{"id":6036,"date":"2012-02-17T07:01:32","date_gmt":"2012-02-17T13:01:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=6036"},"modified":"2012-02-17T22:25:05","modified_gmt":"2012-02-18T04:25:05","slug":"prosecuting-the-keystone-xl-pipeline-enviromentalists-concerns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2012\/02\/17\/prosecuting-the-keystone-xl-pipeline-enviromentalists-concerns\/","title":{"rendered":"Prosecuting the Keystone XL Pipeline: Enviromentalists’ Concerns"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo by Flickr user tarsandsaction\/Creative Commons<\/p>

Environmental groups have been vocal opponents of the pipeline.<\/p><\/div>\n

This article was reported and researched by David Barer, an intern at StateImpact Texas.<\/h5>\n

The 1,700-mile long Keystone XL Pipeline<\/a> would connect the Alberta oil sand fields in Canada to refineries in Texas. The project has become a hotly-contested issue between environmentalists and big-oil companies. Democrats and Republicans have also wrangled over the pipeline due to the upcoming presidential election.<\/p>\n

The Texas leg<\/a> of the Keystone pipeline would run south from Cushing Oklahoma through East Texas to refineries near Houston and Port Arthur. The company behind the pipeline, TransCanada, has secured the vast majority of easements and land rights to place their pipeline, but several holdouts refuse to allow the pipeline to be built on the property, which has lead to eminent domain disputes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

We recently spoke with David Weinberg, the Executive Director of the Texas League of Conservation Voters<\/a>, to learn more about the Canadian tar sands, the environmental movement\u2019s stance on the project, and hear Weinberg and his political organization\u2019s thoughts on the issue.\u00a0(To read an opposing perspective on the pipeline, read our interview with Jim Prescott, project representative for the pipeline<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Q: <\/span>What concerns you more: the Keystone XL pipeline or the tar sands?<\/p>\n

A: <\/span>Clearly, building the pipeline enables the production of this resource, so they kind of go together. There are concerns about the processing and the production of tar sands in general. The particular pipeline route which was proposed to the State Department got nixed; that raised its own set of environmental concerns based on where it was located in terms of oil spills over the Ogallala Aquifer in the central United States. So, there\u2019s a very serious concern about production of the resource regardless of where it is sent, where it is processed and where that fuel is used.<\/p>\n

Q: <\/span>The Canadian tar sands contains one of the largest oil deposits in the world. Many people believe it will be used regardless of whether America builds a pipeline or not. Do you feel that is an accurate assessment of the situation?<\/p>\n

A: <\/span>I\u2019m not going to speculate on what is ultimately going to happen. I think that it is wrong for people to brush aside the environmental concerns, and say “Well, they’re going to produce it anyway; someone is going to take the oil.” Global warming is an incredibly important issue; environmental degradation is an incredibly important issue. They are too important to take a moral view of two wrongs make a right, or the lesser of two evils is the way to go. This is a one of the dirtiest forms of producing energy known in the world. There are much cleaner ways of producing energy, whether that is other fossil fuels or renewable energy. The decisions we make as human beings in terms of the health of our planet, in terms of water, and how we produce our energy is incredibly important. There are many, many problems associated with producing this tar sands. There are simply objectively better ways to produce energy.<\/p>\n

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