Several of the people who protested and were arrested were from Cornell. I could not attend the rally because of school obligations, but supported the protesters wholeheartedly.
The Keystone XL Pipeline is a potential way to extend the current pipeline so that Canada is able to transport almost a million barrels of oil a day from Alberta to the Gulf Coast. But its implementation would require the destruction of vital ecosystems, would dirty local water sources, and would promote the use of, as the Sierra Club puts it, "the most toxic fossil fuel on the planet."
The oil which the pipeline would be transporting would come from tar sands in Canada, which are harder to extract than conventional oil and require even more fossil fuels to get. Moreover, the tar sands are under the Boreal Forest, which would mean a lot of deforestation due to the extraction process. And then the actual use of this oil would even further contribute to the burning of fossil fuels and increased carbon emissions, thus intensifying climate change.
Although this pipeline isn't being proposed for Ithaca, NY, that does not make it any less of a local problem. The pipeline would affect people everywhere, not just in the communities it would be infiltrating directly. Thus, I find it appropriate to talk about in my journal post focused on local issues. Climate change isn't an issue that affects only one community--it is a world-wide problem, that the pipeline would exacerbate. And obviously, people at Cornell and in the Ithaca Community would agree.
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| K.C. Alvey, a Cornell student who helped lead the organizing effort to bring students to the action, is led away from the scene by a police officer after being arrested. |
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