The White House                                                                                      Aug 17, 2021
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington D.C., 20500

Dear President Biden,

We are concerned health professionals and public health advocates in Oregon on the frontlines of climate change. Our patients and communities are already facing health impacts from extreme heat, unprecedented drought, raging wildfires, and other effects of global warming. Climate change is a health crisis. We need action now.

We applaud you for rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement and canceling the Keystone XL pipeline. We now call on you to revoke the permits for the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline expansion in Minnesota. Line 3 will carry the same product as the Keystone XL pipeline, dirty tar sands oil. If it is put into operation, Line 3 will accelerate the damage to our climate, releasing carbon emissions equivalent to that of 50 coal plants, every year.​​ This is in stark contrast to your stated goal to reach a net-zero emissions economy by 2050. We have neither the carbon budget nor financial budget to continue investing in fossil fuel infrastructure if we want to meet that ambitious but necessary goal.  

Allowing Line 3 to proceed also runs counter to your stated goal to stand up against fossil fuel companies and other polluters who put their own profits over people and disproportionately harm communities of color and low income communities. Line 3 cuts through the heart of the Anishinaabe territory in Minnesota, violating treaty rights, damaging sacred wild rice beds, and threatening the health of our Indigenous communities, who have already experienced generations of oppression and trauma due to exploitation of their land and their people. Health professionals and public health advocates across the country stand in solidarity with our Indigenous leaders who are putting their bodies on the line to defend sacred water, land, and climate.
 
Crossing over 200 water bodies, and rivers that feed directly into Lake Superior, including the Mississippi River which supplies drinking water to over 50 major U.S. cities, Line 3 puts these waterways at risk of a spill from the 760,000 barrels of tar sands oil that would flow through it every day. At least nine spills of drilling mud into rivers have been reported during the Line 3 construction process. A spill of tar sands oil into the Mississippi river would have devastating health consequences.

Climate change is a health emergency. As Oregon health professionals and public health advocates, we urge you to take action that climate science demands, listen to the voices of Indigenous frontline leaders, and immediately revoke the Clean Water Act Section 404 Permits and stop Line 3.
 
Respectfully,

Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility
[list of individuals signing]
 
CC:  Jaime Pinkham, Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works
        Gina McCarthy, White House National Climate Advisor