Keystone XL

When Virginia Senator Mark Warner decided to flip his stance on the tar sands pipeline, Virginians were ready to march to his door and let him know that if he claims to be a leader on climate change, he cannot support the Keystone pipeline!

Yesterday, over 20 climate activists, including students and constituents from across the state, stormed Warner's Richmond office to voice their outrage over his recent support for the KXL. After marching through downtown Richmond, we rallied outside Warner's building and flooded his office with our bodies and our voices. Activists from CCAN and 350.org spoke with one of his top legislative aids for almost half an hour about the catastrophic consequences we will face if Warner continues to support the pipeline. We handed over a letter expressing our need for a leader who will fight with us for a clean energy future and demanded that the aid deliver our message immediately to the Senator. Our request? Vote no on any legislative efforts to support the Keystone XL pipeline, and respond to our concerns within one week.

If you haven’t heard yet… it’s about to get HOT in Ohio this summer. Not just the post-finals-week-at-the-beach kinda hot… we’re talking about something even better; the politically-hot-cause-we’re-taking-the-fracking-industry-to-task-and-making-’em-sweat-on-home-turf HOTT. OSEC is kicking off summer vacation by teaming up with 350.org for Don’t Frack Ohio: a long weekend full of movement building strategies, trainings, and especially a big huge action that’s gonna rock Ohio’s statehouse the way earthquakes rocked Youngstown last fall (but better).

You might be asking yourself.. “Ohio? What’s so important about Ohio?” …. Well, Ohio and the Midwest, are Ground Zero for the Climate Fight, and Ohio especially has become the new front-line for the movement to end fracking; in just two years Ohio has gone from 4 permitted horizontally fracked wells to over 85, and the industry doesn’t plan on stopping until it hits a few thousand. Which means OSEC students aren’t planning on stopping anytime soon either; check out what we’ve done since Midwest PowerShift, and join us in Ohio June 14th-17th.

On Friday, March 9, 2012 Students Promoting Environmental Action in Knoxville (SPEAK) set out to blow the whistle on Senator Bob Corker, Senator Lamar Alexander, and Representative Duncan and call a penalty. The three of them have received close to half a million dollars from coal and oil industries in the past 5 years. Students set out dressed as referees (pinstripes and flags included) and blew the whistle at their offices in Knoxville. Students called a penalty on congressman for supporting the Keystone XL pipeline while taking millions of dollars in campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry.

On September 26th, more than 200 people crossed over a police barrier on Parliament Hill, making the Ottawa Tar Sands Action the largest civil disobedience in the Canadian climate movement. As an American student attending a Canadian University I found the day particularly exciting for several reasons, not least of which was the sense of international solidarity in this fight against TransCanada's proposed Keystone XL pipeline.