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Thousands Brave the Cold to Say NO to Tar Sands in New England
On Saturday morning my alarm went off at 3:50 AM. It was two degrees below zero out, almost twenty degrees warmer than it had been the previous morning and it felt just fine. Throwing on several layers and my running shoes, I ventured out for a run around a nearby pond. Sunrise still a few hours away, I was guided by the moonlight which filtered through surrounding pine trees and reflected off the deep winter snow. A few ice fishermen were arriving with their poles and buckets, making their way onto the thick ice of Berlin Pond. It was winter at its finest.
But my arrival in Portland, Maine gave me hope. Organizers from across the region had called on citizens to stand up and demand that a likely proposal by oil giants Enbridge and Exxon to use an existing 62 year-old pipeline to bring carbon intensive, dirty tar sands through a pipeline that runs through Canada, and into Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine for export be stopped. Tar sands are a thick, tarry substance mined in Alberta, the most extreme of “extreme oil.” Mining them requires the vast destruction of pristine boreal forest habitat — the mines and their toxic waste ponds can be seen from space. However, this destruction is not the worst news about tar sands. It is the climate impacts of tar sands that is so alarming. Tar sands are far more carbon intensive than conventional oil, and the tar sands region contains two times the amount of carbon that has already been emitted by human fossil fuel use, which is why leading climatologists have warned that tar sands development would hurtle us past any hope for climate stability.
Three days later, concerned citizens and groups in Vermont demanded that the same pipeline proposal be subjected to Vermont law that would give Vermonters the ability to reject this pipeline project.
Tar sands are part of a bigger picture, one that demands action to stem the tide of dirty fuels that are destroying our climate. No one under the age of 28 has lived to see a month where temperatures have been below the 20th century average. If we fail to act, crisp winter mornings may soon be a thing of the past in northern New England. We can do better than that. And the people of New England are demanding that now is the time to say no to dirty energy and yes to a clean energy future.
Help protect Northeast wildlife and communities from tar sands oil by urging the U.S. State Department to stop the Exxon/Enbridge pipeline!