The Interior Department said in August that the Keystone XL pipeline would not just enable more carbon emissions – it would also have “permanent impacts” on wildlife.
The US President Barack Obama was interrupted on Wednesday by protesters who opposed the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.
As Obama started his healthcare speech at Boston’s Faneuil Hall, two protesters chanted in unison urging the president not to approve the controversial pipeline project that links Canada to Texas.
“Mr. President, reject Keystone XL! Stop climate change! For our generation, stop the pipeline!” the protesters chanted, according to 350.org, the climate group that organized the protest.
In response, Obama said, “That is the wrong rally. We had the climate change rally back in the summer. This is the healthcare rally” while the protesters were being dragged from the hall.
350 tweeted shortly after the protest that “There’s no wrong time to say #noKXL.”
350 Massachusetts had announced a protest of the President’s visit saying “climate activists from 350MA, Sierra Club, Students for a Just and Stable Future, Center for Biological Diversity, and others will deliver the No KXL message with signs, banners, and chants.”
Another anti-Keystone protester briefly interrupted the speech again several minutes later.
Shea Riester, one of the first two protesters, said she “understands that the construction of the KXL pipeline, infrastructure that locks us in to immense carbon pollution, is a threat to his own future and all life on earth, and is determined to stop it,” according to 350.org.
The US State Department is weighing the tar sands pipeline project, hiring a consulting firm to write the draft Environmental Impact Statement. But the company reportedly has ties to fossil fuel companies that have a stake in the Canadian tar sands industry.
The Interior Department said in August that the pipeline would not just enable more carbon emissions – it would also have “permanent impacts” on wildlife.
Critics say if built, the pipeline would create only 35 permanent jobs, emit 51 coal plants’ worth of CO2 per year, and pump tar sands oil to refineries and ports in Texas where much of it could be exported to other countries.
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Source: Press TV