Only 24 hours to stop the Keystone XL Pipeline

Despite President Obama's rejection of the Keystone XL Pipeline plan, Senate Republicans want to add an amendment to the transportation bill that would mandate construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. The vote is expected to take place Tuesday.

Don't let the promise of jobs and cheaper gas prices fool you; as the Natural Resources Defense Council reports, the pipeline company itself stated that only a few hundred permanent jobs will be created for Americans-the State Department estimated fewer than 100 jobs.  This pipeline was created to help big oil companies, not the United States. What Big Oil also fails to clarify is that this pipeline is for export, meaning gas prices in the United States would not become lower but would actually increase.

The environmental damages will be massive. Greenhouse gas emissions and destruction of Canada's great Boreal Forest will prove to be a higher cost to the mythical "benefits" of this pipeline. Since this pipeline would be for tar sands extraction, it will be more likely to spill and harder to clean up.