Students protest Keystone XL pipeline proposal

At least 12,000 people from all over the country and Canada protested in front of the White House last Sunday to oppose the Keystone XL Pipeline. This protest was part of the larger Tar Sands Movement, which aims to convince President Obama to reject the proposal for the pipeline.

The Keystone XL Pipeline plans to carry crude oil over 1,661 miles from Alberta, Canada to Texas. Since it is an international plan, it has to be proposed by the State Department and ultimately approved by Obama. Tar Sands Action, led by activists such as environmentalist Bill McKibben, has held multiple protests in front of the White House since August to try to stop the pipeline from being passed. Sophomore Thalia Patrinos was one of the students from the Baltimore area who went to Washington, D.C. for the protest.

"The Tar Sands Action last Sunday was amazing . . . I met people from Canada, Alabama, California, Florida, and more," she wrote in an email to The News-Letter. "Everyone was working together to build signs and come up with chants as we encircled the White House. Some had built this enormous fake pipeline that read ‘Stop the Pipeline' on its side, which everyone carried above their heads as they marched. Amazing climate scientists showed up to give inspirational speeches, such as Bill McKibben and James Hansen. Once we had all surrounded the White House, Obama drove around to observe what we had all come together to communicate."

Participants, and many other Americans, oppose the pipeline for various reasons. Since the Keystone XL Pipeline relies on the extraction of tar sands oil, it will not help the United States reduce its dependence on nonrenewable energy sources.  "The Tar Sands Action is important to me because the construction of this pipeline means one step backward from renewable energy for this country," she wrote. "We should be using our taxpayer's money to invest in energy that will not only be lasting for this generation's and the next, but will come with the guarantee of jobs. The pipeline will last a couple hundred, maybe a thousand jobs until the construction is over."

Many people are also concerned about the detrimental effects that may occur due to the tar sands extraction.

"The tar sands oil that we will be importing from Canada requires an incredibly water and energy intensive process to collect, clean and distribute, while the environment will be permanently degraded and the health of the people living in it will be put at serious risk," Patrinos wrote. "Not only that, but the pipeline will be built through indigenous territory, unfairly displacing Native American communities once again. The Tar Sands Action is important because it allows the people of this country to stand up to greedy oil companies and come together to prevent these injustices and more."

Patrinos hoped that more Hopkins students would have protested along with her and sophomore Kristi Papadopoulos, though some did come from the Bloomberg School of Public Health. She attributes this to Hopkins students claiming that they have too much work to leave campus.

"More Hopkins students should have come," she wrote. "Most people use schoolwork or exams as an excuse, but they forget that the reason they work so hard in school is so they can change the world someday, when you can be doing it all the time."

However, she hopes that the Tar Sands Movement will only get better from here and greatly influence Obama's decision.

"Since this movement's started, I've only seen it get bigger and bigger," Patrinos wrote. "I'm excited for more people to learn about what's going on and to get more involved."