after marrying her husband and together they own and operate Land Cycles, a motorcycle repair shop and garage in town.
The Keystone XL pipeline, if approved, will not be the first pipeline to run crude through Channelview, Texas. Channelview is located…
David Daniel is a 43-year-old carpenter living in Winsboro, Texas, a small community of a couple thousand people in East Texas. Daniel fell in love with the community for its natural beauty and purchased some land shortly after seeing it for the first time. He found the perfect spot, a rectangular tract of 20-acres with spring-fed creeks, century-old hardwoods and more. He eventually got married on the property and built his own house there.
Now…
François Paulette is a member of the Smith's Landing Treaty 8 Dene First Nation and lives 200 miles downstream from the tar sands industry site in Fort Chipewyan in Alberta, Canada. François was previously chief and vice-chief of the Dene Nation and is currently a commissioner with the Assembly of First Nations, a national organization representing 630 First Nations across Canada.
As both a father and grandfather, François believes that the way of life for…
Kim Marcel is a long-term resident of Fort Chipewyan in Alberta, Canada, the home of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nations. She has always been interested in the environment and is concerned about what the tar sands industry is doing to destroy it. The following is a transcript of an interview between Kim and Friends of the Earth about her story and why she is compelled to fight back against the Keystone XL pipeline.
We're fighting the Keystone XL pipeline in solidarity with people who are already impacted by tar sands oil extraction and who would be directly impacted by this tar sands oil pipeline. We have compiled some of their stories to share with you. These interviews speak directly to the environmental and personal impacts the pipeline could have on many communities.
The campaign to stop the proposed Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline has been growing as communities that would be impacted by the pipeline team up with groups like Friends of the Earth, grassroots activists across the country, and decisionmakers in Washington, D.C. to halt this environmental disaster in the making.
When President Obama returned home to Chicago on August 4 and 5 to celebrate his birthday and fundraise, he was greeted by protestors concerned about a 1,700-mile pipeline that Big Oil is seeking his approval to build from Canada to Texas.