Rescind support of the XL pipeline & demand investment in Renewable Energy

You signed a letter requesting that President Obama approve a $7 billion project to build the TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline to carry tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada to the Texas coast. Your reasons for signing are job creation and energy security. However, the State Department study of KXL jobs tells us that the pipeline will provide less than 5,000, mostly temporary jobs, many less than the industry claims, and the oil from Canada will not help our country's oil needs. It’s mostly going on the world market, and thus will not be used here at home. More importantly, 98% of the world’s scientists agree that Climate Change is real, it is caused by human use of fossil fuel, and if we act quickly to stop burning it, we may avoid the disasters that will otherwise be caused by Climate Change.

The fact is that the full life cycle of Canadian tar sands oil produces even more greenhouse gases than conventional oil sources, and that if we encourage TransCanada to fill the KXL pipeline, it will encourage more use of tar sands oil by other countries.

Our mid-west is burning, arctic Alaska is melting, drought is decimating our farms, floods and monster storms are already decimating communities as large as New York City. Last year was the hottest in our country's recorded history, and with Australia hitting over 115F, 2013 is threatening to break the record again.

And this is only the beginning. If we don’t burn another gallon of gas, we cannot stop the 1C rise that is already in motion and responsible for the extreme weather. The Maldives are already lost. At 2C, which is inevitable at this point if we continue with business as usual, Miami will disappear, as will most of Manhattan and half of the entire population of the world would have to abandon their communities. There will be even less clean water or food, and millions of people could die. This can be avoided ONLY if we reduce greenhouse gasses starting right away. We simply cannot afford this pipeline, it could kill us.

Please, don’t sacrifice our children’s lives for the empty promise of jobs. Even if those jobs did exist, if we have to choose between jobs and life, we would certainly choose LIFE.

North Carolina has enough offshore wind energy-- even after eliminating areas of known impacts-- to provide all the electrical power our state needs. Rescind your support of the Keystone XL pipeline and demand investment in Clean, Renewable Energy!!
We want out of the greenhouse gas production industry!
Rescind your support of the XL Pipeline and demand investment in Renewable Energy!!