When I was growing up I never heard the term “carbon footprint.” Now it is a very common term which is used to describe the amount of impact a company, product or event has on climate change.
As I write this piece I have a symphony of birds singing outside in my backyard. I enjoy nature and I think it is my duty as a human to nurture and protect nature. God gave all of us the authority to tend to His creation, nurturing it and protecting it as He would.
Having this perspective on life I have been concerned about the carbon footprint potential of Keystone Pipeline. Apparently if this pipeline is approved it will have significant potential to plummet our earth into an abyss of climate change.
In fact if the Keystone XL pipeline, which is to transport 830,000 barrels of oil per day, is laid across America the carbon dioxide emissions will increase exponentially. The estimate is that it would equal the amount that 5.5 million new cars would emit into our air.
Yeah, but that may just be all rhetoric by those crazy environmentalists right?
Let’s see what the experts say…
Endorsements — the tar sands action team August 3, 2011 at 7:00 am
The Honorable Barack Obama President of the United States The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20050 August 3, 2011 President Obama: We are researchers at work on the science of climate change and allied fields. We are writing to add our voices to the indigenous leaders, religious leaders, and environmentalists calling on you to block the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline from Canada’s tar sands. The tar sands are a huge pool of carbon, but one that does not make sense to exploit. It takes a lot of energy to extract and refine this resource into useable fuel, and the mining is environmentally destructive. Adding this on top of conventional fossil fuels will leave our children and grandchildren a climate system with consequences that are out of their control. It makes no sense to build a pipeline system that would practically guarantee extensive exploitation of this resource. When other huge oil fields or coal mines were opened in the past, we knew much less about the damage that the carbon they contained would do to the Earth’s climate system and to its oceans. Now that we do know, it’s imperative that we move quickly to alternate forms of energy—and that we leave the tar sands in the ground. We hope those so inclined will join protests scheduled for August and described at
tarsandsaction.org. If the pipeline is to be built, you as president have to declare that it is “in the national interest.” As scientists, speaking for ourselves and not for any of our institutions, we can say categorically that it’s not only not in the national interest, it’s also not in the planet’s best interest. Sincerely, James Hansen The Earth Institute, Columbia University John Abraham Associate Professor, School of Engineering University of St. Thomas Dean Abrahamson Professor Emeritus Energy & Environment Policy University of Minnesota David Archer Professor, Geophysical Sciences Department The University of Chicago Jason Box Associate Professor, Department of Geography Atmospheric Sciences Program Researcher at Byrd Polar Research Center The Ohio State University Ken Caldeira Senior Scientist Department of Global Ecology Carnegie Institution Peter Gleick President and Co-founder Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security Richard A. Houghton Senior Scientist Woods Hole Research Center Robert W. Howarth David R. Atkinson Professor of Ecology & Environmental Biology Cornell University Ralph Keeling Director, Scripps CO
2 Program Scripps Institution of Oceanography Donald Kennedy President Emeritus and Bing Professor of Environmental Sciences, Emeritus Institute for International Studies Stanford University Michael MacCracken Chief Scientist for Climate Change Programs Climate Institute Michael E. Mann Professor of Meteorology Director, Earth System Science Center The Pennsylvania State University James McCarthy Alexander Agassiz Professor of Biological Oceanography Harvard University Michael Oppenheimer Albert G. Milbank Professor of Geosciences and International Affairs Woodrow Wilson School and Department of Geosciences Princeton University Raymond T. Pierrehumbert Louis Block Professor in the Geophysical Sciences The University of Chicago Steve Running Professor of Ecology, Director of Numerical Terradynamics Simulation Group Department of Ecosystem and Conservation Sciences College of Forestry and Conservation, University of Montana Richard Somerville Distinguished Professor Emeritus and Research Professor Scripps Institution of Oceanography Ray J. Weymann Director Emeritus, Carnegie Observatories Member, National Academy of Sciences George M. Woodwell Founder, Director Emeritus, and Senior Scientist Woods Hole Research Center
Are you listening to me now?
