Tweet
(photo: Ferne Millen)
Nine recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize including the Dalai Lama and Archibishop Desmond Tutu have written a letter to President Obama. They urge him to reject the proposed Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline which will affect “millions of people whose lives and livelihoods will be affected by construction and operation of the pipeline in Alberta, Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas” and risks “contaminating the Ogallala Aquifer, the main source of fresh water for the Great Plains.”
“We urge you to say no” to the pipeline and “turn your attention back to supporting renewable sources of energy and clean transportation solutions,” says the letter (PDF) “This will be your legacy to Americans and the global community: energy that sustains the lives and livelihoods of future generations.”
The letter was signed the following Nobel Peace Prize laureates:
- Mairead Maguire of Ireland (1976, co-awardee with Betty Williams of Ireland)
- Betty Williams of Ireland (1976, co-awardee with Mairead Maguire of Ireland)
- Adolfo Pérez Esquivel of Argentina (1980)
- Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa (1984)
- His Holiness the Dalai Lama (1989)
- Rigoberta Menchú Tum of Guatemala (1992)
- José Ramos-Horta of East Timor (1996)
- Jody Williams of the United States (1997)
- Shirin Ebadi of Iran (2003)
Photo by: World Economic Forum under Creative Commons
65 Comments
Archbishop Desmond Tutu: I love him!
This whole situation is so heartbreaking, I can hardly stand to read about it.
I am so happy that these good people came forward, but I really, really fear that nothing anyone says will stop the path of destruction we seem to be on right now.
I fear for our earth, and I am deeply saddened by this situation.
Thank you for this post.
“Athabasca Tar Sands – No Day At The Beach” (SkyTruth.Org, Mar. 5, 2009)
“SkyTruth: Athabasca Tar Sands Mining 3-d Flyover” (video, uploaded Jan 24, 2007)
(excerpt from “Ongoing Leak at Platform 23051 Site – Anybody Home?,” July 15, 2011)
These are remarkable people reminding us with their actions not to give up!
My God, it’s huge. Our boreal forests are all we have, the pine beetles, due to climate change have already destroyed a good deal of the boreal forests from Canada to Mexico, and now this?
YeeeeOww!
Those are some might powerful names on that letter. Surely Obama will think again before he gives the approval.
Thank you for bringing this to our attention at the Lake, along with the other links of important information. Many others have spoken out by letter writing campaigns and phone calls besides our hero protesters.
Oh, and recommended!
The corporate need of greed has overtaken any sanity and any justice. I mean, just look at how they use the military as their own private armies to raid foreign country’s for oil and resources!
I participated at another post earlier today where one of the comments said that even if Obama approved it, the American people will stand in the way and prevent it from being built. I hope it doesn’t come down to that, but if it does MORE POWER TO THE PEOPLE!
Seeing it from space is, or should be an enormous wake up call. Not to mention the gases and toxic sludge that will remain with us for eternity.
If the US is getting most of it’s oil from Canada, then why are they manipulating the prices and blaming it on OPEC? I’m telling ya, I can’t quit the Corporatists fast enough!
I have great admiration for the people that come forward to tell us and warn us. It so sad that money makes power, and power makes individuals blind.
More people should come forward. Unfortunately, we already know the outcome. Obama works for corporations, not the people.
From the International Boreal Conservation Campaign (IBCC) on Global Warming:
The Vancouver Sun: Canada said to be Fort Knox of carbon
The Star Phoenix: Maps show boreal forest as a mighty carbon trap
Edmonton Journal: Boreal forests important carbon repositories
Financial Post: Canada’s boreal forest locks up twice the carbon of a tropical rainforest
Here’s a fact sheet about the problems with “Strip Mining for Oil in Endangered Forests”
“Tar Sands Action: Phase One” (video, uploaded Sept. 7, 2011)
“Digging to the Ogallala Aquifer” (video, by Cindy Myers in Stuart, Nebraska, uploaded Feb. 1, 2011)
That is true. Not just Obama but all of Congress.
OMG! Liability Waivers and thinner pipe!
Is the NSA, CIA, FBI on the trail of this terror? If not, then don’t talk to me about terror anymore.
Hrruumph. My money says that Obama doesn’t recognize most of the names and with the possible exception of Tutu can’t name why any one of them received the prize.
Boxturtle (In fairness, not one of the names could likely say why Obama won the prize)
A good thing the letter and signatories were made public, otherwise it would have just gone into Obama’s burn bag. Imagine him taking action on anything that wasn’t demanded by the greedy right.
Well. This might be an optimistic sign. Obama does tend to get teary eyed over the Nobel prize winners.
