Student protestors visit D.C.

This weekend, 11 Truman State students from the Environmental Campus Organization will go to Washington, D.C., to protest the approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, which President Barack Obama said he will make a decision about by the end of the year.

The 1,700 mile pipeline would be built in Texas and is estimated to create 20,000 U.S. jobs during construction and 200,000 additional jobs by 2035 along with 775 billion Canadian dollars, according to the Canadian Energy Research Institute.

Tar Sands Action is organizing the protest, which will involve forming a human chain enclosing the White House on Nov. 6 — exactly one year exactly before the next presidential election. More than 4,000 protestors nationwide have signed up for the event on www.tarsandsaction.org.

ECO member senior Stephanie Vaughn said Adam Hasz, a student from Washington University, invited ECO members to join him and 35 other Green Action members from Washington University in St. Louis to join the Tar Sands Action protests. Hasz said 65 college students from Missouri will meet in St. Louis on Friday afternoon to travel together on a charter bus.

Hasz said the pipeline is the second phase of a project started by Keystone. The first pipeline, which was constructed a year ago, connects tar sands oil deposits in Canada to refineries in Illinois and Oklahoma, already has had 12 leaks. Hasz said the pipeline was estimated to have no more than one leak a year. The proposed second pipeline would transport Canadian oil to refineries in Texas, he said.

"The problem with tar sands is that it is a much, much dirtier source of oil than the traditional crude that is found in the Middle East, or in other places with large traditional oil deposits," Hasz said. "Tar sands is far more toxic. It contains a lot more carbon."

Hasz said that unlike other oils, tar sands oil cannot be extracted with traditional oil pumps — the topsoil in forests has to be removed and the entire region needs to be mined.

Vaughn said the Energy Action Coalition is funding a large portion of the costs, so ECO members only have to pay $20 and food expenses.

"We wouldn't really even be able to cover going down there," Vaughn said. "Essentially the Energy Action Coalition has said that they're going to provide enough funding that anyone who wants to go can go."

Vaughn said this is not ECO's first time protesting at the nation's capital. About 20 ECO members participated in the Power Shift Movement in Washington, sponsored by the coalition last spring.

In August, 1,253 Keystone protestors were arrested and jailed, but Tar Sands Action doesn't anticipate any arrests this weekend, according to the website.

Senior Jordan Kulage, a Coal-Free Mizzou member attending the protests, said a friend in Washington warned him about the protesting rules.

"They're pretty strict," he said. "But we're going to be protesting in Lafayette Park, which is right by the White House, and that area is free to protest, and we shouldn't get in any trouble. We're going to be in such a large group that I'm not worried personally about being arrested."

Kulage said the human chain will be formed on the streets around the White House, which is a legal protesting zone. He said it is a violation to have more than 20 people on the sidewalk.

"You get three warnings, and if you don't move, you get arrested," he said.