The reality of what the proposed XL pipeline would mean hits us all in different ways. Monday night it hit me in two distinct ways within two square feet of Robert Reich (Secretary of Labor in the Clinton Administration).
Yes, Monday night I was talking in person with Robert Reich. No, it wasn't like that. I don't usually have the ear of the influential (except on dining issues). I arrived at his table with the wrong food. His three guests and he denied that any of the plates belonged there (they were right), I turned to Robert Reich and asked, "Well, you're Robert Reich arent' you at least?" He replied, "Well, yes." "There you go," I said, "that proves I'm not wrong about everything." His three guests and he laughed. I remembered then that I would be writing on the pipeline today. I quickly decided not to ask him his position on it though as I already knew his basis for opposing it.
The 20,000-barrel spill last month at a Tesoro Corporation’s pipeline in North Dakota went undetected until a farmer came across it in his field. Three years ago, a rupture In Enbridge Corporation’s oil pipeline near Marshall, Michigan spilled 843,000 gallons, becoming the nation’s most expensive onshore oil spill. (Oil was carried 35 miles downstream on the Kalamazoo River.) Enbridge, the largest transporter of Canadian crude to the U.S., already knew of cracks in its pipeline; it didn’t react to the rupture for 17 hours after it was discovered. Over the past three years, 96 pipeline incidents have caused 41 fatalities, 200 injuries and $400 million in property damage, according to government data. Yet government regulators still haven’t produced promised rules to compel operators to detect such leaks. If all this doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in the construction of TransCanada Corporation’s Keystone XL Pipeline from Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico -- the last portion of which the Obama administration is still weighing -- it shouldn’t. The Administration should nix it, unless or until we know oil can be transported more safely than it has been.
Robert Reich, October 29, 2013.
Reich makes an excellent point about about rejecting the pipeline on the issue of safety. I was reminded of another excellent reason to reject the pipeline a bit later. Oddly enough, someone else who arrived at the table represented, for me at least, an even more compelling reason. That person was the busser who cleared away the plates from the table (after the correct ones had finally arrived). José is from El Salvador. His family emigrated here fifteen years ago. His older brother can no longer work due to a health condition inherited from working in the agricultural fields of California's Central Valley.
When the President evaluates whether the XL Pipeline is in our national interest ((NID), he will be considering the impacts that are happening now due to climate change. José's family has had to consider some of them for a while now, as have other folks who have to work under the sun.
A few months back I wrote in the Hummingbirds blogthon, "In Guest Voz: Climate Change is Impacting Migrant Farm Workers Osvaldo Lopez, a young farmworker himself, explains the harrowing effects of climate change on farm laborers:"
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, field labor is ranked among the top three most dangerous occupations. The factors that make field labor dangerous are pesticides, pollen, cancer, and now intolerable heat.
The CDC has established nearly a
tripling since the 1990s of heat-related deaths among crop workers here.
Luckily José's older brother isn't one of those fatalities, at least yet.
Robert Reich and the busboy who cleared his dishes view the potential effects of the pipeline from different perspectives. They both still know it is against our national interests. You know it is against our interests. Now is the time to shout it loud. The clock is running out....
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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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Up next:
3:00 pm: James Wells.
5:00 pm: Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse.