On Tuesday December 6th, grassroots leaders representing communities across the US and Canada will deliver a petition with 7,585 signatures to the US State Department calling on President Obama, Secretary of State Clinton, and other US State Department Officials to immediately reject the permit for the Transcanada Keystone XL pipeline.
On November 10 President Obama and the State Department announced that they would delay the permit and seek a new environmental review of the Keystone XL pipeline, and are asking TransCanada Corporation to evaluate other options, such as rerouting the pipeline. This decision came about as a result of a multi-year campaign led by Indigenous Environmental Network and other environmental groups, together with family farmers, faith-based groups, youth and students, labor unions, and rural communities living along the proposed pipeline in opposition to the proposed pipeline.
The more than 7,500 petition signers are calling on the US State Department to "Reject, Not Reroute" the Keystone XL Pipeline, and to "Deny, Don't Just Delay" the permit.
The delegation delivering the petition represents farmers, youth, and workers who are members of Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, La Vía Campesina North America, Grassroots International and Energy Action Coalition. The signatures will be delivered along with a photo mural documenting some of the climate justice actions that took place in 20 locations around the world December 3-5, coinciding with protests in Durban, South Africa against the UN climate negotiations COP17 (known by many in civil society as the Conference of Polluters).
