200 actions to #StandWithStandingRock & #NoDAPL Solidarity Support the Indigenous led movement to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline 15SEP16

THERE were over 200 actions this week in support of the Standing Rock Sioux protest and their legal case against the ndap/north dakota access pipeline. +350.org is one of the environmental organizations supporting the people of the Standing Rock Reservation and offer the chance for you to support them by signing a petition to Pres Obama to stop the ndap. (Also note, I clicked the link to donate to the Sacred Stone Camp supply fund, they are no longer accepting donations to their gofundme campaign). You can go to the Sacred Stone Camp website for more information on the Standing Rock Sioux actions and make a donation to their legal fund. You might also consider ending your personal baking / credit card relationship with td bank and citibank and not buy fuel from phillips66, sunoco and marathon.

This week has been incredible. I'm so proud to be part of this big, beautiful movement with you -- here's just the latest reason why:

On Tuesday, more than 200 actions were organized in just a few short days to show our collective solidarity with the fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline. From banner-drops in California to main-street rallies in small Midwest towns, to actions as far afield as London and Hawaii -- this movement truly came together to #StandWithStandingRock.

This week's largest rally, in Washington, DC, had over 3,000 people calling on President Obama to stop the pipeline (along with featured speakers like Senator Bernie Sanders, Tara Houska, Van Jones, Chase Iron Eyes, Rev Yearwood, and Jasilyn Charger).

Last week, President Obama blocked the final federal permit needed to build the pipeline. Now, the Administration has opened the door to using a more thorough review process, one that takes climate and tribal consultation into account, like Keystone XL.

You can still stand with the Standing Rock Sioux, who are leading this fight on the ground, by calling on President Obama to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline for good. Add your voice here. 

What’s happening right now in Standing Rock -- and the simultaneous landowner opposition gathering steam in Iowa -- is a historic display of resistance. In fact, one reporter commented that “the oil industry has never been more scared.”

This isn't the first pipeline we've fought together -- and it won't be the last -- but something special about the Dakota Access uprising has captured the country's imagination. The dedication, moral clarity, and brilliant organizing on the part of Native tribes and Indigenous-led organizations is that something special.

The actions this week have been a powerful show of solidarity, but this fight is definitely not over. Let's keep showing up and standing with the Standing Rock Sioux and everyone fighting this thing on the ground. Right now, the best way to do that is to add your voice:

Sign the petition to President Obama here.

There's plenty more to do: Join one of the upcoming actions targeting financial institutions that are funding the pipeline here, contribute to efforts on the ground via the Sacred Stone Camp supply fund, the Sacred Stone Camp legal defense fund, or theRed Warrior Camp legal defense fund, or contribute to farmer and landowner organizing efforts in Iowa here.

Dakota Access hasn't seen the last of us. Together, we can stop this pipeline -- and every pipeline after it.

Thank you for everything you do,

Emily for the rest of the 350.org team

P.S. Check out some of the social media from this week's #StandWithStandingRock day of action here, and see the best photos from actions around the country here. 

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350.org is building a global climate movement. Become a sustaining donor to keep this movement strong and growing.

#NoDAPL Solidarity

Support the Indigenous led movement to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline

We are calling for solidarity actions targeting:

• The pipeline companies trying to build the Dakota Access Pipeline
• The financial institutions that are lending the money to build the project
• Michels Corporation, which is the contractor actually constructing the pipeline

Join an existing action near you, or organize an action of your own.

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Companies Behind DAPL

The Dakota Access Pipeline is a project being proposed by a collection of pipeline companies, with a complicated and intertwining structure:

• Energy Transfer Partners owns a 45% stake in the project
• Sunoco Logistics Partners owns a 30% stake
• Phillips 66 owns a 25% stake.

Additionally, Enbridge Energy Partners is attempting to buy a 28% stake in the project and Marathon Petroleum Corp is attempting to buy a 9% stake. These companies are hoping to finalzye this deal by the end of September. We are calling on these companies to pull out of the project or to cancel it outright.

