BREAKING: TransCanada asks for KXL application "suspension"

Letter from Bill McKibben 350.org

Dear friends,

Well, somewhat astonishing news tonight. Transcanada—the company that was so sure it would be building the Keystone Pipeline that it mowed the 1700 mile route and stockpiled the necessary pipe across the Midwest—tonight said it wanted to suspend its application.

This is—make no mistake—a massive victory for people power. You emailed, you phoned, you marched, and in record numbers you went to jail. That’s what it took to persuade the arrogant oil industry they simply couldn’t prevail in their plan to pump the world’s filthiest oil across the heart of the continent.

They’re clearly pursuing a gambit—knowing they’ve lost, they’re trying to ask for some extra innings from the umpire, on the theory that they’ll re-submit a new route for the pipeline after the next election. President Obama shouldn’t give it to them. He should finally break his silence on Keystone and say the most important thing: it fails the climate test that he laid out. It will help cook the planet. It’s a bad idea no matter what route it takes, because it’s a fuse to one of the planet’s nastiest carbon bombs.

If President Obama rejects this pipeline once and for all, he’ll go to Paris with boosted credibility—the world leader who was willing to shut down a big project on climate grounds. Truthfully, though, we know it was a movement that shut it down: First Nations and Indigenous Peoples, climate scientists, farmers and ranchers, ministers and rabbis, young people and old people.

Tell President Obama not to let TransCanada play for time. It’s time to reject this pipeline once and for all.

They told us it was a done deal. We are an inch away from undoing it completely. And in the process, we’ve helped build a movement ready to take down hundreds of other fossil fuel projects and keep fossil fuels where they belong—underground.

Thank you all for your relentlessness. Let's not stop now.

Onward,

Bill, Sara, Jason, Rae, Jamie, Deirdre and the rest of 350.org's KXL team