High number of anti-Keystone comments from foreigners

Not all of the 2 million comments submitted by Keystone XL opponents to the State Department on Friday right before the public comment period ended came from the U.S. public.

The Washington Post reports that a number of the comments submitted to State came from people outside the U.S. that oppose the controversial $5.4 billion project.

{mosads}Avaaz, a liberal advocacy group with over 34 million members across the globe, received 954,827 comments online against the pipeline, 65,38 of which were from the U.S. Respondents from Canada submitted another 66,817.

“This decision is really a referendum on U.S. climate leadership as a whole,” Emma Ruby-Sachs, campaign directro for Avaaz told the Washington Post. s

Ruby Sachs noted that Secretary of State John Kerry referred to climate change as “perhaps the world’s most fearsome weapon of mass destruction” in his speech last month. “If climate change is a weapon of mass destruction, Keystone is the fuse. Our members were saying, ‘It’s in your national interest to lead on climate.'”

Comments also came form high profile international figures including South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and Spain’s former secretary of state for climate change Teresa Ribera.