Banks Funding DAPL

The companies building DAPL were able to secure a $2.5 billion loan from a collection of banks to build the pipeline. But the pipeline companies can only access $1.1 billion of this loan until certain progress is made on the pipeline project. So we are calling on these lenders to cut off this line of credit to the pipeline companies and to stop funding the DAPL.

Three of the main lenders are Citigroup, TD Securities and Mizuho Bank.

Michels Corporation

The contractor actually building the pipeline is Michels Corporation, an international company that has worked on several other controversial projects including the Southern Leg of the Keystone XL pipeline. We are calling on Michels to halt construction on the Dakota Access Pipeline until a Environmental Impact Statement on the project is completed and a full consultation with the impacted tribes takes place.

Fredrikson & Byron, 10-Code LLC, G4S and Frost Kennels

We have added the law firm that represents the Dakota Access Pipeline and the security firms that have been hired by the pipeline companies to attack peaceful protestors. We need these institutions to dissociate themselves from the Dakota Access Pipeline and to be held accountable for their dangerous actions.

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Below is a map of some of the office locations of these targets. In addition to this map there are these resources:

TD Bank Branch Locations in the “United States”

TD Bank Branch Locations in “Canada”

Citibank Branch Locations

LAST DAY TO SUBMIT COMMENTS AGAINST KEYSTONE XL / KXL IS FRIDAY, 7 MAR 14 & The Keystone Saga Can Still End Happily - Here's How 5MAR14

FRIDAY, 7 MAR 14, is the last day to submit your comments to the US State Department opposing the keystone xl pipeline. Please click the link and submit your comments and share this with others. From Daily Kos, 350.org, Credo, NRDC, LVC and others.....

This Friday marks the deadline for public comments on the Keystone XL pipeline before the Obama administration makes the final decision about whether or not to issue a permit.

Please join Daily Kos and CREDO by signing and sending the petition urging the Obama administration to reject the Keystone XL pipeline.

This pipeline would accelerate global climate change and be a game changer in climate destruction. Not only does oil production from the Alberta tar sands emit much more greenhouse gas than traditional oil production, the process involves clearing large swaths of arboreal forest, uses huge amounts of water to separate the bitumen from the sand, and produces excessive waste byproduct.

And those are the consequences before anything even enters the KXL pipeline. KXL presents the very likely risk of an oil spill in the Midwest United States. A pipeline spill along the proposed route of KXL could contaminate the Ogallala aquifer-–which is used to supply the country’s agricultural production in the Plains and supplies 82 percent of the drinking water to over 2 million people around the aquifer.

We cannot allow President Obama to approve the KXL pipeline and accelerate the rate of climate change while putting the American public at risk.

Please join Daily Kos and CREDO by signing and sending the petition opposing Keystone XL. We will deliver all of the comments to the State Department through the official channels provided at regulations.gov at 5:00 PM eastern Friday, March 7.

Keep fighting,
Rachel Colyer
Campaign Director, Daily Kos 

The Keystone Saga Can Still End Happily - Here's How

by Raul Grijalva

As Kossacks and a lot of other Americans know, being against the big, ugly Keystone pipeline deal has nothing to do with wanting to live in caves or get rid of civilization as we know it. In fact, we’re opposed to Keystone because we don’t want to live in caves or get rid of civilization as we know it. It’s important to remember what’s at stake here. Opening up a big patch of dirty tar sands to years of development is the last thing our environment needs. The rest is industry window dressing.
A lot of people already know this, and the environmental risks of a long pipeline carrying heavy sludge across the Great Plains should be enough to shut the whole thing down. But the story doesn’t stop there. There’s corporate influence-peddling, years of bad science passed off as the last word, contractors failing to disclose their conflicts of interest, and industry inflating its job creation numbers. It’s actually a pretty interesting story. Follow me past the fold to hear how I’m trying to help write a happy ending.

