14 DAY TRIAL // United States President Barack Obama is expected to deliver his verdict on the Keystone XL pipeline project sometime later this year. To put it in a nutshell, what Barack Obama has to do is say whether or not the construction of this pipeline is to be given the thumbs up.
In a recent report, the country's State Department argues that the United States President might as well approve this project, seeing how tar sands are to be exploited with or without Keystone XL. Hence, the pipeline in itself will not be a contributor to climate change and global warming.
Not at all surprisingly, there are a lot of folks who do not see eye to eye with the State Department as far as the Keystone XL project is concerned. Interestingly enough, it would appear that former United States President Jimmy Carter is one of these people.
Huffington Post reports that, in a letter addressed to both Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry, Jimmy Carter, together with nine Nobel Prize laureates, urges that the current United States President prove that he meant what he said when he promised to tackle climate change and global warming, and reject Keystone XL.
“We stand with the 2,000,000 voices who submitted their comments in the national interest determination process rejecting the pipeline and ask you once again to stop Keystone XL,” Jimmy Carter and the Nobel Prize recipients write in their letter to Barack Obama and John Kerry.
“The rejection of the Keystone XL would have meaningful and significant impacts in reducing carbon pollution. The myth that tar sands development is inevitable and will find its way to market by rail if not by pipeline is a red herring,” the letter further reads.
Just for the record, it must be said that Jimmy Carter is the first former president of the United States to have until now publicly opposed the Keystone XL project. His views on the matter at hand are very much different to those of George W. Bush, who, back in 2013, stated that building this pipeline should be a “no-brainer.”
Should the Keystone XL pipeline be approved by the Obama administration and built, it will serve to carry some 830,000 barrels of crude oil on a daily basis. What environmentalists are worried about is that, by making this much oil available for power generation, the pipeline will be a major contributor to climate change and global warming.