2012年2月13日

24 Hours to Stop Keystone XL

Dear friends--When we started the fight about Keystone there were just a few of us, and no one thought we had a chance. But with hard work and lots of great organizing we scored an unlikely victory when the President eventually rejected the pipeline last month. However, the oil industry’s representatives in Congress are eager to undo that, and it looks like a deal could be coming together in the Senate this week to make that happen. It’s time for us to defend our victory.  Beginning at noon today, every environmental group in the nation, not to mention great allies like MoveOn.org and CREDO Action, will come together for the most concentrated burst of environmental advocacy this millennia. We’re aiming to send half a million email messages to the Senate in the next 24 hours. And they’ll all have the same  message: back up the President and make sure this pipeline doesn’t get built.  This is what movements look like.   And we need you to play a big part. 1—Send a message right now to the Senate: http://act.350.org/sign/kxl/ and 2—Make sure that everyone else you know does the same thing. 

Dear friends–

When we started the fight about Keystone there were just a few of us, and no one thought we had a chance.
 
But with hard work and lots of great organizing we scored an unlikely victory when the President eventually rejected the pipeline last month. However, the oil industry’s representatives in Congress are eager to undo that, and it looks like a deal could be coming together in the Senate this week to make that happen. It’s time for us to defend our victory. 
 
Beginning at noon today, every environmental group in the nation, not to mention great allies like MoveOn.org and CREDO Action, will come together for the most concentrated burst of environmental advocacy this millennia. We’re aiming to send half a million email messages to the Senate in the next 24 hours. And they’ll all have the same  message: back up the President and make sure this pipeline doesn’t get built. 
 
This is what movements look like.   And we need you to play a big part.
 
1—Send a message right now to the Senate: http://act.350.org/sign/kxl/
 
and
 
2—Make sure that everyone else you know does the same thing. 
 
The arguments by now are clear:  This pipeline won’t create jobs (that’s why the biggest labor unions in the country support the president). It puts the heartland of the country at risk from spills, the kind of leaks that devastated the Yellowstone and Kalamazoo Rivers in the year past. And after the year with the most weather disasters in the nation’s history, and amidst this weird and out-of-kilter winter, the fight against climate change must start here. 
 
The only argument for the pipeline comes from folks like the Koch Brothers—“we can make a lot of money.” It’s not a good argument, but that money buys votes in Congress, unless we stand up. 
 
So: stand up.
 
Look, this is one battle in the long fight against climate change. There will be others—we’ll doubtless have to call on you to go to jail again, to march and to sit in and to protest. And I have no doubt you’ll be there when it’s needed. 
 
But today—today—the fight is at the keyboards.  What you started has spread to become the greatest green fight in years. We’ve got to defend your victory, and we’ve got to do it now. 
 
With deep thanks,
 
—Bill McKibben for 350.org