Last week I wrote an op-ed for the New York Times highlighting an important part of the case against Keystone. In a nutshell, approving it would send a terrible signal about how the federal government weighs science against corporate interest in making environmental decisions. The State Department has been contracting out the job of assessing Keystone’s environmental impacts since 2008, and (to cut a long story short) they haven’t been picky about who they’ve hired.
Friends of the Earth has a great timeline of all the problems that process has created. If you’re not familiar with the history, take a look. It speaks volumes. The State Department doesn’t have much in-house experience doing environmental science, and its reliance on outside expertise has led it to hire not one but two companies – Cardno ENTRIX and then Environmental Resources Management (ERM) – that have done lots of work for TransCanada, Keystone’s parent company. That wouldn’t be a huge problem if they hadn’t both refused to disclose that work until after the contracts were signed.
These conflicts of interest go back a ways. In October 2011, the New York Times made it clear exactly how flagrant the choice of Cardno ENTRIX really was:

The [State] department allowed TransCanada, the company seeking permission to build the 1,700-mile pipeline from the oil sands of northern Alberta to the Gulf Coast in Texas, to solicit and screen bids for the environmental study. At TransCanada’s recommendation, the department hired Cardno Entrix, an environmental contractor based in Houston, even though it had previously worked on projects with TransCanada and describes the pipeline company as a “major client” in its marketing materials. While it is common for federal agencies to farm out environmental impact studies, legal experts said they were surprised the State Department was not more circumspect about the potential for real and perceived conflicts of interest on such a large and controversial project.

So what happened? The State Department inspector general was asked to look at whether the choice of Cardno ENTRIX was improper. The IG slapped them on the wrist and said no big deal – even though, as the New York Times explained, its own report found the following:

The State Department failed “to perform any independent inquiry to verify Cardno Entrix’s organizational conflict of interest statements.” TransCanada was not asked by the State Department to view and certify Cardno Entrix’s conflict of interest statements.
Overall, the review found that the State Department’s “limited technical resources expertise and experience” limited [the] environmental review process. The officers in charge of the review, according to the report, had “little or no” experience with environmental law “and had to seek training and learn quickly on the job.”

This suggested to me and some of my colleagues that the State Department wasn’t the right agency to be in charge of this process. (In fact, the only reason the State Department is in charge of this process is that Congress hasn’t stepped in to supersede an outdated executive order.) We thought maybe, at best, the State Department would learn an important lesson and hire a better contractor to write a final environmental impact statement. Well, the State Department – at TransCanada’s urging – hired ERM. You can guess what happened next. Take it away, Buzzfeed:

TransCanada, the company behind the Keystone Pipeline, never disclosed its previous work with a contractor the company later recommended for a key environment study, according to documents obtained by an environmental activist group. [. . .] Ties between ERM and TransCanada have been reported before, as has ERM’s contention that it had no conflict with TransCanada. What the new documents show, environmental groups who reviewed them say, is that TransCanada recommended ERM as one of the firms that had no significant conflict when it came to evaluating the environmental impact of Keystone. The critics say they also show the State Department has gotten itself into the same trouble with contractor selection it did the last time it hired a consultant for Keystone, a process that led to criticism from the Inspector General’s office. State denies that there was anything wrong with the process.

Just last week, the State Department inspector general . . . slapped them on the wrist. Again. The Wall Street Journal – hardly a launching pad for anti-corporate broadsides – noted how soft the IG report really was, considering its findings:

The inspector general report released Wednesday said the State Department had “created misperceptions” about ERM’s disclosures by failing to fully explain the company’s relationship to TransCanada earlier. The report said the State Department's handling of ties between the two companies suggested “ERM had not provided all required information to the Department and that ERM and the Department were attempting to conceal conflicts of interest.”

Supposedly, all this is a matter of “misperception.” Well, I don’t think so. I think the public perception that this is a Bush-era throwback is spot on. That’s why I recently asked the Government Accountability Office to investigate whether the State Department process for choosing contractors is broken and needs to be fixed. I’m proud to have the support of Sen. Barbara Boxer, the chairwoman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and one of the best friends the environment has ever had in Congress. We’re going to get to the bottom of this.
You can help. If you think the State Department, and our whole federal government, should do a lot better than we’ve seen so far, make your voice heard. This is the last week the State Department is accepting public comments on whether Keystone is in the national interest. Submit your public comment now and make sure we start putting science ahead of corporate demands once and for all. I’m proud to be a leader in this fight, but I’m just one voice. So are you. So are each of us. And we’re always stronger when we work together.

