“You know the news is bad when it comes out at 4 PM on Friday.” – Michael Brune, Sierra Club
The Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) for the Keystone XL pipeline’s route was released just a few weeks after about 35,000 people gathered in DC to urge the project not be built, and after several years of actions and protests from multiple organizations and groups. The focus nationally is often on preventing construction of the northern section. For the southern, Oklahoma-Texas section, construction is well underway. I’ll keep making this point: Obama halted the northern construction for further study (the SEIS is the result), but simultaneously expedited the construction of the southern section. That’s crucial in any analysis.
From a petition drive at EcoWatch:
Last spring, President Obama made a special trip on Air Force One to the ‘Pipeline Crossroads of the World’ to call for fast-track approval of the southern (OK-TX) leg of TransCanada’s Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.
(Stopping) Keystone XL in its entirety … means not only denying TransCanada a presidential permit to build the northern leg of their tar sands pipeline, but using his presidential powers to immediately halt construction of the southern leg … .
The SEIS statement is a draft. The process will include a period for public comment, followed by a final report.
Via Bryan Walsh at Time, with what is being seen as the key argument in the report
‘Approval or denial of any one crude oil transport project, including the proposed Project, remains unlikely to significantly impact the rate of extraction in the oil sands, or the continued demand for heavy crude oil at refineries in the U.S.’
In other words, … while the environmental movement has made the Keystone XL pipeline a line in the sand for U.S. climate policy—and for the environmental legacy of President Obama, who has final say on the pipeline—the project itself will have little impact on carbon emissions and on climate change. Whether or not the pipeline is built, the oil sands crude will flow.
Which is kind of like saying, “whether or not we enact gun / ammunition regulations, the bad guys who want to get guns will find a way to get them, so why bother?”
From Walsh:
While it is entirely possible that Canada could and will choose to ship its oil sands crude to Asia, that would require a another pipeline that some native groups in Canada have opposed in the past. Railroads are an option as well, but cargo lines are already jammed … .
Keystone XL is the cheaper way to get the tar sands crude to a refinery. The fight to get this pipeline built has been fierce, by TransCanada and by the Canadian government. They didn’t make these efforts, and the Obama administration didn’t make half-way decisions, without very compelling=money reasons.
At EcoWatch, Bill McKibben writes:
Last week Time Magazine declared that Keystone XL had become the Stonewall and the Selma of the climate movement – and (Friday) we got a reminder of just how tough those fights were, and how tough this one will be.
… with Secretary of State John Kerry half a world away and D.C. focused on the budget fight, the State Department released a new environmental impact statement for the pipeline. Like the last such report, it found that approving a 800,000 barrel-a-day fuse to one of the planet’s biggest carbon bombs was ‘unlikely to have a substantial impact’ on the tar sands or the climate.
That, in a word, is nonsense – some of our most important climate scientists in the U.S. have written the State Department to explain exactly how dangerous Keystone is. Just yesterday Europe’s top climate diplomat pointed out that it would send a truly terrible signal to the rest of the world.
President Obama will be making a decision in a few short months. … (T)oday’s report makes the odds look even tougher – and the power of the fossil fuel lobby hasn’t waned one bit.
Sierra Club’s Michael Brune wrote The Keystone XL Pipeline Is an Eco-Threat – Why Doesn’t the State Department Think So?:
You know the news is going to be bad when they bury it at 4pm on a Friday. We dealt with this for eight years during the Bush administration. I never thought we’d be doing it again under John Kerry’s State Department. …
… (T)he State Department’s analysis is not only inaccurate but also incredibly cynical. By this same logic, why would anyone in North America stop new coal plants from being built, if the coal would just be burned in China and India anyway? Why would we try to replace fracked gas or mountaintop-removal coal with solar and wind, if we’re powerless as a country to lead the world to a clean energy economy? …
President Obama needs to reconcile his soaring oratory on climate with strong action to turn away from dirty fuels like tar sands oil.
Sen. Bernie Sanders issued a statement which includes this:
‘President Obama spoke eloquently in his Inaugural Address and State of the Union about the need to take action to reverse global warming. It’s now time to turn words into action. The president cannot tell us that he is concerned about global warming and approve the Keystone XL project.
