It's easy to make a public comment against the Keystone XL pipeline.
Here are two "mad-libs" to help with the composition process. Each block contains three lines, any of which will connect correctly with its neighbors. This provides an enormous number of possible combinations.
Select one line from each block, copy and paste...and click "submit." Then do it again. And again.
But before we begin, a Climate Message:<
Ready? Here we go:
a - (The Keystone XL pipeline)
b - (The extraction of Tar Sands oil)
c - (This project)
a - (is catastrophic on multiple levels of scale.)
b - (isn't just a disaster in the making, but many disasters — some immediate, some long-term.)
c - (is a "perfect storm" of climatic and environmental impacts.)
a - (The destruction of millions of acres of boreal forest)
b - (Cutting down countless trees)
c - (Destroying huge amounts of Canadian forest land)
a - (in order to exploit Canadaâs tar sands)
b - (for the most venal of motives)
c - (to feed our civilization's addiction to fossil fuels)
a - (is already an environmental blunder of huge proportions.)
b - (is an inexcusable crime against nature.)
c - (is an example of the most thoughtless greed imaginable.)
a - (Transporting the filthy Tar Sands oil across the US)
b - (A pipeline carrying toxic dilbit all the way across North America)
c - (A pipeline running from the Tar Sands to Texas)
a - (holds the potential for hundreds of local and regional disasters.)
b - (is going to damage and destroy both ecosystems and communities all over the country.)
c - (will inevitably leak, causing enormous damage to lives and property.)
a - (In the longer term, burning all that oil will push the greenhouse effect into overdrive,)
b - (And as far as our descendants are concerned, when that carbon enters the atmosphere, it's going to stay there for millennia,)
c - (And if we burn that oil, the CO2 emissions will trigger runaway climate change,)
a - (a situation from which recovery may be impossible.)
b - (making a stable planetary environment a thing of the past.)
c - (leaving an inhospitable Earth on which countless humans will be unable to survive.)
a - (If President Obama allows the pipeline project to proceed,)
b - (Should the Keystone XL receive presidential approval,)
c - (If the Obama administration ignores these warnings,)
a - (we will know that his commitment to the fight against global warming is)
b - (it'll be clear that those noble words about the climate emergency are)
c - (there will be no doubt that the fine speeches about the urgency of climate change are)
a - (inadequate to the magnitude of the crisis.)
b - (only cosmetic, not actual.)
c - (mere window dressing to an energy policy dominated by the short-term profiteering of the fossil-fuel industry.)
And now, a Climate Message from Afropop expert Banning Eyre:
This "mad-lib" uses somewhat longer phrases to create more verbose paragraphs. You too can sound like a progressive version of George Will!
a — (The assertion that a transcontinental pipeline will reduce the cost of Alberta's Tar Sands oil ignores several troublesome facts.)
b — (Those who glibly claim that the Keystone XL will make Alberta's Tar Sands oil less expensive are ignoring a number of important facts.)
c — (The claim that a pipeline across the continental US will reduce the cost of oil flies in the face of the facts.)
a — (Pipelines leak, and the crude intended for transport in the Keystone XL is a particularly toxic variety.)
b — (The dilbit oil which the Keystone XL is expected to carry is extremely "dirty" and highly poisonous.)
c — (There has never been a leak-free pipeline, and the Tar Sands oil is a very toxic product.)
a — (Let it contaminate an aquifer en route, and the price goes up to include countless thousands of human lives.)
b — (If it gets into the ground water anywhere along its route, and it won't just disrupt ecosystems and agriculture, but thousands — perhaps millions — of human lives.)
c — (Aquifers are vulnerable, and once they're contaminated, the damage is permanent — and costly both in dollars and lives.)
a — (More importantly, the CO2 emissions from the project would trigger runaway climate change an order of magnitude more severe than anything we've yet experienced.)
b — (On a longer timescale, burning the tar sands oil will create massive greenhouse emissions — putting us on the pathway to irreversible and catastrophic climate change.)
c — (The project's carbon dioxide releases are enough to trigger catastrophic climate change far worse than anything we've seen so far.)
a — (Such a planetary disaster would carry costs of Brobdingnagian proportions — damages which our trivia-obsessed political establishment seems incapable of imagining.)
b — (Global climate chaos would be expensive beyond the imagination of any deficit-fixated politician — and could well be the end of our complex civilization.)
c — (Such a disastrous outcome would be costly not just in financial terms, but in the harder currency of lives destroyed, ecosystems ruined, and global stability compromised for thousands of years.)
a — (Let the exploitation of the Tar Sands proceed, and all of these outcomes are inevitable — natural consequences of a business plan that profits from environmental destruction.)
b — (Keep exploiting the Tar Sands, and these outcomes are inevitable; it's what you get when your business model hinges on the destruction of the environment.)
c — (Follow a destructive business plan to extract and burn the Tar Sands' oil, and these consequences aren't just probable; they're inevitable.)
a — (We'd be better off minimizing and eventually eliminating fossil fuels from our energy economy, and leaving all that dirty crude in the ground.)
b — (The country, the economy, and the planet will all be better off if we can shift our energy economy to renewable sources, and leave fossil fuels where they belong: in the ground.)
c — (We need more fossil fuels in our energy economy like a stage four cancer patient needs a steady supply of cigarettes.)
And now, a Climate Message from Kunal Shrivastava, who delivers his Message in Hindi:
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Keystone XL Pipeline "Public Comments" Blogathon: March 3-7, 2014
The public comment period for the National Interest Determination ends on March 7, 2014. We have a coalition seeking public comments to oppose the Keystone XL Pipeline.
You can write your own comment to post at regulations.gov. Or, you can copy from one of the comment templates available from the list below. It's preferrable to tweak the template a little with your own words so that it does not resemble a boilerplate comment.
Let your voice be heard by opposing the Keystone XL Pipeline.
The deadline for submission of comments is March 7, 2014.
350.org
Bold Nebraska
Center for Biological Diversity
CCAN or Chesapeake Climate Action Network
CREDO
Energy Action Coalition
Environmental Action
Friends of the Earth
League of Conservation Voters
Moms Clean Air Force
Montana Environmental Information Center
National Wildlife Federation
Natural Resources Defense Council
Northern Plains Resource
Oil Change International
Rainforest Action Network
Sierra Club
Our Daily Kos community organizers are Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse, rb137, JekyllnHyde, citisven, peregrine kate, John Crapper, Aji, and Kitsap River, with Meteor Blades serving as the group's adviser.
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