Originally posted to Raul Grijalva on Wed Mar 05, 2014 at 07:36 AM PST.

Also republished by Climate Change SOS, Kitchen Table Kibitzing, DK GreenRoots, Climate Hawks, EcoJustice, and Baja Arizona Kossacks. 

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/03/05/1282313/-The-Keystone-Saga-Can-Still-End-Happily-Here-s-How?detail=action 

Did you see the New York Times article?! Keystone XL Pipeline Fight Lifts Environmental Movement 24JAN14

THE environmental community is anxiously waiting for Pres Obama's State of the Union speech on Tuesday, 28 JAN 14. We expect him to announce his decision on the keystone xl pipeline. I have a few new post on this issue this week, just do a search on keystone xl on this blog if you are interested. This is from 350.org and the NY Times. AND of special note, as a member of Credo Mobile for many, many years I have already voted for this months disbursement of funds and voted to split my shares between 350.org, Mother Jones and Planned Parenthood.
Next week is going to be a big one -- President Obama is giving his State of the Union speech, and we're hitting the home stretch of the fight to stop the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.
To get fired up for what's next, check out the front-page New York Times article that JUST came out about an hour ago. The headline: "Keystone XL Pipeline Fight Lifts Environmental Movement." The article is a testament to your hard work, and all that we've accomplished together. Click here to check it out.
But before we jump into the next phase of this fight, I hope those of you who are CREDO customers will help out with a quick opportunity to support this growing movement.
CREDO is a cell phone company, alternative credit card provider, and a social justice campaigning powerhouse. They’ve been our partners every step of the way in the fight to stop Keystone XL -- and as the team behind the Keystone XL pledge of resistance, alongside RAN and The Other 98%, will be a key part of finishing it. Over the last few years, they have helped turn out thousands of people for many major actions on Keystone XL and a diverse range of other issues.
In addition to mobilizing the grassroots, CREDO helps fund hundreds of progressive groups -- and the way they do it is pretty cool. Every month, CREDO members vote to distribute funds among three progressive nonprofits. So, if you’re a CREDO customer -- like me, for instance -- then you have an easy way to help out 350.org with just a few clicks.
Over the next week, CREDO members can cast a vote to raise funds for 350.org as we scale up our efforts together. The voting is free and only takes a few seconds -- we’re excited to be part of it and we hope you’ll help out by voting for 350.org.
Note: this voting offer is solely for CREDO customers, which we realize many of you may not be. If you aren’t, don’t stress it -- we've got big plans in the works, so get your marching shoes ready. But if you are a CREDO customer, we hope you’ll cast a vote for us -- though we should say that the other two groups you can vote for, Mother Jones and Planned Parenthood, both do excellent work to build a more progressive world.
(FYI: I just cast my ballot right now and it took approximately three seconds.)
Thanks, and talk more very very soon,
May
P.S. I also wanted to note an important development: a few days ago, the Southern leg of Keystone XL started making deliveries of tar sands oil to refineries in Texas. The Northern leg is still President Obama’s call to make, with huge implications for our climate and water. You can learn more about the next steps of resistance to the Southern pipeline by clicking here.

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Keystone XL Pipeline Fight Lifts Environmental Movement

 By SARAH WHEATONJAN. 24, 2014

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Protesters against the proposed Keystone XL pipeline in San Francisco last year. Jewel Samad/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

WASHINGTON — Environmentalists have spent the past two years fighting the Keystone XL pipeline: They have built a human chain around the White House, clogged the State Department’s public comment system with more than a million emails and letters, and gotten themselves arrested at protests across the country.

But as bad as they argue the 1,700-mile pipeline would be for the planet, Keystone XL has been a boon to the environmental movement. While it remains unclear whether President Obama will approve the project, both sides agree that the fight has changed American environmental politics.

“I think it would be naïve for any energy infrastructure company to think that this would be a flash in the pan,” said Alexander J. Pourbaix, president of energy and oil pipelines at TransCanada, the company that has been trying to get a permit for the Keystone XL pipeline since 2008.

