Renowned for her protesting efforts, actress Daryl Hannah has once again been arrested. This time she was amongst a group of Tar Sands Action activists arrested at the White House in Washington. The protest group has been conducting an ongoing “sit in” against TransCanada Corp.’s proposed Keystone XL pipeline.
Hannah is the latest high-profile environmentalist to go to jail, although more than 550 people have been arrested so far in the protests. The protests are aimed at persuading U.S. President Barack Obama to reject Calgary-based TransCanada’s application for a permit to build a 2,700-kilometre pipeline.
Environmental groups are up in arms about the proposed pipeline, saying it should be stopped because it will promote the growth of oilsands extraction, greenhouse gas emissions and that it poses a threat to ecologically sensitive areas along the planned route. But unsurprisingly the U.S. State Department says that an environmental-impact study has decided that the Keystone XL oilsands pipeline would have “no significant impact”.
Hannah spoke to the ABC moments before her arrest, she said;
“We want to be free from our dependence on foreign oil and fossil fuels. If Obama approves of this Keystone XL pipeline… it would be a disaster. These pipelines, it’s not ‘if’ it’s going to spill, it’s ‘when’ it’s going to spill,” “We cannot risk these precious resources and we cannot shackle ourselves to this type of destructive energy future when we have solutions available to us. We have American-made, American-grown, clean safe energy.”
