I wanted to make sure you saw this email (below) about the Line 3 pipeline. You don’t want to miss out on the great event we have planned for this Wednesday!
GreenFaith is working with Minnesota Interfaith Power and Light, the Poor People’s Campaign, Global Catholic Climate Movement, and several other organizations to host a digital rally on Wednesday urging President Biden to Stop Line 3 and Build Back Fossil-Free. As people of faith and spirit, we know how important it is for our leaders to say no to destructive projects like the Line 3 Oil pipeline, which harm both people and planet.
You can join us on Wednesday by RSVPing here.
You’ll hear from amazing speakers such as:
Winona LaDuke from Honor the Earth
Tara Houska from the Giniw Collective
Rev Barber and Rev. Theoharis, co-chairs of the Poor People’s Campaign
And many more!
You’ll also hear from GreenFaith leaders about how you can take action on March 11th for Sacred People, Sacred Earth and support the fight against the Line 3 pipeline.
We hope you join us on Wednesday at 3pm ET. It should be a great time.
In solidarity,
Sara
Dear Rev.,
My name is Whitney Terrill. I’m a GreenFaith Fellow who works for Minnesota Interfaith Power and Light. I urge you to join us here in Minnesota in calling upon President Biden to stop the Line 3 pipeline and help us build back from COVID-19 in a fossil-free way.
Join me: sign the petition and learn about organizing a local action on March 11.
I’m a Muslim, and my faith calls me to take care of our earth and all people. This teaching is universally shared among the world’s religions, and it’s what inspires me every day in organizing faith communities here to oppose this disastrous project.
For those of you who haven’t heard, Line 3 is a massive tar sands oil pipeline that would create emissions equivalent to the Keystone XL pipeline, Dakota Access pipeline, or 50 coal-fired power plants. It’s exactly the kind of thing we can’t afford if we are serious about addressing the climate crisis.
In addition to being a climate bomb, the pipeline violates Indigenous treaty rights. Our Indigenous allies here have been opposing this project for seven years. In President Biden’s inauguration speech, he said that “a cry for survival comes from the planet itself.” I’ve seen that cry being sung by our Indigenous siblings. In recent weeks, they’ve been standing outside in the cold Minnesota winter praying and resisting the desecration of their sacred land. We need to stand with them.
Sign the petition and learn more about how to organize to stop Line 3.
We’re grateful that President Biden rejected the Keystone XL pipeline and rejoined the Paris Climate Agreement on his first day in office, but that was just step one. He needs to stop Line 3 and every other fossil fuel project across the United States. For that to happen, he needs to hear us to raise our moral voices and call for the bold leadership we truly need.
Together with GreenFaith, Minnesota Interfaith Power and Light, and many other faith groups and leaders, we will deliver this petition and call for an end to Line 3 and all fossil fuel projects.
Then, on March 11, grassroots religious and spiritual groups around the world are organizing local actions calling for transformative climate action. A number of these actions in the US will be focused on stopping Line 3. Sign the petition and learn more about how to organize to stop Line 3.
We Minnesotans are ready for this struggle. We need your support to win. I hope I can count on you.
In solidarity,
Whitney Terrill
GreenFaith Fellow
PS. Please join us for the digital rally to Stop Line 3 featuring leaders like Winona LaDuke, Tara Houska, and faith leaders calling for an end to Line 3 and for President Biden to Build Back Fossil Free. You can RSVP for the webinar on Feb 10th here.
Petition language:
Dear President Joe Biden,
As people of faith and spirit across the United States, we urge you to take bold, executive action to stop the Line 3 tar sands pipeline.
We applaud your opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline, and your support of a climate test for pipelines. Line 3 is on the same scale as Keystone XL and Dakota Access. Not only does Line 3 violate Indigenous treaty rights, the pipeline would be a 10% expansion of tar sands, carrying the equivalent emissions of 50 coal-fired power plants. In order to be a consistent climate leader, you must extend the same criteria to Line 3 and do everything in your power to reject this pipeline.
As a devout Catholic, you have surely heard the first lines of Laudato Si, Pope Francis’s encyclical:
...Our common home is like a sister with whom we share our life and a beautiful mother who opens her arms to embrace us...This sister now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her. We have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will. The violence present in our hearts, wounded by sin, is also reflected in the symptoms of sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air and in all forms of life. This is why the earth herself, burdened and laid waste, is among the most abandoned and maltreated of our poor; she “groans in travail” (Rom 8:22). We have forgotten that we ourselves are dust of the earth (cf. Gen 2:7); our very bodies are made up of her elements, we breathe her air and we receive life and refreshment from her waters.
We must not further plunder our earth, soil, water, and air if we are going to continue to live on this earth. Minnesotans submitted 68,000 public comments against Line 3, they've marched in the streets, attended the hearings and engaged in every step of the process. Despite Minnesota’s own Department of Commerce suing the Public Utility Commission for approving this project, the bulldozers are here to plow through sacred wild rice watersheds, over 800 wetlands, and 200+ water bodies in the Land of 10,000 Lakes. The police are militarizing and the drill is ready to burrow millions of barrels of tar sands oil under the headwaters of the Mississippi River.
All of our faith and spiritual traditions teach us that we must care for sacred earth. In your inaugural address, you said “a cry for survival comes from the planet itself.” We hear that cry, it is being sung by our Indigenous siblings standing in the cold Minnesota winter against this destruction of the sacred. Join their prayers and stand against Line 3.
As people of faith and spiritual practice, we implore you to use your power to stop Line 3 as well as the Dakota Access Pipeline, and all other climate destroying pipelines that will lock us into decades more of fossil fuels.
Be brave and faithful and do not let this dirty project continue. Drilling under the Mississippi River is imminent, it is urgent that you act now.
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