Environmentalists want to stop the transport of 800,000 barrels a day of heavy crude oil from tar sands formations in Canada to Texas refineries, and an oil extraction process — effectively a strip-mining operation in once-pristine forests in Alberta — that emits more greenhouse gases than other forms of production. Proponents of the Keystone XL project say that the oil will come out of the ground with or without a new pipeline and that other methods of transport, like rail, cause more pollution. They point out that TransCanada began operations on Wednesday on a southern pipeline segment that connects to existing pipelines to provide a route from Alberta to the Gulf Coast.

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The Keystone XL project has also raised the profile of a diverse generation of environmental leaders, like the activist Bill McKibben, a former writer for The New Yorker and founder of 350.org. Jeff Swensen for The New York Times

Although some critics say the environmental movement has made a strategic error by focusing so much energy on the pipeline, no one disputes that the issue has helped a new breed of environmental organizations build a mostly young army eager to donate money and time. The seven-year-old email list of 350.org, an organization that focuses on climate change, has more than doubled to 530,000 people since the group began fighting the pipeline in August 2011. In addition, about 76,000 people have signed a “pledge of resistance” sponsored by seven liberal advocacy groups in which they promise to risk arrest in civil disobedience if a State Department analysis, expected this year, points toward approval of the pipeline.

The Keystone XL project has also raised the profile of a diverse generation of environmental leaders, like the activist Bill McKibben, a former writer for The New Yorker and founder of 350.org, and the billionaire venture capitalist Thomas F. Steyer, who is estimated to have contributed at least $1 million to the movement and has starred in four 90-second ads opposing the pipeline. Not least, it has united national and local environmental groups that usually fight for attention and resources.

“Over the last 18 months, I think there was this recognition that stopping the pipeline is, in fact, important,” said Ross Hammond, a senior campaigner at Friends of the Earth. “But it has also brought a huge number of people into the movement.”

That movement, Mr. McKibben said in an interview, “looks the way we want the energy system to look: not a few big power plants, but a million solar panels all tied together.”

Politically, the draw of Keystone XL comes from its physical presence. It is far easier, environmental activists say, to rally people around something as vivid as a pipeline bisecting the United States than, say, around cap-and-trade legislation that would have forced industry to pay a price for its carbon emissions. The legislation failed in Congress in 2009.

“When we’re able to focus on distinct, concrete projects, we tend to win,” said Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club. “And when we tend to focus on more obscure policies or places where we need action from Congress, we tend to stall, like every other thing tends to stall.”

The pipeline has been a particular hit with small donors, especially as environmental organizations turn more to protests, fund-raisers said. Last year, the Sierra Club raised $1 million in six weeks for a major rally in Washington. About $100,000 of that came from contributions of less than $1,000.

“This is not one of our usual long-term campaigns,” said Jackie Brown, the Sierra Club’s chief advancement officer. “This was an emerging upswelling of support.”

Wealthier donors are also opening their wallets. Betsy Taylor, a longtime environmental fund-raiser, said her network of contributors was increasingly supporting the more aggressive campaigns run by groups like 350.org and Bold Nebraska, a shift away from the environmental research and policy organizations that have traditionally drawn such contributions.

Keystone XL — the XL stands for express line — would be a shortcut to the Gulf of Mexico as well as an extension of TransCanada’s existing Keystone pipeline, which runs from Alberta to Nebraska, with small branches to Illinois and Oklahoma. Keystone XL would be a far more direct route across the United States. Keystone consists of a three-foot-diameter pipe that is three feet underground. Keystone XL would also be three feet in diameter, but four feet underground.

Initially, opposition to Keystone XL consisted of scattered people and groups along the proposed route of the pipeline, including indigenous tribes in Alberta. The fight went national in June 2011 when James E. Hansen, a former NASA climate scientist, wrote an open letter calling the pipeline “game over for the climate” and urged people to write to Hillary Rodham Clinton, then the secretary of state. (Because the project crosses an international boundary, it is subject to approval by the State Department.)

Mr. McKibben, the author of numerous books about climate, decided to use 350.org to campaign against the pipeline. That fall, he urged his members to commit civil disobedience in front of the White House.

