To the editor:

“A climate bomb” is what Bill McKibben calls the Canadian tar sands project.

This project involves an area the size of Florida in the province of Alberta. It is rapidly turning this fertile land of forests and lakes toxic by a desperate process that destroys the land and pollutes the water, causing cancer and death rates among the wildlife and indigenous people there to soar.

The oil is contained within a layer of tarry sand. Its extraction involves ravaging the land and contaminating millions of gallons of water per day with arsenic and other toxins. It also produces three times the amount of earth and ocean damaging carbon dioxide as conventional petroleum mining.

The oil would be transported via the proposed Keystone XL pipeline which would run from Alberta through seven states to refineries and ports in Texas. The governor of Nebraska officially opposes it because it could contaminate the Ogallala aquifer upon which they rely for farming, etc.

The company, TransCanada, has a very poor record in this regard. This is unequivocally the worst environmental act ever perpetrated. There are numerous stories documenting it, “Tar Sands Oil Extraction — The Dirty Truth” is a YouTube video.

We urge you to contact President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton and urge them to just say no to the Keystone XL pipeline. Veto the XL pipeline.

GARY PIAZZON

President

Whidbey Environmental Action Network