Inside Climate News is reporting on an effort by many ranchers and activists to hamper TransCanada’s plans to run their Keystone pipeline through the United States. Using the example of Nebraska rancher Bob Allpress’s efforts to protect his land from eminent domain seizures by the government, Inside Climate News explains Allpress’s plans to build solar paneling along his property—property that falls within the planned pipeline path.
"Not only would they have to invoke eminent domain against us, they would have to tear down solar panels that provide good clean power back to the grid and jobs for the people who build them," Allpress said.
The project, known as "Solar XL," is the latest example in a growing number of demonstrations against pipelines where opponents festoon proposed corridors with eye-catching obstructions. Nuns recently built a chapel along the path of a proposed natural gas pipeline that would cross their property in Pennsylvania. Last year, pipeline opponents built a replica of the cabin belonging to Henry Thoreau, one of the environmental movement's founding fathers, along another proposed natural gas pipeline route in Massachusetts.
The fact of the matter is that putting up solar panels is not going to stop TransCanada and their ilk from running their oil through, but it’s a powerful symbol of what is really going on—haphazard decision-making that benefits an oligarchical few.
"It's critical when we are fighting a project like KXL to show the kind of energy we would like to see," said Jane Kleeb, a Nebraska resident and president of Bold Alliance, one of several environmental and Native advocacy groups behind the project.
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"These solar projects don't use eminent domain for private gain and don't risk our water," Kleeb said.
The Keystone pipeline is something only an unpopular president enamored by a billionaire who runs a failing economy based on an oligarchy of oil, and a Republican Congress who swims in the economic failures of “the free market,” could love.