My first spam email

As a member of the internet population, I'm assuming everyone's gotten a few spam emails. I've gotten more than my fair share of "BEST EVER THING ON SALE NOW," "I need your help," and "aljslkdjflskfd" emails that are a little pesky but easily delete-able.

Today, I sent some.

Yeesh, I know.

But, in my defense, it was a really important spam email. I sent my family and some of my very best friends an email with a bunch of links about the Keystone XL pipeline protest that's going on in Washington D.C. right now. I've been following environmentalist Bill McKibben since his book, Eaarth, came out. I loved the book. You should read it (Now I'm spamming in my blog! Someone slap me!). But in any case, I've been watching this issue since he brought it to my attention.

Tar sands, also known as oil sands, are basically petroleum deposits. There are some huge, and previously untouched, tar sands in Alberta, Canada. It's only recently that we've even considered getting the petroleum out of these places because they're really clay, mud, and as the name suggests, sand, that have large amounts of petroleum that we've just now come up with the technology to profitably extract. Except that the process will also include burning a huge amount of greenhouse gases off into the atmosphere, up to four times the amount of greenhouse gases that producing conventional oil does.

The site in question is huge - enough oil to potentially last us for centuries. But it would be such a pain to get it all the way down here to us folks in America. So instead, there's a certificate of national interest sitting at the White House that would allow for the creation of something called the Keystone XL pipeline. It would take the oil down from Canada all the way to our refineries in Texas. Even without including the risk of a spill (the precursor pipeline and its' stations have leaked more than a dozen times in the last year) and the environmental damage that would cause, the pipeline is basically just a way to destruct our planet faster.

McKibben writes in a letter asking the public to protest, "The Keystone Pipeline would also be a fifteen hundred mile fuse to the biggest carbon bomb on the continent, a way to make it easier and faster to trigger the final overheating of our planet, the one place to which we all are indigenous."

He also mentions climatologist Jim Hansen's finding that "the principal requirement is that coal emissions must be phased out by 2030 and unconventional fossil fuels, such as tar sands, must be left in the ground...If the tar sands are thrown into the mix it is essentially game over."

So, all that to say, I wanted my family to check it out. No, that's not right - I wanted my family to put together a fund to get me out to D.C. so I too, could be arrested. But knowing that wasn't exactly possible - or likely - I just wanted them to sign this petition that will be sent to President Obama. See, it's really his decision on this one, so the hope of the protesters is that the 275 arrests (as of today, but by the end of the two weeks, will likely be much, much, higher) and thousands of signatures on the petition sway his judgment a little.

Maybe the dozen friends and family I had deleted the email as soon as they figured out it was me becoming the crazy Boulder hippie they all knew I'd be.

But maybe a few of them looked at the video I sent, checked out the NY Times editorial that opposes the Keystone XL pipeline or just learned enough about the issue, so that if they hear it in the news in the next few weeks, they know what's going on.

Maybe that's what I'm doing to you.

Maybe you should sign the petition.