Unless the “9 Nobel Laureates” give more money to Obama than Big Oil, they might as well go fuck themselves.
14 people were killed on that platform.
apparently not important enough people.
Kafka
True.
However, two of these people are from Ireland. Time, yet again to be filled with
IRISH PRIDE
Grin
Hell, even the Nobel Committee said he got it cuz they thought he’d be better than Shrub. Shows how much they knew. They got snookered same as the rest of us.
I so wish this mattered to O, but given the arrogant contempt for Nobels he showed in his PP was-is-peace acceptance speech, I doubt he’ll do anything other than chuckle over it.
You lose BoxTurtle…he recently had the Dalai Lama to the White House for a visit and I can’t imagine why he or anyone would not recognize why the DL got the Nobel prize for peace!
He is probably worried about another rumored coup.
I know I will sound like a kid at school but: Can they write us a letter about social security and medicare, too? And one about all these wars?
Shouldn’t we be consistently referring to this as the Tar Sands pipeline rather than the Keystone pipeline? Or as the Tar Sands pipeline (AKA Keystone)? I know that mzchief calls it the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline in his opening ‘graph, but I’ve not seen it branded as Tar Sands all that often even in FDL. Just as the South Texas Project was always referred to as the South Texas Nuclear project by its opponents here in Austin, we should be re-branding these projects when- and wherever possible.
I wonder what would happen if they chained themselves to the WH fence?
Tea and cookies in the Oval Office.
Diff’rent strokes for diff’rent folks..
There are people in this country who don’t know who the Dalai Lama is, much less that he was awarded the Peace Prize or why. Ask any Tea Party member you know and see it s/he knows who he is.
on edit, if s/he.
Good one.
I’m also familiar with the Comanche Peak Steam Electric Station as the company calls it.
recommended and tweeted
thanks for sharing this important information mzchief
I hate feeling like a rube.
He may recognize some of the names and even know some of them by sight. That doesn’t mean he wouldn’t have them arrested if they’d been peacefully protesting outside the White House. How much money have any of them contributed to his campaign?
Bahá’u'lláh, Guru Nanak Dev, Budai, Mohammed, Jesus, Virgil, Socrates, Buddha, Confucious, Lao Tze, Zoroaster, Moses and Krishna could sign it and Obama would still go ahead and the main stream media would still ignore the story.
Sadly, the only thing the White House politicos are thinking about is how big of a bus they’ll need to throw nine Nobel laureates under it.
He probably has access to Cheney’s shredder.You should leave off the “right” and settle for the “greedy”. Plutocrats don’t distinguish between “left” and “right”, they’re amoral institutions interested in the “green” that is money.
What does the Nobel Peace Prize have to do with the Keystone pipeline? Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize, too, but that doesn’t even mean he’s a man of peace, or anything else in particular, except the momentary fav of some European liberals. We need more energy. I’d rather have a pipeline than more wars in the Middle East. Land can always be remediated.
How about calling it the “Polluting Pipeline of Death” and saying that Al Qaeda is behind it?
Obama: Politics trumps science.
You have plenty pipelines already.
Instead you are arguing for more more climate destabilization on steroids and boy howdy, you are gonna get you some more wars anyway.
Stop thinking two dimensionally, painting yourself in a corner, and embracing false dilemmas.
Got science?
Thanks, mzchief!
Just now, I wrote to Obama via the White House website that all of these Nobel Peace laureates had urged him to nix the Tar Sands pipeline.
Now if Al Gore would just go get himself arrested….
Are you being paid to post by P. Rick Perry or the Koch brothers? Do you support “clean coal” as well? Your willful ignorance is astounding.
Did you include a campaign contribution of at least $100,000? If not, you just wasted time and energy.
Rendition to Somalia.
Give Obama a break! It’s not easy raising a billion dollars to be President. If you don’t pay, you don’t get to play.
The only thing Obama remembers about Alfred Nobel is that he made a fortune in TNT and munitions, and he’s trying to emulate that.
Obama has negotiated a deal to save polar bears and medicare. Old and poor people will be put on ice floes. While not the natural prey of polar bears or the best way to treat sick and the age challenged, it does get a number of corporate friendly environmental groups off his back and save medicare for the healthy people who might need it, as long as they don’t come to rely upon it, then they’re bear chow.
The Keystone XL pipeline would have negative global implications for all of mankind. The K XL with breaks would be as bad for humans and the environment as a small nuclear war. Oil accidents happen all the time. The health of the environment and man is never brought back to original health–never back to normal. It is always about cover up, lies and throwing money and more chemicals at the problem. Sorry, I don’t want to be reading about mutations of wildlife and more cancer in humans as a result of the proposed Keystone XL. The oil companies and feds don’t tell us what exactly is used to disperse oil during accidents. That 1700 miles will spread into all of the nation with the aquafer and food grown from it.
cal222–land can not always be remediated. You sound like a government-military wonk/troll. Heck, in northern Ohio, NASA PBS and the Army are still trying to “remediate” land from WWll munitions plants and reactor sites close to schools and other human activity.
