How do, say, Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s experience/expertise/interests reasonably intersect with the Keystone XL controversy?
The Energy Collective reports:
An advertisement in the Washington Post featured a letter from ten Nobel Laureates who are asking President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry to reject the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline based on its significant impact to the climate. The advertisement sponsored by NRDC, the Nobel Women’s Initiative, and Environmental Defence Canada reproduced the letter in full which said “as leaders who have spoken out strongly on these issues, we urge you, once again, to be on the right side of history and send a clear message that you are serious about moving beyond dirty oil.”
If a letter like this were signed by men who had built bridges, hydroelectric projects, aqueducts, dikes, pipelines and the like, then I would take heed. Otherwise it’s merely the musings of celebrity. The opinion of Nobel Peace Prize winners should carry about as much weight here as that of hockey players or movie actors.
Tutu comes from a country whose coal production creates 17 times as much CO2 as oil sands production per year. Not that I care about either but it does demonstrate his hypocrisy.
They are all recent Peace laureates. The Peace Prize has lost all of its credibility over the last twenty years and couple of these names are why.
Their scientific credentials, pooled, would not make for a good high-school science project.