Margaret MacMillan Quotes

The more people learn about the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, the worse it looks.

Here in Canada, the people who oppose the tar sands most forcefully are Indigenous people living downstream from the tar sands. They are not opposing it because of climate change - they are opposing it because it poisons their bodies.

There's a lot of propaganda that contaminates a discussion around what we should do about pipelines, how our economy may or may not be dependent on exports of raw bitumen.

Much of the U.S. Midwest is already running on bitumen. Do we want to extend this addiction? And at what cost? Or should we set other goals and say one to two million barrels of oil a day from the tar sands is all we really need to make the transition?

The tar sands boom has become the world's largest energy project, the world's largest construction project, and the world's largest capital project.

The oil industry fought hard to keep Keystone alive, making wildly exaggerated claims that the pipeline - the country's largest infrastructure project - would create tens of thousands of jobs and decrease America's reliance on oil from the Middle East.

When the President was asked about global warming at a public appearance yesterday, he responded by talking about America's addiction to oil. You make the connection.

I think really what needs to happen is the people of the United States need to stand up and say, 'Oil is an energy model from the past. It doesn't work for the planet, it doesn't work for the people, it never has and it never will.'

Having yet another vote on refinery legislation that uses high oil prices as an excuse to weaken environmental protections and to give more legislative gifts to the oil industry is misguided in the extreme.

I look at ANWR (Artic National Wildlife Refuge) as a poison pill in the energy bill.

The environmental movement's focus on the Keystone XL pipeline issue really used to baffle me.

Mercury pollution from power plants is a national problem that requires a national response.

Natural gas emits only half the carbon dioxide of coal when burned, but if methane leaks when oil companies extract it from the ground in a sloppy manner - methane is far more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide - it can wipe out all the advantages of natural gas over coal.

The destructiveness of the tar sands is not inevitable. But Canadians and Albertans have become too tolerant of the politicians who compromise the nation's energy security as well as the next generation's future.

There is nothing wrong from divesting from coal. It certainly is immoral to profit from the extraction of fossil fuels... But we ask these college students to just divest. Nothing happens. People just sell their stock.

People want the Keystone pipeline built all across the country.

Here's the truth: Keystone XL won't make America energy-independent. It will threaten our land and livelihoods to pump Canadian tar sands' heavy crude through America and out to foreign countries, like China.

Oil companies have played a role in suppressing the development of alternative fuels.

Where I come from, people will spit at you if they think you support Enbridge.

We oppose any pipeline whose sole purpose is to export bitumen from Canada to make profits in other countries.

I stick to stuff I'm pretty sure of and I know this: when the price of a barrel of oil is under $80 a barrel and you build a pipeline, you are driving up greenhouse gases.

You think OWS is radical? You think 350.org was radical for helping organize mass civil disobedience in D.C. in August against the Keystone Pipeline? We're not radical. Radicals work for oil companies. The CEO of Exxon gets up every morning and goes to work changing the chemical composition of the atmosphere. No one has ever done anything as radical as that, not in all of human history.

I think we need to go straight at the fossil fuel industry.

[Hillary Clinton'] transition director being Ken Salazar, I think, indicates that she will continue to be a friend to fracking. It's not possible to solve the climate crisis while we continue to expand fracking.

It's not terribly fun defending you (oil companies), but I do.