Tell President Obama...
...Reject the Keystone XL Pipeline
Congress approved and President Obama signed a two-month payroll tax and unemployment extension bill in December of last year. This legislation also includes a provision, added by the Republicans in Congress, requiring President Obama to make a decision on the tar sands Keystone XL Pipeline within the next 60 days.
Obviously this provision has nothing to do with the payroll tax and unemployment extension bills but was included to force a politically painful decision for the President. Instead the Republicans have served up our best opportunity to stop Keystone XL for good this time. The reality is, there's nothing politically painful about saying "NO" to a project that makes no sense and is destructive to our environment.
President Obama promised us a thorough, transparent review of a new pipeline route after delaying a decision on the pipeline in November. The accelerated timeline pushed by Republicans clearly won't allow enough time to complete the required environmental review of a project that, in its present design, crosses ecologically sensitive territory and risks polluting an aquifer critical to Midwestern water supplies...
This is also an opportunity for President Obama to lay out the case that industry and government working together can create hundreds of thousands of clean energy jobs rather than the few thousand temporary jobs to build this pipeline. We cannot cede a $5 trillion global clean energy market, and the jobs that go with it, to more aggressive competitors like China and Germany. Just one example will give you an idea of the opportunity available by investing in clean energy. The Energy Department predicts that its loan guarantee programs alone could create more than 60,000 direct jobs in the solar and wind industries and in companies developing advanced batteries and other components for more fuel-efficient cars.
This is the moment -- a 60 day window -- to inspire President Obama to be the President he told us he would be and say “NO” to this dirty pipeline and to lay out a clean energy strategy for the future.
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