Lower Rio Grand Valley Sierra Club members at the rally against
the Keystone XL pipeline at the White House By Stefanie Herweck
In the coming weeks President Obama will make one of the most
fateful decisions of his presidency: whether or not to approve
the Keystone XL pipeline project. The pipeline would transport
liquefied tar sands across the United States for export on the
Texas Gulf Coast. On Sunday protesters formed a human chain
around the White House in an effort to remind the president of
his own words on the campaign trail: “Let’s be the generation
that frees itself from the tyranny of oil.” “Tar sands oil is
the dirtiest oil on Earth,” says Michael Brune, executive
director of the Sierra Club, and it is hard to imagine how
mining, transporting, and burning it will help bring to life
Obama’s words. It is also hard to think of a project with more
terrible consequences for Texas, and for the world. A Canadian
corporation, Transcanada, wants to build the 1,980 mile long
pipeline from the tar sands oil m