Dear President Biden,
I am writing to you to ask you to stop construction of the Line 3 tar sands pipeline in Minnesota. I am extraordinarily glad and grateful that one of your first acts in office was to stop the Keystone XL pipeline, and so I am asking you to once again product our climate and our future by halting the Line 3 pipeline as well.
Line 3 would cross more than 200 bodies of water in northern Minnesota, crossing reservation boarders and land that the Ojibwe and Dakota people hold treaty rights to and use for food production, including most especially wild rice. The likelihood of a leak or spill, and the devastation that that would cause to people and the climate, is enormous. Even if the pipeline works as it should, its climate effects will be horrific and directly counter to this administration's stated goal of tackling the climate emergency--Line 3 would create more pollution than the equivalent of 50 coal plants.
As a Minnesota resident I am devastated that my state leaders have abdicated their responsibilities to the environment, to the Ojibwe and Dakota people whose lands we occupy, and to our children's futures by not stopping the constriction of Line 3 before now. President Biden, please step in where they have failed, and call an immediate halt to the construction of Line 3, as well as a stop to the use of the pipeline it was slated to replace. We need you and are counting on you.
Sincerely,
[my name]
Feel free to use that as a guide, though as always remember to personalize based on who you are and what’s most important to you. (And if you'd like help constructing your own letter, please reach out! I'd be happy to help.) See
here and
here for information on the pipeline to help script your call or write your email/letter.
2. Tell banks to stop funding Line 3. There's an important loan renewal deadline for Enbridge on March 31st, 2021--please use
this form to email executives at the banks that are funding Line 3 to tell them to not renew their loans to Enbridge. The text of the letter can be edited, so please take advantage of that to rephrase and personalize the text (while still keeping the main info). Here is my edited version of the text:
Dear bank executives,
I am writing to you today to demand that your company does not continue its participation in $2.16 billion credit facility renewal with Enbridge on March 31st, 2021.
Enbridge is the company responsible for the building of the Line 3 tar sands pipeline, which is going on right now in defiance of treaty rights and grave environmental concerns over its construction. If built, Line 3 would cross more than 200 bodies of water in northern Minnesota, crossing reservation boarders and land that the Ojibwe and Dakota people hold treaty rights to and use for food production, including most especially wild rice. The likelihood of a leak or spill, and the devastation that that would cause to people and the climate, is enormous. Even if the pipeline works as it should, its climate effects will be horrific and directly counter to this administration's stated goal of tackling the climate emergency--Line 3 would create more pollution than the equivalent of 50 coal plants.
Renewing your loan to Enbridge is a significant social risk to your company's reputation. A wide variety of groups, including the Red Lake Nation, the White Earth Band of Ojibwe, and Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, MN’s Department of Commerce, and multiple environmental organizations, are currently challenging the legality of Line 3 in court. Meanwhile, over 200,000 people have signed a petition demanding that President Biden take Executive Action to stop Line 3, and Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar has written to President Biden demanding the same. Recently, more than 600 people took to the streets of St. Paul demanding a stop to the pipeline. The best-selling novelist and member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Louise Erdrich wrote in the New York Times: “[Line 3] is is a tar sands climate bomb (...) The state’s environmental impact assessment of the project found the pipeline’s carbon output could be 193 million tons per year. That’s the equivalent of 50 coal-fired power plants or 38 million vehicles on our roads.”
The climate movement has grown dramatically in recent years, gaining more people and more power. Now that the Keystone XL pipeline has been canceled, stopping Line 3 is the number one priority for huge numbers of climate activists across the United States. Your company's funding of Line 3 will not go unnoticed.
Therefore, I strongly urge your company to do the right thing for the environment, for Native rights, and for your own company's reputation, and walk away from Line 3 and the $2.16 billion credit facility renewal with Enbridge on March 31st.
I kept the general flow of the original letter, but used text from my above letter to Biden and significantly rephrased and edited much of the letter to make it my own.
3. If you have money in
a bank that funds Line 3 and other pipelines, strongly consider closing your account and moving your money to a credit union or smaller bank that doesn’t fund climate change. (
Click here for a zoom-in-able version of the graphic if you’re having trouble reading it.)
The list includes all the major US banks, including JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and Citibank, along with many international institutions, including Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse, Royal Bank of Canada, and many more. Tips for moving your money out of these banks can be found
here. (The list/graphic look to be a few years old, but I believe it to still be largely accurate. If you'd like help researching your bank, let me know.)
4. Sign a petition. There are lots of these going around, and they take less than a minute each to sign. Here are some I know of, from
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