In politics, it is a time-honored tradition to release unpopular news late on a Friday afternoon in order to minimize both the news coverage and the reader/viewership. That’s why the Obama administration’s State Department waited until 4pm yesterday to release their report on the Keystone XL pipeline. It’s also why the administration chose yesterday afternoon to announce a somewhat curious list of pardons.
I’ll be honest. Writing well about environmental issues is difficult and I tend to defer to Steven D, who has more patience for delving deep into the source material. I haven’t had time to look at the State Department’s report, and the reaction has been so immediate and so heated, that I wonder how many people who are writing about it have actually read it.
One interesting thing about the report is that it was prepared over a two year period under the stewardship of Hillary Clinton. The new Secretary of State, John Kerry, has a strong environmental record and it is quite possible that his State Department would have come to different conclusions. It’s hard to know how much this is determined by the science, how much by the Secretary of State’s guidance, and how much by Obama’s guidance.
As a general matter, I am very concerned by the energy boon we’ve unleashed with the development of fracking and the exploitation of Tar Sands. Obviously, these are enormous opportunities to create wealth and to increase our energy independence, but they are also going to be sources that put a lot more carbon in the air and that carry all the environmental hazards associated with mining and drilling and transporting. Just the sheer amount of money that is involved creates tremendous political clout for the carbon-emitting industries, and the availability of all this energy undermines a needed sense of urgency about dealing with climate change. Even if these activities create something salutary, like lower energy prices, that can turn around and bite us by making cleaner fuels less competitive. That’s why I understand that the environmental movement opposes the Keystone XL pipeline on principle, regardless of the findings of the State Department report.
That’s not to say that the report cannot be deeply flawed, and some of the early criticisms seem valid to me. But I do think people should read and discuss it a little more before we jump to the conclusion that we’re all doomed. This is a really complicated topic, from the science to the politics to the mechanism the government goes through to approve or disapprove of the pipeline. It’s the last part that I particularly don’t understand well enough to jump to conclusions about the meaning of the report. Assuming, for the sake of argument, that this pipeline is going to eventually be approved, what tools does the administration have (unilaterally, and in concert with Congress) to mitigate or offset any increase in emissions? Can they wheel and deal, perhaps behind the scenes, so that final approval is informally linked with other anti-carbon measures?
I understand that environmental lobbyists are going to oppose the pipeline with every ounce of energy that they can summon, and they will denounce the administration and some will write them off completely and forever if the pipeline is approved. That is their job. But beyond the noise and heat, there is a more nuanced set of considerations.
With the release of the report, a 45 day window has opened for public commentary. The State Department will take a look at what the public has to say before they issue their final report which will approve or disapprove the pipeline. I recommend that you do your best to educate yourself and then make your own contribution to the debate. To some degree, I think that these types of decisions are foreordained and the people with the money tend to prevail, but John Kerry is not Hillary Clinton and the president nominated him for a reason. We could have some influence over the decision, even if it is just to provide cover for a very difficult decision not to approve the project.
My feeling is that the pipeline is not a good idea, but I plan on becoming much more educated about the issues involved before I start screaming like a banshee.
Run a cost/benefit analysis. There are no benefits to the US in any but the very shortest of short term. Consider the vital importance of the Oglala aquifer to the nation, and the insanity of entrusting it to Big Petrol.
I get the caution thing, but this scheme stinks to high heaven and back. It’s a no-brainer, if ever there was one.
I haven’t read the report. But I’ll comment that actions speak louder than words.
The actions of our government (and the governments of most countries), including but not limited to the Obama Administration, indicate that they simply don’t believe the science around Global Warming. Because if they did then their actions would be very different.
Yes, yes, I know that the Administration increased the CAFE standards for average fuel economy. That’s like putting up a snow fence in the face of a category 5 hurricane.
