by James C. Henderson
About 110 people protested outside Senator Amy Klobuchar’s office in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Monday, March 18, 2013. They were there to voice their disappointment that Senator Klobuchar has intimated that she will vote to approve a new bill to authorize the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. They were also there in an attempt to convince her to vote against the bill instead, an attempt many thought was in vain. The vote on the Keystone XL pipeline has been hurriedly scheduled for this week in Congress.
The protest was sponsored by 350.org, which provided speakers who informed the crowd of the environmental consequences to the environment. The consequences, they said, would be catastrophic. They feel that stopping the pipeline is imperative because it would allow for the full blown development of tar sands mining in Alberta, Canada. Extraction of oil from tar sand is costly and its refinement consumes enormous amounts of energy and water. Some quoted NASA scientist, James Hansen, who has said, if the Keystone XL pipeline were built, it would be “game over” for the environment. According to Hansen, the amount of carbon dioxide that tar sands mining, refining, and use would introduce into the atmosphere will overwhelm efforts to curb greenhouse gases.
Tar sands mining and refining is currently underway in Alberta, but construction of the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada across the prairie states of America to ports in the Gulf of Mexico will give oil companies invested in the exploitation of tar sands access to the global oil market. A major portion of tar sands oil will not be used in the United States and not help America’s dependence on oil or provide it with a cheap oil.