Neither Obama’s or Kerry’s “passionate” (as I’ve seen them described) words about climate change are enough. Once again, and as always, if actions don’t follow, then among other results, fewer and fewer people will believe the words, no matter how passionately and eloquently spoken.
(There Is No Planet B via Planet B)
” I never thought we’d be doing it again under John Kerry’s state department. ” You must be kidding me. The man who tried to ignore Iraq and Abu Graib while he was running for president; the man who thought skiing was more important than keeping Alito off the court; the man who signed off on Bush’s war agenda regardless of his tough ” No man want’s to be the last man to die for a mistake, ” rhetoric. Give me a break.
I wondered when I read Brune’s statement about Kerry if it was an expression of actual surprise / disappointment.
“Neither Obama’s or Kerry’s “passionate” (as I’ve seen them described) words about climate change are enough. Once again, and as always, if actions don’t follow, then among other results, fewer and fewer people will believe the words, no matter how passionately and eloquently spoken.”
Absolutely. Will politicians ever learn? Not only do elections have consequences as I keep hearing from various and sundry, so do WORDS spoken by those elected and those appointed (Kerry). (Also, no doubt the same report probably would have been released if Clinton were still SOS.)
Meet the new Energy Secretary, MIT physicist Ernest Moniz, who has some good things to offer and some not so good. Or, in the words of the Sierra Club “”an ‘all-of-the-above’ energy policy only means more of the same.” http://tinyurl.com/c7n6d37
I agree, this would very likely have been the decision under Clinton, too.
And the Sierra Club quote is right on target.
It’s going to be interesting to see what Moniz does, though I’ll admit, my guess is that, in general, we’ll continue the “all-of-the-above” policy making.
Thank you, Joyce, for keeping on top of this important story.
Stopping this pipeline won’t stop the oil! Stop the Keystone pipeline and they will just use trucks and trains to ship the oil instead.
GOOD! Let them use trucks and trains. This is one of those moments that prove I’m no Obamabot…FUCK THIS SHIT!!!!!!!! STOP all subsidies to oil companies…END their virtual tax free status…HOLD the mofos responsible as in CRIMINALLY for the environmental impact of their insanity.
I am with you but stopping the Keystone Pipeline is like trying to cure cancer by cutting off a finger! Focusing on this particular pipeline project is a mistake our target should be the entire Tar Sands industry. Talk about an ecological nightmare!
One must start somewhere…so if the finger is cancerous it must GO!
Walsh’s article addresses the near certainty that other means of transportation of the crude will be used, should Keystone (the least costly option) not be completed. I think it will be, but sure, if it isn’t, they’ll do something else. Like every other movement / activist work, the efforts are a step at a time and ongoing. Efforts to stop KXL are as much about education as anything else. Which is also a common aspect of movements. You do as much as you can, as best you can. Doing nothing clearly won’t help.
Agreed!
Funny, when Obama supporters make that same argument regarding ACA it’s not accepted by the hard left! Curious that!
From Robert Redford today.
Note to people on Kerry, like Clinton before him, it’s Obama who is boss on this, as is any president.
Yep. Obama’s the boss. I still think the decision has been made since at least the moment the southern section was approved and expedited.
You’re right, Taylor. Whoever is SOS, that Keystone Pipeline report would have advocated going forward with the project. Whether or not to pipeline and all of our foreign policy decisions are made by the White House and it’s Obama’s pipeline and FP. Kerry went along with that decision even if he disagreed with it (and the same would have held true for Clinton).
Clinton made FP suggestions to Obama, some he agreed with and some he rejected. This is an article from the NY Times not long after Clinton left State. http://tinyurl.com/avr6aov
Here is one pertinent excerpt:
“And yet, interviews with more than a dozen current and former officials also paint a more complex picture: of a dogged diplomat and a sometimes frustrated figure who prized her role as team player, but whose instincts were often more activist than those of a White House that has kept a tight grip on foreign policy.”
And, the same holds true for the pipeline.
And, the same will hold true of Kerry as SOS as it did for Clinton.
The moment the Obama Administration announces it’s approval of the Keystone Pipeline will also be the precise moment that whatever hope Dems have of winning back the House in 2014 vanishes!
Things go better with Koch.
Made me laugh