Local activists are protesting the government’s recent ruling on the Keystone XL Pipeline.
On Friday, the State Department ruled that the pipeline posed no major environmental problems with building and expanding the project from Canada to Texas.
“It’s essentially a carbon bomb used to benefit a few billionaires, CEOs,” said Wichita State professor Kent Rowe.
Rowe is a leader of the Kansas Sierra Club.
Tonight, the group is organizing a march in response to the State Department’s findings. The report claims that the United States will benefit by $3.4 billion by the pipeline construction. Some of that benefit includes about 2,000 part-time jobs.
“Utilizing the jobs argument, it is really bogus,” Rowe said.
Yet others like Texas landowner Billy Doornbos have been vocal about the benefits of the project. Doornbos hopes President Obama will consider moving forward with Keystone XL down to his land down south.
“We would wish the president would allow them to open that second line that they’ve been trying to get for several years. We find it hard to believe that he hasn’t,” he said in a TV interview with an ABC affiliate in Texas.
Rowe said the pipeline would transport some of the dirtiest crude oil on Earth. Instead, he would like President Obama to focus on environmentally friendly alternatives.
Activists will march from the Kansas Policy Institute to the Chamber of Commerce Monday at 6 p.m. The Kansas Policy Institute is located at 240 N. Water in Wichita. Anyone is welcome to attend.