Phil Kerpen in his article published in the Times Record on January 7, recommends that the United States approve the Keystone XL pipeline. Kerpen is President of American Commitment, an organization dedicated to “Free Markets, Economic Growth, Limited Government, Property Rights, and Individual Freedom” according to its website. There are many statements in this article which are highly questionable. Kerpen’s claim that the pipeline would create 40,000 jobs appears to be a gross exaggeration. The Times Record editorial on January 22 puts the number of jobs at 5,000 temporary jobs and only 40 permanent ones, hardly enough given all the risks of a Keystone XL pipeline.

Kerpen’s claim that the principal opponent of the pipeline is San Francisco billionaire Tom Steyer is totally false. In June of 2011, twelve hundred people came to Washington, D.C. to protest the pipeline in the largest act of civil disobedience in the North American climate movement, followed by 40,000 people who stood outside the White House in 2013 protesting Keystone. Gus Speth, former dean of Yale’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, has thrown his lot with those getting arrested to protest the Keystone Pipeline. In addition there are millions of people opposed to building the pipeline for reasons Kerpen failed to mention. Ranchers and indigenous people who live along the proposed pipeline path have campaigned together against the pipeline that would threaten their water supplies. Water supplies along the proposed route of the pipeline are all interconnected. Spills from the pipeline could contaminate an enormous expanse of water needed for drinking and irrigation of the nation’s breadbasket, not to dismiss salmon runs and valued fly fishing streams.

Perhaps the biggest reason not to build Keystone is that the planned route is through the Ogallala Aquifer, a vast source of fresh water beneath the Great Plains that provides drinking water to approximately two million people. We cannot put this huge source of fresh water at risk. But Kerpen doesn’t tell us this. He may not even know about it.

He doesn’t tell us that the tar sands oil the Keystone XL pipeline would carry have emissions of CO2 that are 12 percent higher than from conventional oil. He doesn’t tell us about the scourge on the landscape the tar sands extractions have made in Alberta, where the Trans Canada oil company has torn down boreal forests to extract tar sands oil, leaving huge tailing ponds covering nearly 70 square miles. These ponds have now been found to leak toxic liquid into nearby water systems. He doesn’t tell us about the broken treaties with indigenous people in Alberta who can no longer fish in their streams. The lawsuits brought by indigenous people in Canada and the U.S., some of which have been successful, may be out greatest hope to forestall this attack on our land. Indigenous people, however, have few resources to go up against “Big Oil.” For a more complete understanding of this debate I heartily recommend Naomi Klein’s most recent book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate.

Kerpen doesn’t tell us that a part of the Keystone pipeline system known as Keystone 1 is already built and had fourteen leaks in the United States in its first year of operation. Tar sands oil is thought to cause more erosion of pipelines than traditional oil. We have only to look at yesterday’s newspaper to read about truckloads of water being brought into the town of Glendive, Montana following a leak in an oil pipeline that poisoned the water supply in the Yellowstone River with 50,000 gallons of oil, or more.

Another error in Kerpen’s article is that Keystone would provide “more secure access to North American energy.” All the tar sands oil in Keystone would be carried to refineries in Texas and exported from there to other countries and would add nothing to the U.S. supply of oil.

As to Kerpen’s attack on Tom Steyer, shouldn’t we applaud a man who once promoted and made his fortune on fossil fuels for “seeing the light” and becoming a proponent of “green energy”? The forces against green energy are fierce, but unless we listen to what 97 percent of environmental scientists are telling us and do something about our reliance on fossil fuels now, we will not have a livable planet. Let us hope that Obama will not listen to false prophets like Phil Kerpen and will acquire the knowledge and courage that will lead him to veto the Keystone XL pipeline.

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Sarah J. Slagle-Arnold is a clinical psychologist. She lives in Topsham.