Any yes, I’m sure that the 0.01%ers and the 0.01%er-wannabees who make up the decision makers in our government probably figure that even if the Earth does heat up and cause massive disasters that their money will protect them. But that too means they really don’t believe the science. Because the cautious science (the last IPCC report) says that a business-as-usual scenario will lead to a 6-7C degree increase by end of the century. More recent information, especially a lot of research on tipping point scenarios such as methane-in-permafrost, indicates that this figure is probably low … 8-10C is more likely. And with that kind of increase in that short of time no amount of money will save you or your descendants.
And make no mistake – a CAFE standard of 54 mpg by 2025 … if somehow miraculously it isn’t circumvented as previous standards have been (like with the “light truck” loophole) … will have almost no effect on this trend by itself.
Oh, there are some isolated signs of hope. Good developments in solar … a surprising reduction in US-emitted CO2 (but offset many times by unexpectedly high increases from other countries) … even fracking for all the enviromental problems it creates might actually help a little bit if it somehow is used to replace coal burning with natural gas.
But, again, back to actions and words. Government subsidies of petroleum and coal dwarf subsidies of clean technology. It’s just far too little and already far too late.
If you think the CAFE standards are the sole, or even the most important, action this administration has taken in the realm of global warming, you don’t know nearly enough about the topic to venture an opinion.
The EPA Clean Air regulations promulgated over the past four years have set us on a path close down the coal industry.
The billion of dollars invested in clean energy have so successfully jump-started that industry that the largest source of new power generation in the country last year, surpassing even natural gas, was wind energy.
Conservation measures have been so successful that the American commercial power market is shrinking – not just in per capita terms, but in real terms.
All of these are more significant than the CAFE standards, which are themselves a great deal more significant than the Keystone XL pipeline.
Don’t believe in climate science my ass.
Good points. There has been a lot of movement in pressuring the electric industry away from coal. Duke Energy however is not yet on board that movement. But AES is closing three coal-fired power plants and buying midwestern wind-generated power.
And the EPA Clean Air regulations are the only way that Congress has left for the administration to move. And to my mind makes eminently more sense than the pseudo-market mechanisms of cap-and-trade and carbon taxation, both of which are subject to evasion schemes and financial market shenanigans.
The pipeline however deals with primarily transportation uses instead of building uses. And there is not yet the deployed transportation technology that can reduce oil consumption to make the exploitation of Bakken in the US and the tar sands in Canada uneconomical. Plus, Canada is planning to export through British Columbia (or Washington state) to Asian markets, which only moves the sources of greenhouse gases.
Summer of 2009 when stimpak was kicking in, one could see windmill parts being trucked around the country; I saw them between PA and CO – it was amazing; then whole forests of windmills sprang up in Iowa. I read 2 years ago that Iowa had largest wind farm in the world – possibly no longer the case though. As I believe you wrote, or perhaps seabe [?] under cover of stimpak Obama activated green energy
The EPA Clean Air regulations promulgated over the past four years have set us on a path close down the coal industry.
That’s not it at all. It’s the cheap cost of natural gas that’s killing King Coal.
You’re both right. The EPA rules will shut down a third or more of the existing coal fleet, and natural gas is preventing them from being competitive.
In fact, Byron Dorgan recognized that carbon sequestration was their only route towards survival:
Ally gives coal tough love
Robert Byrd tried to sound the alarm, too. But Big Coal didn’t want to hear it. Maybe it’s because they were banking on a Republican winning in 2012.
Cheap natural gas is an important factor, no question, but that’s only half of the economic equation. Producing coal-fired electricity is now much more expensive than it would otherwise be, because of EPA regulation, which makes the gas not just cheap, but more importantly, cheaper than.
Even beyond this is the long-term outlook. Building a power plant is an enormous capital investment, and the company gets its money back over a period of decades. The ramping up of coal regulations has created expectations that have scared off that investment.
Yep. It’s complicated, but not that complicated. even putting aside the issue of climate change, we also have to confront the fact that the fossil fuels aren’t going to be around much longer.
