leodcaprio:

Hey everyone. So, if you haven’t heard, President Obama is currently weighing his options and deciding whether or not he should continue in progressing forward with the Keystone XL Pipeline project. If he does, our beautiful planet will face irreversible environmental consequences and unrelenting suffering. Below I copy and pasted some information about the Keystone XL and there’s a petition at the bottom you can sign. PLEASE signal boost this and pass it around. 

WHAT IS THE KEYSTONE XL PIPELINE?

The Keystone XL is a proposed 1,179-mile (1,897 km), 36-inch-diameter crude oil pipeline that will transport toxic tar sands from under Canada’s Boreal forest (a forest about the size of New York state), to the Gulf of Mexico to be refined and exported.

WHAT ARE THE DANGERS OF THE KEYSTONE XL PIPELINE?

• The tar sands are about the dirtiest and most carbon-intensive of the fossil fuels, especially when you consider the damage done and energy used in getting them out of the ground.
• If all of these tar sands are developed, we will no longer have the opportunity to stabilize the climate.
• The annual emissions of the Keystone XL would be massive at around a whopping 147 to 168 million metric tons of carbon dioxide. This is equivalent to running at least 30 million cars, 7.3 million homes and 42 coal-fired power plants each year. 
• Water contamination occurs when polluted water - water used for extracting the oil sands- is stored in “tailing ponds”. The polluted water eventually seeps out of the ponds, letting harmful substances like cyanide and ammonia, work themselves into our water cycle.
• The tar sands oil are underneath the world’s largest intact ecosystem, the Boreal forests of Alberta. The forests not only serve as an important carbon sink, but its biodiversity and unspoiled bodies of water support large populations of many different species. As the Keystone pipeline is built, the forest risks being destroyed in the process.
• Northern Alberta, since the construction of the pipeline, has seen spikes in rates of rare cancers, renal failure, lupus, and hyperthyroidism. In the lakeside village of Fort Chipewyan, for example, 100 of the town’s 1,200 residents have died from cancer. 
• The probability of spills from this pipeline is high and more threatening than conventional spills, because tar sands oil sinks rather than floats, making clean ups more difficult and costly. TransCanada’s first pipeline proves that this threat is real, as it spilled a dozen times in less than a year of operation.
• This would affect the Ogallala Aquifer which supplies water to more than one fourth of America’s irrigated land and provides drinking water for two million Americans.

WHAT CAN I DO?

• Sign a petition HERE.
• Write a message to the Secretary of State, John Kerry, HERE, and explain your concerns for your planet.
• Contact the Candian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, HERE. 
• Reblog, like, share, and tweet this post. Spread it like fire. (But not actually, because, that’s not great for the environment either).

PLEASE do everything you can to stop the Keystone from progressing any further. Some argue that it will create thousands of jobs and billions of dollars, but, really. Money doesn’t matter if you don’t have a planet to spend it on.