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Speakers seek to raise awareness on concerns regarding Michigan oil pipeline

April 15, 2015

For its second stop, the Enbridge Tar Sands Resistance Tour will visit MSU Wednesday.

Beginning at 6 p.m. in 343 Law College Building, the event features a number of speakers who will seek to increase awareness to Enbridge Inc., an energy transportation company which operates a pipeline in Stockbridge, just 40 minutes south of East Lansing .

The tour will seek to “highlight the severe environmental and cultural threats that Enbridge Inc. pipelines pose throughout the Great Lakes Region,” according to a statement from the group.

More than 100 people have committed to attending Wednesday’s event on its Facebook event page . East Lansing is one of 14 stops the tour is making throughout the Midwest, including Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota and North Dakota.

A statement from the group claims the stops are significant. 

“The Enbridge pipeline routes from east to west, against the flow of oil, traversing the region to unite climate activists, community organizers and concerned citizens behind the protection of the Midwest’s invaluable land, water, and climate,” according to the statement.

Kendall Mackey, the national tar sands organizer for the Energy Action Coalition, said the tour is part of an initiative to rally community members together to form a “regional-wide resistance” to prevent the spread of tar sands extraction to the Great Lakes, something she said was one of the dirtiest forms of energy.

“I think students at MSU and across the region and across the country are really concerned about climate change and climate justice and want to move beyond the dirty fuels of the past and into the clean energy future that we know our generation needs to thrive and be successful,” Mackey said.

Jazz studies senior Duncan Tarr, an organizer with the Michigan Coalition Against Tar Sands and the MSU Students United, said a number of environment and cultural problems in Michigan, including the 2010 Kalamzoo River oil spill, and this is something MSU students should care about.

“Climate justice is one of the most important social justice things of our time,” he said.

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