Our home sits on the Ogallala Aquifer. All our water - for drinking, bathing, cooking and irrigating our gardens - comes from our well. Everyone who visits says we have the most delicious water they have ever tasted.
The Keystone XL pipeline threatens the purity of our water, as we are just 70 miles from where the proposed route would cross the Platte, a national treasure and historically significant river that runs just a mile from our front door.
But the KXL fight isn't just about us. It isn't just about Nebraskans. It isn't just about the First Nation people in Canada who are dying from pollution at the tar sands mining site. It isn't even just about the Chinese, who will receive the vast majority of oil refined from those tar sands.
It's about all of us on the planet, even your uber-conservative pro-life Uncle Larry, who thinks KXL is a good idea. Here's the shortest blog I can write to explain that to him.
Most of the oil refined from the dirty tar sands that flows through KXL is already contracted to be sold overseas. So it's foreign tar sands being combined with toxic chemicals to flow over the US's largest aquifer to be refined into oil in Texas and shipped out tax-free from ports in the gulf of Mexico to foreign markets in the other side of the world.
What could possibly go wrong? Oil leaks from tankers into the ocean? Refinery explosions? Diluted bitumen (tar sands made to flow by adding toxic chemicals) spilling into the rivers and aquifers the pipeline crosses? Mercury poisoning causing birth defects among people living near the mining site? All these things have happened and are happening now, and there is every expectation they will continue to happen in future, despite all the safety assurances.
That is why the pipeline is called "All Risk & No Reward" for Americans.
KXL pipeline will not be safe. It will not have any effect on the US domestic oil supply. It will not create more than 50 permanent US jobs.
What KXL will do:
1. Be built across private land wrested by private corporations against the will of more than 100 dissenting landowners along the route. The landowners are being told this is a valid use of eminent domain for public gain, but it is in fact eminent domain for private gain.
2. Eventually leak into the aquifer -- all pipelines leak -- a situation that literally cannot be contained or cleaned up. Millions of acres of farmland will become worthless, and millions of people's drinking water will be contaminated beyond recovery.
3. Be the responsibility of the landowner to mitigate when it leaks. Yes - incredibly, that is how the lease contracts are written.
4. Be the responsibility of the landowner to remove when derelict. See last point above.
5. Continue the world's dependence on dead-end nonrenewable fossil fuels vs clean renewable sources of energy.
6. Continue to be the cause of death and premature miscarriage of many First Nation peoples who live near the mining site in Alberta, Canada.
7. Continue to destroy thousands of acres of pristine environment in the immediate mining area and for miles around it, as well as all along the route.
And, just in case this is not enough. KXL will make this situation economically feasible:
When burned, the fossil fuel source flowing through the KXL pipeline will cause GAME OVER for climate change. What does that mean? It means the amount of CO2 dumped into the atmosphere caused by burning fuel from this particular tar sands field will cause climate change to accelerate faster than mankind will be able to adapt to it. GAME OVER! Translation: We all die off faster and more horribly.
KXL is disastrous and immoral. Please tell everyone you know. Even Uncle Larry.
Especially Uncle Larry.
Want to learn more? Watch this segment of The Ed Show.