Opposition to  Keystone XL Pipeline Grows, as TWU and ATU Join Powerful Alliance for the Future

Labor and Climate Leaders at TWU-Sponsored Round Table on Keystone XL Pipeline. 

Left to right:  ATU President Larry Hanley; Cornell Global Labor Institute Director Sean Sweeney; Climate Activist and Author Bill McKibben; Author and Activist Naomi Klein; TWU VP and Director of Strategic Planning Roger Toussaint; Director of Labor Sustainability Network Joe Uehlein

The TWU and the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) have joined the growing opposition to the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, which climate activist Bill McKibben calls a “1500 mile fuse to the biggest carbon bomb on the planet.”  The two unions, which together represent more than 300,000 workers, said: “We need jobs, but not ones based on increasing our reliance on Tar Sands oil … Many jobs could also be created in energy conservation, upgrading the grid, maintaining and expanding public transportation – jobs that can help us reduce air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions and improve energy efficiency.”

This nearly 2000 mile long conduit made from foreign-built pipe would transport oil extracted from “bitumen sands” or “tar sands” from the world’s largest boreal forest in Alberta, Canada, across the pristine Ogallala Aquifer which supplies America’s bread basket with drinking water, to foreign-owned refineries in Texas, which would ship most of the oil out of the country.  

Because the proposed pipeline would cross the border from Canada, President Obama has the final say over whether it gets built.  Over 1,200 people were arrested opposing the project in two weeks of peaceful civil disobedience in front of the White House that ended Saturday.  The Group Tar Sands Action submitted a petition to the White House that day with nearly 700,000 signatures opposing the project.  

Why are TWU and so many millions of people around the world opposing this project and fighting for a “Green New Deal” instead?

• There are no jobs on a dead planet.  We need a “Green New Deal” to create the jobs that will help us make the transition to a low carbon economy, from railroad repair to public transit operations to bridge construction.  Such work can be a central part of building a new energy system, saving our water infrastructure, building a new transportation system, and constructing sustainable cities – everything that’s necessary to halt human destruction of the climate.  
• There are many things that we should be building – but the Keystone XL Pipeline is not one of them.  The leading NASA climate change specialist, Jim Hansen, says, “If the tar sands are thrown into the mix it is essentially game over” for the struggle to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to the level we need for a viable planet. 
• The tar sands, according to Al Gore, “are the dirtiest source of fuel on the planet.” Burning the recoverable oil in the Alberta tar sands (which would be extracted by strip mining a boreal forest that is the largest terrestrial carbon sink), would increase the 390 ppm carbon in the atmosphere today by more than half, increasing the gap between the current level and the safe level of 350 ppm five-fold. 
• Labor needs to get ahead of the curve and help lead the way to the 21st century green economy, rather than applying brakes to the growing movement that will help us get there. If the labor movement does not take its proper role in this movement, we are contributing to our own extinction. The Keystone XL Pipeline issue is to the climate justice movement as Wisconsin is to the labor movement.
• Labor has been critical of corporate short-term thinking, maximizing profits on a quarterly basis and not looking to the future.  Yet parts of the labor movement are guilty of similar short-term thinking when it comes to decisions related to climate and sustainability. 
• The proposed pipeline would create far fewer jobs than the oil industry claims, probably only about 2000 per year over the three year construction period, according to the State Department. 
• Keystone XL may kill more jobs than it creates, through its contribution to the climate crisis (which will cause major job losses through damage to water, energy, transportation and public health systems, as well as important economic sectors such as agriculture, fisheries, forestry, manufacturing, and tourism), through contamination of water via oil spills (which will also cost farming, ranching and tourism jobs), increased air pollution (which causes respiratory and other illnesses which keep people form working), and lost construction and refinery jobs in Canada.
• We can’t build our future by destroying our future.  We must fight for jobs for our members that will truly “pave the way for better days” rather than destroying their and their children’s futures. We need to support deep reductions in the burning of fossil fuels, support the measures climate science says are necessary to protect people and the planet, and rebuild the labor movement around the jobs of the future. Every dollar we invest in fossil fuels is not only a dollar that goes to intensify the climate crisis; it is also a dollar that we should instead be spending for the transition to renewable energy. 
• But we also can’t let climate protection make victims of workers who happen through no fault of their own to be in the way of changes that are necessary to protect the climate.  We need to ensure that the transition to an economy that protects the climate is a just transition that protects the livelihoods of those who through no fault of their own may have to pay the price of change.
• The pipeline is supported by the very same forces that are attacking unions, holding our economy hostage, and preventing the transition to a 21st century economy.  The billionaire Koch Brothers, for example, who bankrolled both the attacks on the labor movement and climate science denial nationwide, stand to profit from the Keystone XL project.  They are already  responsible for close to 25 percent of the oil sands crude that is imported into the United States, and they own both a crude oil terminal at the starting point of the proposed pipeline and a refinery that is already receiving 250,000 barrels a day of  Alberta tar sands oil. 
• The Keystone XL pipeline is opposed by most Canadian unions, including the Alberta Federation of Labor and the CEP (Communications , Energy and Paperworkers Union), the Canadian union that  represents the tar sands and refinery workers who would work on the project. They oppose it because it is unsustainable and cuts off the possibility of creating a democratic energy policy that benefits workers in Canada for the long haul.  The rapid projected rate of growth of this export-driven project would turn Canada into “America’s gas tank,’ preventing that country from being able to reach its greenhouse gas emissions targets.
• People in the Midwest oppose the Keystone XL pipeline because it would cross the Ogallala Aquifer, a major source of clean water for the America’s bread basket.  The Keystone I pipeline, already completed, has leaked 14 times in the single year it has been in operation, making it the newest pipeline ever to be declared an imminent threat to public safety by federal regulators.
• “First Nations” people in Alberta oppose the project because it is destroying their traditional culture as it encroaches on the boreal forest, and is having tremendous health repercussions on workers and people in surrounding communities.
• Our friends in the environmental and climate justice movements need to join us in supporting full employment policies, and fight for a just transition that protects the well-being of workers and communities who may be hurt by side effects of climate protection policies.