Our clean energy future and Keystone: To say Yes, you have to say no (and vice versa)

By KC Golden
Climate Solutions

Today, we are joining together as never before to try to stop another attempt by Big Oil to hijack democracy and ram the Keystone Pipeline through Congress. Please join us by signing the petition here, right away, and then sending the link on to your friends.

In response to our email alert, I've heard from a few people on our list saying things like “We can’t solve the problem by stopping the pipeline. We need a carbon tax. We need a cap on climate pollution.  We need better alternatives to oil.”

Amen. We are hard at work, day in and day out, on those solutions and more.

Here’s the thing though: It is no longer scientifically rational or morally defensible to be implementing these solutions in parallel to massive expansions in long-lived fossil fuel infrastructure, like the Keystone Pipeline. As the International Energy Agency recently warned, we need to shift our infrastructure investments from fossil fuels to clean energy right away, or “lose forever” the chance to avoid dangerous climate change.

If we continue to build out fossil fuel infrastructure now, then our patient, hopeful, focused efforts to build the clean energy economy will bear fruit too late. The game will be over.  We will be locked into a future of catastrophic climate change, driven by the fossil fuel investments we make today. That’s why top climate scientists are among those petitioning Congress to stop Keystone today.

So we have to choose now. I wish we were further along, so that we could choose the clean energy path with no disruption, no wrenching or difficult changes.  But these changes will be far less wrenching and difficult than the changes that become necessary when we permanently destabilize the global climate. Many of them, in fact, will save us money, deliver jobs, and help us build healthier, stronger communities – like, for example, new clean car standards.

We’ve reached the moment of truth: The clean energy economy can’t just be a sideshow to the fossil fuel economy. If we are to deliver a future worthy of our kids, it must replace the fossil fuel economy. We can’t build all the alternatives overnight. But we can and must stop digging the hole deeper by making big new investments that accelerate our progress in the wrong direction.

If we mean YES to the clean energy economy and climate solutions, we have to say NO to Keystone.

Here again is the link to the petition.