Impeach all dealmakers having anything to do with the pipeline. They seem to be an enemy of the people. Don’t give them immunity as they have been made aware of so much risk. No private for profit oil company is allowed to ruin so much of our nation and the world. At worst, refineries must be at location of oil extraction–otherwise work on solar and better storage in batteries over the 1700 miles. Oil pipes are broken now going into water on a Native American Reservation. I believe we have three oil pipe breaks or leaks going on right now.
The idea of the Keystone XL pipeline is beyond preposterous.
Let China ruin its own environment for gas instead of ruining our environment. Canada can have it. And, no debt for oil/environmental trade offs to China. Texas really, really wants this pipeline to go through. $$$$$$$$$$ Texas doesn’t seem to value life much. Come to think of it, Texas appears to be a lot like China on the human and education front.
The capacity some have to rationalize needs to be tapped for something more useful than surrender.
Thanks for the post. Good commentary, as well.
While I laud the efforts of these fine people, I sadly doubt it will make one whit of difference to the greed-heads at the top of the pyramid, who appear hell-bent for greedily grasping & grabbing after as much money as they possibly can. Ignoring the enviromental impact of this egregious & wrong-headed project is typical of the upper 2% who appear to *insanely* believe their paid shills who, for the right money, will peddle lies that such a project will not have any negative impact at all.
Where the upper 2% think they will go when the planet is despoiled (we are headed in that direction), is beyond my capacity to imagine.
Doris Lessing wrote some interesting science/space fiction dealing with potential impacts of global climate change’ they are insightful (even if just fiction). You can run, but ultimately you cannot hide. The effects will impact everyone, rich or poor, no matter what.
Recommended. Thanks.
Agree. Rick Perry appears hell-bent to turn TX into China-East; a real third world state. Amazing that his supporters can’t get enough of being treated like serfs, who get to live in shit-rotten conditions and be paid paltry wages, if “lucky” enough to have a job.
Bernie Sanders might be the exception.
Please delete this comment before they read and adopt it as policy. They don’t need any help coming up with policies of destruction.
recommended, tweeted and woohoo for getting front paged mzchief!!!
His backers are robber barons and his supporters are the ignorati.
It is slick enough they would, wouldn’t they. ;)
“Where the upper 2% think they will go when the planet is despoiled (we are headed in that direction), is beyond my capacity to imagine.”
May very well be what the timing of all these particular manufactured crises and shock doctrine responses together are about, padding the resources to let the inbred elites survive what’s coming? I know I am giving them too much credit as I am sure most of them hoard wealth for the sheer pleasure of their dementia.
I’ve been reading sci-fi/fantasy for years. Amazing how prescient a lot of it is, especially in the prediction of the police state.
More indigenous people affected by the past pollution of the energy companies behind the Tar Sands mining and processing activities speak out about the devastation and what the pipeline really means:
* Video presentations of Indigenous Environmental Network.
* An introduction (with videos) to the Beaver Lake Cree Nation’s law suits against the Alberta and Canadian Federal governments and the work Respect Aboriginal Values and Environmental Needs (RAVEN) is doing to assist them on these legal cases.
Unfortunately there are folks who are aware of this former head of state and have formed some kind of opinion of him but not necessarily for happy reasons:
‘Not to be outdone by Robertson, Mohler claimed that Buddhism, Hinduism, and Marxism are “demonstration[s] of satanic power‘ (MediaMatters.Org, Mar. 20, 2006)
“Terror group’s threat raises Dalai Lama alert” (The Australian, Apr. 3, 2007)
“Emergent Church Leaders: Wolves in Shepherds’ Clothing!” (CSTNews.Com, Oct. 10, 2008)
Otherwise, it appears that he is extremely well-known in many large cities around the world, including Washington, DC (EuroNews.Net, July 8, 2011), and for happy reasons:
“H.H.Dalai Lama speech on World Peace at west lawn Capital Hill Saturday, July 09, 2011” (move to time point 4:00 for the interview of DC Metro residents that is conducted in English)
From “Mandela wins BBC’s ‘global election’” (BBC.Co.Uk, 30 Sept. 30, 2005):
{ snip }
Photos:
Obama with Archbishop Desmond Tutu
Obama with His Holiness the Dalai Lama
Obama with José Ramos-Horta
Thank you, greenharper!