Trump accelerates controversial Keystone and Dakota pipelines <br /> <br />Trump accelerates controversial Keystone and Dakota pipelines <br />Not one to shy away from a challenge, US President Donald Trump has signed executive orders to accelerate two controversial pipeline projects. <br /> <br />He also decreed that lines built in the US must be made of American steel. <br /> <br />There have been numerous objections to the Dakota and Keystone XL pipelines. <br /> <br />The latter was rejected by former President Barack Obama’s administration in 2015 amid environmental concerns. He said the project would not have lowered petrol prices, created long-term jobs or affected energy dependence. <br /> <br />In December, 2016, the US Army failed to approve the completion of the Dakota Access Pipeline. <br /> <br />Supported by Trump, it has been at the centre of months of protests by the Standing Rock Sioux tribe in North Dakota. <br /> <br />The Native Americans said a part of the line designed to run under a reservoir on the Missouri River could contaminate drinking water and run over sacred burial sites. <br /> <br />Trump claims the pipelines “will put a lot of steelworkers back to work.” <br /> <br />Greenpeace Executive Director Annie Leonard called the claim “bogus.” <br /> <br />“Instead of pushing bogus claims about the potential of pipelines to create jobs, Trump should focus his efforts on the clean energy sector, where America’s future lives,” she said. <br /> <br />“Renewable energy is not only the future, but also the only just economy for today,” she added. <br /> <br />“Keystone, the Dakota Access Pipeline, and fossil fuel infrastructure projects like them will only make billionaires richer and make the rest of us suffer. <br /> <br />“We will resist this with all our power and we will continue to build the future the world wants to see.”
