Pipeline foes booted from courthouse sidewalk

Environmental activists gathered outside the federal courthouse in Louisville late Tuesday afternoon called on President Obama to veto the anticipated congressional approval of Keystone XL pipeline.

Many of those who attended the rally are also planning nonviolent civil disobedience should the pipeline be approved, said Drew Foley, a rally organizer. The event included participants of 350 Louisville, the Sierra Club and Rainforest Action Network.

Dozens of area residents have also been trained in nonviolent methods of demonstration and what to do in the event they are arrested, he said.

The rally drew more than 75 people, but was forced to move from the north side of Broadway to the south side, after a private security guard said no protests are allowed on the public sidewalk inside the black security posts. That was news to participant Ben Evans, who said he's protested at least a half dozen times on that sidewalk, with no trouble, until Tuesday.

"It makes me worried there's a crackdown in free speech," he said.

UPDATE | Vigil should not have been moved, feds say

The private security guard would not identify himself, but cited a federal code that he said has been in existence for a decade. Federal security officials watched from the steps and insisted they had nothing to do with forcing the crowd to the other side of the street. He said his boss sent him out to break up the protest. I gave him my card and asked him to ask his boss to call me. That did not happen.

The location has frequently been used for other demonstrations over the years, with no federal objections I've ever known about.

Louisville's Keystone demonstration was one of many across the country, as a new Republican-controlled Congress seeks to push through legislation allowing construction of the controversial pipeline, which would carry Canadian oil sands crude to the Gulf Coast. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell from Louisville was threatening to keep the Senate working until after midnight tonight to get the Keystone bill through.

The president has threatened a veto if the legislation comes before a big federal study is complete.

Foley led the gathering in a chant of "Barack Obama yes you can, stop the dirty pipeline plan."

Louisville resident Sam Avery, author of the book the Pipeline and the Paradigm, said the threat to the planet from development of the oil sands would be catastrophic, coming at a time that when there is already too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels, and as too much polar ice has already melted. Exploiting the oil sands will only push us farther into jeopardy with climate change, he said.

"The Earth will be fine, without our species" said Dan Givens from Hart County. "But I like our species."

Some have argued that the oil sands will be development with our without the Keystone XL pipeline and Republicans have been at odds with the president over how much the pipeline would help the U.S. economy, with the president minimizing the impact.

Still, scientists have warned that full development of the oil sands would be big trouble because they contain much more carbon that other oil deposits, and that means more climate pollution.

Retired NASA climate scientist James Hanson two years ago put it this way in a New York Times piece:

If Canada proceeds, and we do nothing, it will be game over for the climate. Canada's tar sands, deposits of sand saturated with bitumen, contain twice the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by global oil use in our entire history. If we were to fully exploit this new oil source, and continue to burn our conventional oil, gas and coal supplies, concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere eventually would reach levels higher than in the Pliocene era, more than 2.5 million years ago, when sea level was at least 50 feet higher than it is now.