Political Quotes

“Madam President, I rise today to oppose S. 2280, a bill to approve the Keystone XL Pipeline. The Keystone Pipeline would carry 830,000 barrels per day of tar sands oil bound for global markets from Canada to refineries along the gulf coast. This is one of the most important points about Keystone, which is that it does nothing for American energy security. It takes tar sands oil from Canada, moves it through the United States, and makes it available to global markets. It does nothing for American energy security. But more than that, it represents a massive endorsement of a fossil fuel economy when we ought to be focusing on transitioning to clean energy. There are many reasons to vote against this bill, but I will focus on four. First, the oil from tar sands is exceptionally dirty. I think for the American public out there, they have a basic instinct that oil is not the cleanest of energy resources. But tar sands oils are really in a special category. We do not need this oil enough to justify its impacts on health and climate change. Mining tar sands oil is nothing like setting up a rig and drilling a hole in the ground. Tar sands are dirty in terms of the land destroyed, dirty in terms of the water wasted and contaminated, and dirty in terms of the energy needed to mine, transport, and process the oil. Getting and using oil from tar sands puts far more carbon pollution in the atmosphere than conventional oil.…”