Culture and Coexistence into the Great Unknown
President Obama: We citizens for Tar Sands Action in Los Angeles laud your decision to send the Keystone XL Pipeline back to the State Department for re-review. Yet, ensuring climate stability, protecting land and water resources, and launching an alternative clean energy economy will take much more work.
The COP17 climate meeting in Durban, South Africa, is themed “Saving Tomorrow Today.” The environmental impact of hydroelectric dams in Africa and beyond places tomorrow’s ecosystem sustainability at risk.
Reducing oil dependence. Strengthening energy security. Creating jobs. Tackling global warming. Addressing air pollution. Improving our health. The Union of Concerned Scientists has outlined a US national blueprint for a clean energy economy.
Keystone XL, touted to bring jobs and energy security, will do neither. Even if the pipeline never spilled, even if the tar sands weren’t an environmental atrocity, this would still be a bad deal for the US public.
While thousands surrounded the White House, a hundred people marched through downtown Los Angeles in solidarity calling for Obama to reject the 1,700-mile tar sands oil pipeline from Alberta, Canada to the Gulf Coast.
Pines of the Rockies are dying, wildfires racing across the Southwest deep into Texas, and Colorado’s aspens have declined due to lack of water. Worldwide the problem stretches from Southern Africa, the Amazon, Siberia, Algeria, and Australia. Without forest, levels of carbon dioxide rises and the climate will continue to warm.
Inuit communities, elders and hunters, speak regarding social and ecological impacts of a warming Arctic and their conception of poles shifting, winds different, stars unrecognized. A Labrador Inuit Aurora Borealis myth illuminates their traditional connection with the stars.