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With his approval rating among American voters at an all-time low, President Obama could use a little support from his peers. But this month nine fellow recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa and the Dalai Lama, sent the president a letter urging him to veto the construction of a huge pipeline that would bring bring crude oil to the United States from Canada.

On Monday, the letter was published as an advertisement in The Washington Post. It reads in part: “The night you were nominated for president, you told the world that under your leadership – and working together – the rise of the oceans will begin to slow and the planet will begin to heal. You spoke of creating a clean energy economy. This is a critical moment to make good on that pledge.”

The ad was paid for by the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Nobel Women’s Initiative.

The Keystone XL pipeline would bring crude oil extracted from the rock under Canadian forests to the Texas coast for refining, traversing some of the Midwest’s most important aquifers en route.