Tar Sands Action - Obama finally speaks...

Tar Sands Action (WOW - a 'crack in the line'?? Certainly Harper will NOT pleased....)

Yesterday President Obama made his first comments about the Keystone XL pipeline. Take a minute to read what he told a Nebraska television station that asked him about the pipeline:

The State Department’s in charge of analyzing this, because there’s a pipeline coming in from Canada. They’ll be giving me a report over the next several months, and, you know, my general attitude is, what is best for the American people? What’s best for our economy both short term and long term? But also, what’s best for the health of the American people?

When pressed about how the potential for new jobs plays in to his decision, President Obama said:
"I think folks in Nebraska, like all across the country, aren’t going to say to themselves, “We’ll take a few thousand jobs if it means that our kids are potentially drinking water that would damage their health ..."

Getting the President to step up and own this decision is an important victory that would not be possible without your hard work. We've come a long way from a few dozen people sitting in on the hot August concrete outside the White House.

Of course, the fight continues: the President has said that this is his decision, which means we need to make sure he stands up to the pressure from big oil and rejects the pipeline. Now that we know the President is paying attention, it's important to speak loud and clear. We'll be taking that same message to him this Sunday when thousands of people join hands and surround the White House. (

In a reasonable world, the President's statements yesterday would mean the end of this pipeline. After all, he ran as a candidate with the hope to end the tyranny of oil, and if this is his decision, there should be no question about what he should do.
But big oil is already waging a huge misinformation and lobbying campaign to get this thing through, and the pressure will only get more intense in the coming weeks. We need to let the president know that he has the support he needs to reject the pipeline, and that there will be real consequences if he doesn't.