(The following national newsletter was emailed by Scott Parkin, Senior Campaigner, Climate Program, Rainforest Action Network (RAN). This organization, along with Credo and now, 350.org, are leading a national coalition to plan Keystone XL Pipeline actions.)
Hey friends – Here’s the latest updates on Keystone XL.
A lot is moving within the State Dept., the other agencies and Congress on this right now. We’ve been keeping up with it and responding the media and social media spheres, as well as to all of you. The current thinking amongst our allies in the environmental NGO world is that we’re very close to winning (i.e. Obama rejects the pipeline and vetoes the current legislation being passed by the GOP-led Congress).
Until there is an out and out rejection of the pipeline, we’re still preparing for a possible approval of the pipeline and deployment of the Pledge. The difficult thing is that the process in Washington D.C. lacks transparency. The Pledge was conceived and has existed as deterrent to a bad decision by the Obama Administration. If no information before a decision comes out and they surprise us with a pipeline approval, we plan to still deploy the Pledge as a reactive action.
The Pledge, at that point, will be a reaction to a bad decision. It will be a reaction to a president who has insisted on a “climate test” on a pipeline that we all know it fails such a test. It will be a reaction to a president who has spoken out about the “the tyranny of oil.” The anti-KXL and climate movements have built a great deal of power in this campaign. This will be our moment to make our voices heard and exert that power we’ve built.
Below is the latest newsletter.
Thanks for all you do. Stop The Pipeline.
Best, Scott
News
•EPA Release Keystone XL Comments: On Tuesday, the Environmental Protection Agency released its comments on the State Department’s Keystone XL Environmental Impact Statement. The statement was very good for the anti-KXL movement. The comments reflected the views of the anti-KXL movement in that the pipeline would be a disaster the climate. To learn more, click on:
•House Accepts Senate Bill, White House Re-affirms VETO. Read more here:
KXL Pledge of Resistance:
•Despite all the good news around Keystone XL, we still want to be prepared in case the decision turns out to be an approval. Therefore, we’ll be prepping some key pieces for possible Pledge mobilization and deployment.
• Sam Briggs is working with us on activating the Pledge of Resistance (in the case of a KXL approval). Sam will be working with me, Todd and the rest of the team in preparing for that scenario. You can contact him at nokxlassist@gmail.com
•Sam will also be contacting you via phone and email this week.
• Inside Climate News had a really good Q&A on the Keystone XL approval process. You can read it here:
•We had a call on Monday with over 50 of you. Here’s the recording:
**Next Call: Thursday, February 12th at 8pm EST/5pm PST (unless something happens before then). Register here-
Next Steps
•YOU: Continue to convene and re-convene your groups and refresh yourselves on roles, trainings and action planning.
•US: We’ll be checking via phone, email and survey to assess and trouble-shoot the Pledge network’s needs.
•Next Call: Thursday, February 12th at 8pm EST/5pm PST (unless something happens before then). Register here-
