Money being spent on the Dakota Access pipeline and other oil projects in the U.S. would better be invested in renewable energy, former U.S. Vice President Al Gore has said as he slammed the controversial project as an “atrocity.”
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“This Standing Rock project is an atrocity. It is an absolute atrocity,” the 2000 presidential candidate said during The New York Times Global Leaders’ Collective conference.
"The massive investment in these pipeline infrastructure projects will be amortized over 50 to 75 years, and we need that capital to flow into renewables.”
Al Gore received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 for his environmental activism and his projects fighting global warming. In 2011 Al Gore founded the Climate Reality Project, a non-profit organization with the stated mission of finding “a global solution to the climate crisis.”
Commenting on police violence against water protectors Al Gore wished “President Obama would step in before there is more violence out there” against protesters.
“This is an embarrassment to our country. All those promises have been broken for so long. Using water cannons in subfreezing temperatures, that’s inhumane," he added.
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The action against the US$3.8 billion pipeline has attracted more than 300 Native American tribes from across the United States in a show of unity that is being called historic.
They say the project will damage burial sites considered sacred to the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and pollute the area's drinking water.
Al Gore’s comments came hours before U.S. military veterans began arriving Thursday at Standing Rock encampment to join thousands of activists with the plan of protecting them from police attacks as they brave snow and freezing temperatures to protest the pipeline project.