Last week it was Neil Young taking a stand against the proposed Keystone Pipeline, which if build would transport tar sands oil from Hardisty, Alberta, through Montana and South Dakota to Steele City, Nebraska, according to Wikipedia. President Barack Obama has been delaying his decision regarding the pipeline.
Young spoke at a press conference in Washington D.C. with Senators Harry Reid and Debbie Stabenow. “I am against the Keystone pipeline in a big way,” Young said. “The fact is, Fort McMurray [Alberta] looks like Hiroshima. Fort McMurray is a wasteland. The Indians up there and the native peoples are dying. People are sick. People are dying of cancer because of this. All of the First Nations peoples up there are threatened by this. Their food supply is wasted, their treaties are no good. They have the right to live on the land, like they always did, but there’s no land left that they can live on. All the animals are dying.”
Today a video featuring Robert Redford protesting the pipeline was released on You Tube:
“The Keystone XL and tar sands expansion have no place in a clean energy future,” Redford said in the video. “I can understand why oil companies love tar sands. There is a lot of money to be made by strip mining and drilling the dirtiest oil on the planet.
“The oil industry is lobbying hard for President Obama’s approval to let the Keystone XL pipeline cross our border and move a river of tar sands to the Gulf Coast, where much of it will be shipped overseas,” Redford continued. “But why should the rest of us pay the price so that the oil companies can line their pockets? Developing the Canadian tar sands is destroying our continent’s great northern forest at a terrifying rate. It is producing enough carbon pollution to wreak havoc with our climate for decades to come. And the pipelines that carry this dirty fuel are a direct threat to our nation’s own drinking water supplies. If you ask me, tar sands oil is exactly the type of dirty oil we can no longer afford. It may be great for oil companies, but it is killing our planet. There is no energy security in that. The saner choice is clean energy.”