Here’s a link to the letter from Bill McKibben and a distinguished group of activists explaining the need for non-violent direction action against the Keystone XL Pipeline from the Canadian Tar Sands to Gulf Coast refineries.
And here’s an image of what the boreal forest looked like before and after strip mining to extract petroleum out of the underlying tar sands. Of course, this is not just an issue of preserving “wilderness,” and the traditional ways of life of the indigenous communities who inhabit the boreal forest.
As McKibben puts it in his letter, the tar sands are “the biggest carbon bomb on the continent.” If we exploit them through the proposed construction of a 1,700 mile underground pipeline designed to pump 900,000 barrels of heavy crude daily, it is, as distinguished climatologist James Hansen argues, essentially game over for attempts to stop run-away climate change.