I was a little surprised that we heard nothing about the Deepwater Horizon in the election campaign last year, but I guess nobody wanted to look at the obvious lessons there. Why was it so hard to stop the spill? Because we were drilling a mile beneath the surface of the Gulf. Why were we drilling a mile beneath the surface? Because we’ve already got all the oil that’s easy to get.
Fracking, too. However useful it might be in the short term, it should be obvious that this is not a long term solution. Again, the mere fact that we’re resorting to increasingly elaborate technologies to get the remaining fossil fuels has some unavoidable implications.
The only excuse for investing anything at all in fossil fuels anymore is to tide us over until we can switch to clean energy sources.
The pardons are bizarre, assuming the trials were fair.
We have 10-15 years to seriously implement a solution. If we don’t, we’re fucked either way. Approval of this pipeline, as GreenCaboose states, shows that no one really believes the science. The rich think their money will shield them — they don’t give a fuck about their grandchildren, though — but it won’t. And I take some cryptic, morbid solace in that.
The pipeline has not yet been approved. See my comment below.
It’s true that Obama nominated Kerry. But he also nominated Susan Rice for the same position, and her orientation vis-a-vis the pipeline is quite different from Kerry’s. I’d revert to the default assumption that money gets its way absent stronger evidence to the contrary.
Susan Rice was never nominated for this posiition.
My conspiratorial side thinks that Obama floated, but never nominated, the Dread Susan Rice of Benghazi for Secretary of State so that the Republicans could claim a head without derailing his actual choice, John Kerry. It is interesting that he floated her name while she was the Republicans’ public enemy #1.
And because of Kerry’s service and history with Obama I find it highly unlikely (to put it mildly) Susan Rice was ever considered. Floting her name did focus their crazy accusations for a while (“please proceed,” applies there too)
The only thing floating her name did was further prove that the GOP isn’t a friend to anyone non-white.
Sure her orientation to the pipeline is different from Kerry’s. She has a large personal investment in TransCanada, the company that wants an American permnit to build the Keystone pipeline. Can anyone spell “conflict of interest”? That has got to be relevant to this whole story, even if I’m not sure how.
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/29/stake-in-keystone-pipeline-is-potential-conflict-for-susan
-rice/
A politician invests in the corporations and industry he/she believes in. Her interest lies in big oil and a polluting version as well. If one believes in clean energy, he/she would invest in a great industry. Look to the rest of the world from Germany to East-Asia.
I find her stocks in Canadian oil revolting, that’s why I beliieve Susan Rice and Hillary Clinton followed conservative neocon policy. IMO it showed and there was no progress on the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Aren’t the Arab oil states making deep investments in Bill’s Charitable Funds. No conflict of interest just doesn’t exist, whether it’s Washington or Jerusalem where billionaires meet.
Canadian mining tycoon Frank Giustra has given more than $25 million to William J. Clinton Foundation. See also donations in previous years the Gulf States: Oman, Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Kuwait and Qatar. That’s why I’m writing about US foreign policy doing the Gulf States’ bidding in the Middle-East.
The Bush era with Condoleezze Rice redux. one of the most visible reminders of the Bush administration’s ties to big oil – the 129,000-ton Chevron tanker Condoleezza Rice. Bahamian-registered oil tanker carrying the moniker of Bush’s national security adviser was renamed the Altair Voyager.
The heat on the blogosphere has obscured some very key facts about what was released yesterday and what the decision facing the State Department (which likely will rise to the Presidential desk) really is. That tends to divert people from taking action that could affect the outcome.
First of all, the State Department decision is whether to issue a permit to allow the pipeline in the US to connect with its extension in Canada. But the pipeline is designed and routed to also carry oil from the oil sands in the Bakken formation in Montana and North Dakota. Denial of the permit will not affect the transport of Bakken formation oil through the pipeline.
