FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

November 10, 2011

CONTACT:

Mike Tidwell, 240-460-5838

Delegate Heather Mizeur, Maryland House of Delegates, 240-464-8523

Chesapeake Climate Action Network congratulates Obama administration on decision to delay TransCanada Keystone XL tar sands pipeline and now examine climate impacts of proposal

Mike Tidwell, Director of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, congratulated the Obama administration today for rejecting TransCanada’s current plan for a 1700-mile tar sands oil pipeline from Canada to Texas. The U.S. State Department announced today that it will delay any final decision on the pipeline until at least early 2013 while taking a more in-depth look at, among other harmful impacts, the affect of the pipeline on global warming. The State Department had previously signaled that a final decision would come in late 2011. Tidwell was one of 1,253 arrested at the White House in late August protesting this planned pipeline.

“We are pleased that President Obama heard the voices of people all across the country and acted to delay any decision on the controversial, climate-wrecking Keystone XL pipeline. For those of us who live in the Chesapeake region, this pipeline and the increased production and burning of tar sands oil as a result would have had negative environmental and economic consequences. It would have worsened the quality of our air and accelerated the already-alarming rate of increase of carbon pollution that is heating up our atmosphere and leading to repeated extreme weather events in the Maryland-Virginia region.

“Activists and leaders from this region helped to lead this successful fight: people like Maryland Delegate Heather Mizeur, Maryland state Senator Paul Pinsky, Dr. Cindy Parker of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Rev. Lennox Yearwood and others. Hundreds of people from the Maryland-Virginia region were arrested in August at the White House and thousands took action in some way since then.

Said Heather Mizeur, a member of the Executive Committee of the Democratic National Committee, “Change we can believe in is alive and well. Twelve thousand cheering, chanting, climate change activists at the White House Sunday could not be ignored. We paid the President a visit to his own home in an effort to reconnect his heart to this important issue; to remind him that we are the activist base that supported him; and to give him the courage to do the right thing and reject the Keystone XL pipeline. Today’s action by the State Department is proof positive that President Obama is listening and starting to understand.”

Mizeur pushed the White House in August with a DNC resolution calling for cancellation of the pipeline, leading an insurrection within the President’s own party.

Tidwell concluded, “This decision should become a pivot for the administration and for the country to finally get serious about a determined shift from dirty fossil fuels like the tar sands to clean, renewable energy sources like wind and solar. CCAN and our allies will be stepping up our efforts in support of the building of offshore wind farms off the Maryland and Virginia coasts. Wind farms provide completely clean, non-polluting energy. In addition, the power for electric cars provided by wind energy will cost only 1/3 as much as the oil used in gasoline-powered vehicles. We need offshore wind, not tar sands oil.”