“I remember when I heard the call for civil disobedience, I thought, ‘Yeah, right, you’ll get like 40 people to show up,'  ” said Mr. Hammond of Friends of the Earth. “And then, bam!” Over a two-week period, about 1,200 people were arrested at the White House.

Stephanie Kimball, 30, a Wisconsin dentist, said in a recent telephone interview that she had been “trying to figure out where to jump in” to the environmental cause when a talk by activists arrested in 2011 inspired her to volunteer as a local coordinator for 350.org. She said she was also working to stop a pipeline by the Canadian corporation Enbridge.

To counter the campaign, TransCanada has had to run television and radio ads to promote the jobs that the pipeline could provide. Industry allies like the American Petroleum Institute have also been running ads.

If Mr. Obama approves the Keystone XL pipeline, Mr. Brune of the Sierra Club said, it will be “the Vietnam of his presidency.” But, he added, environmentalists’ efforts will hardly have been for nothing.

“If you lose on this,” said Mike Casey, a consultant for Mr. Steyer, “this infrastructure doesn’t go away. It remains deployable and passionate.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/25/us/keystone-xl-pipeline-fight-lifts-environmental-movement.html?hp&_r=1 

Stop the New England tar sands safety cover-up from the Natural Resources Defense Council 17APR12

TAR SANDS OIL......the name alone evokes visions of destruction and massive pollution impossible to clean up if there is a spill. The production releases massive amounts of greenhouse gases, the main cause of global warming. The earth itself is poisoned at the source of tar sands oil production, land, air and water turned into a toxic wasteland not fit for man, flora or fauna. It is a waste of land and water and resources that would be better spent on the development of alternative renewable energy and fuel efficient appliances and vehicles. And now a Canadian company, enbridge, wants to expose not only millions of Canadians but millions of Americans to the vile toxic stew of tar sands oil by building a pipeline (line 9)across Ontario and Quebec as well as Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine to the Atlantic Coast so it can be exported. Not only will numerous waterways be put at risk but super tankers will present a risk of spills in the fisheries off the New England Coast. The NRDC is asking people to sign letters to the Canadian National Energy Board for them to order a review of this proposal. Click the link to sign on in opposition for your letter to be presented to the agency this Thursday, 19 APR 12.

	Image courtesy of NRCM A Canadian pipeline company may be planning to funnel toxic tar sands oil through New England -- and trying to get out of telling the public what will happen to the drinking water when there is a spill. We can force the company to come clean about the threat of a tar sands spill by convincing the Canadian National Energy Board to order a comprehensive environmental review. To show public demand for the review, NRDC is planning to deliver 10,000 letters on this Thursday. Add your name to our letter demanding a full review of the safety risks, and we’ll send it straight to the energy board. This enormous pipeline would transport tar sands oil from Canada through New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine -- where the oil would leave U.S. shores on super tankers. A tar sands pipeline through New England would endanger a number of drinking water sources, rivers and wild lands. And while this company is trying to avoid giving a full picture of the risks, we already know that tar sands pipelines are more susceptible to spills than other pipelines, and that a spill of this type of dirty oil is more devastating to local communities and takes longer to clean up. The company behind the pipeline is trying to skirt the full environmental review for its dangerous project by breaking it into phases. We can't let this corporation bring toxic tar sands oil into the United States without even revealing the risks to human health and the environment. Tell the Canadian National Energy Board to demand a full environmental review of this dangerous tar sands pipeline. Tar sands mining and drilling in Canada will eventual destroy an area of boreal forest the size of Florida, while generating over three times the global warming pollution as conventional oil production. Tar sands represent a step backward for the United States at a time when we should be moving forward with clean energy solutions. It's time to hold these dirty energy companies accountable for wreaking havoc on our environment and putting our health at risk.

The Natural Resources Defense Council is a nonprofit environmental organization with 1.3 million members and online activists, and a staff of scientists, attorneys and environmental experts. Our mission is to protect the planet's wildlife and wild places and ensure a safe and healthy environment for all living things.

For more information about NRDC or how to become a member of NRDC, please contact us at:

Natural Resources Defense Council
40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011
212-727-4511 (voice) / 212-727-1773 (fax)
Email: nrdcaction@nrdc.org
http://www.nrdc.org