Rainforest Action Network Executive Director Lindsey Allen issued the following statement in response to President Obama’s rejection of the Keystone XL Pipeline:
“The president’s decision today is the result of years of grassroots people power organizing against all odds in every corner of this country. But this has never been about just President Obama’s decision; and this has never been about just one pipeline. This is a win for long-term climate justice over short-term corporate profits. And it is only the beginning of what this growing movement will achieve.
“When we fight, we win. Keystone XL was considered a done deal just a few years ago, and the fight to stop it was viewed by DC insiders as a lost cause. But this movement refused to accept the defeatist logic that catastrophic climate change is inevitable and that business-as-usual fossil fuel production will never be stopped. Millions of people rejected the conventional wisdom and took on the moral responsibility of acting in the face of overwhelming odds, and together, we proved the doubters wrong again and again. Today will reverberate in history as a watershed moment for the climate movement, not as the ending of a campaign but as the beginning of a new paradigm, as the point when we, as a society, began to leave the pipelines unbuilt and keep fossil fuels in the ground.”
