WASHINGTON, November 19 (Sputnik) — US Senate’s defeat of Keystone XL Pipeline bill gives a chance to combat global warming and save Canada’s boreal forests, US ecologists stated.
“We have to say ‘no’ to this project in order to have a chance to beat global warming. The project will decimate Canada’s boreal forests in Alberta,” Senior Counsel at Center for Biological Diversity Bill Snape told Sputnik Wednesday.
Center for Biological Diversity stance on Keystone XL Pipeline construction is that the United States does not need “this dirty tar sands oil because we [the United States] are awash in other energy resources.”
Snape stressed that even the project’s supporters acknowledge “most if not all of this oil will be exported from Houston to Asia and other parts of the world.”
“We believe as the American public continues to learn more about this boondoggle, the tide will turn squarely against it,” Snape said.
The entire environmental and public justice community was relieved to win the Senate vote last night, Snape concluded.
Natural Resources Defense Council President Frances Beinecke agreed that “the bill would have turned Congress into a permitting authority, overriding environmental law, and giving a green light to a pipeline project that would worsen climate change and threaten water quality.”
“The Senate did the right thing to reject the misguided bill, and now the president should do the right thing and reject the pipeline,” Beinecke said in a statement.
US-based group Environmental Defense Fund issued a similar statement, confirming that “the pipeline is the wrong choice for America, a step in the wrong direction at a time when we need a rapid shift to clean energy in order to safeguard the climate and our economy.”
On Tuesday, US Senate rejected Keystone XL Pipeline construction bill lacking just one vote in favor. Last week, US House of Representatives approved the bill by the majority of vote.
The Keystone Pipeline System is currently stretching from Canada’s Alberta to US refineries in Nebraska, Illinois, Texas and Oklahoma. The Keystone XL is its expansion which is planned to carry heavy crude oil through America’s heartland from Canada’s tar sands. Thousands of environmentalists have been protesting in the United States against this 1,179 mile construction that will cost $8 billion, according to the recent TransCanada Corporation estimate.
