November 06, 2015
Washington, DC

In response President Obama’s decision to reject the Keystone XL pipeline, World Wildlife Fund (WWF) issued the following statement from Lou Leonard, vice president for climate change:

“When it comes to saying no to extracting fossil fuels from dirty tar sands, President Obama just dropped the mic. And he did it three weeks before Paris.

“More than 150 countries have made pledges to reduce emissions and we know these will get us about half of what we need to curb the worst impacts of climate change. Rejecting the pipeline makes it tougher to dig up tar sands that would only add more fossil fuels to the fire. This is the right move by the Obama Administration and we hope it continues the momentum we’re seeing to ratchet up climate ambition for Paris and beyond.

“The implications of building a pipeline go beyond climate change. It would have accelerated fragmentation of a globally important ecosystem, bisecting America’s last great swath of grassland. It would have degraded and fragmented wildlife habitat. It would have opened the door to accelerating oil and gas development and the potentially devastating impacts of pipeline spills. President Obama is right to reject Keystone XL.”