If you’ve been following the current saga at the Rubin Rodeo, you already know its been an eventful week. Our vacation was an epic fail that included record setting rain. After giving up on vacation and packing the kids up for college, a tornado swept through our neighborhood. These inconvenient truths have had me thinking long and hard about what the heck is going on in our world.
The NY Times recently reported that instead of having the usual 3 or 4 yearly weather related major disasters that cause more than a billion dollars in damage, this year we’ve already had 9 and the year isn’t over yet. Nine weather disasters ties the record with 2008. An no doubt, we’ll have some meteorological mayhem ahead as hurricane season arrives.
This reality check causes me to be instantly grateful for the fact that I don’t have a tree through my roof and that all of my family are safe and healthy.
Being the science nerd that I am, I’ve been doing my homework over the last couple of years. Reading books like the one by NASA scientist, James Hansen, The Storms of My Grandchildren, helped me to understand how our weather is impacted by the carbon we put into the air by burning fossil fuels.
According to Hansen,coal burning power plants have been and continue to be a major culprit in raising CO2 levels.
But there’s an even dirtier fossil fuel that’s starting to become more available. The Alberta tar sands.
James Hansen says if we start burning this tar sands oil, its essentially game over for the climate. Runaway climate change will make our planet uninhabitable.
Alberta Tar Sands
This is one of the many reasons I am choosing to go to Washington DC for a weekend that will include an act of civil disobedience and quite possibly a sleepover in jail.
I am planning to take part in a historic sit-in in front of the White House to stop a proposed pipeline will bring this messy tar from Canada down to Texas for refining into oil.
I decided that it was time to stop being an armchair environmentalist. Its time to do more than sign petitions and make phone calls. We need to show the Obama administration that this is a key issue not easily shrugged off or swept under the table. When it comes to this pipeline, Obama gets to make the decision himself. Doesn’t have to mess around with a gridlocked Congress.
Stay tuned for more info and details. This is going to be memorable.
Learn more about the Tar Sands Pipeline by clicking here.
Tar Sands Action/ Josh Fox from JFOX on Vimeo.