Second, the document that was released yesterday did not necessarily require John Kerry’s involvement in the timing of its release nor does it represent a decision by John Kerry. It is a supplemental draft environmental impact statement that is subject to a 45-day public review. The lobbyists and the oil industry definitely will be making comments during that 45 days and so will the DC-based environmental organizations that regularly track this sort of thing. The open issue is how many members of the public will make thoughtful comments to bolster the environmental case.
Third, this is not the last bureaucratic step before issuing the permit. The EPA or State are obligated to respond to all comments in a document that accompanies the final environmental impact statement. In practice, what agencies do is bundle similar comments to address with a single sentence or paragraph, identify some classes of comments as irrelevant, and in general weed down to the key technical issues, which get addressed in some length. That process takes time to accomplish. The more and more diverse high-quality comments, the longer time it takes. I wouldn’t expect the final environmental impact statement before July. After the final environmental impact statement is released, there is still an inter-agency review in which issues from agencies outside State and EPA get dealt with. Such as from Interior, Commerce, Energy, or Agriculture. In principle, Interior should bring forward any tribal concerns from BIA or the review might allow tribes to present their concerns directly. The political question is whether the relevant tribal governments have been bought off by Enbridge and TransCanada. After that review, the decision to issue the permit can go forward. Normally this is a pretty low-level bureaucratic action. In this case, it likely will be a Presidential decision. Suspect August or September at the earliest. At that point folks can start praising of savaging President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry. (And Hillary)
What that means is that there is ample opportunity to use the levers of government that citizens do possess to question the wisdom of issuing the permit. And the larger the number of people questioning, the more salient the issue becomes for the President and Secretary of State. And commenting on an environmental impact statement is about as low-risk and low-cost an activity as one can do. It takes enough time to skim the relevant parts of the statement, write a cogent and relevant comment, find the EPA site that is managing the commenting process, and enter the comment online. The worst case is you waste a couple hours or a couple days depending on how thoroughly you read the supplemental environmental impact statement.
The conclusions being reported hinge on the notion that denying the permit does not deny alternative and already permitted means of transporting the oil. The weakness of that argument is economic; if the economics were the same, why exactly is this pipeline being built? What is the ROI of the pipeline?
The other weaknesses have to do with the steps that the pipeline is going to take to mitigate environmental damage. Experience with other pipeline environmental impact statements is that the they overpromise the effectiveness of the protective and mitigating features engineered into the pipeline. And strangely enough, a lot of these failures are straightforward enough to be spotted by layfolk using common sense. The problem for individuals is that there are so much technical material to wade through that it is helpful to divide up sections so as to do the smell test on all of the document. Crowdsourcing the research, as it were. Hopefully there are multiple crowdsourcing efforts underway. A crowdsourced list of links for BooMan Tribune would be helpful.
Another issue to watch is the rising indigenous movement in Canada and the US around environmental and land concerns. The exploitation of the Bakken shale ripped off several North Dakota and Montana tribes’ mineral rights without adequate compensation. The Harper government in Canada is doing yet another land grab from First Nations, despite all the high-sounding and even recent treaties.
What finally undoes tar sands and oil sands extraction is a massive switch of oil consumers to alternative forms of energy. In this, the fossil fuel company tax subsidies create and distinct government-provided incentive to stay with oil and coal. So the way the sequester gets resolved also affects the economic business case for tar sands extraction.
Right, the tar sand oil is very expensive, both alternate energy sources and cheaper oil elsewhere will kill tar sands for another century at least.
Did you see the wrinkle Oui dug up. It seems that the EU is thinking about requiring labeling of fuel refined from tar sands.
No, I didn’t. Oui digs up the darndest stuff. But I’m not surprised.
Now if only we can get rid of the Ethanol mandate which no longer does anything for clean air, if it ever did.
Thanks for this very thorough overview, THD.
Like almost everyone else trying to make decisions regarding environmental and climate change issues, I am not a scientist. I must therefore study reports I donʼt always understand and use gut feeling for those providing the reports. I have found that “following the money” has always been an effective method in determining what is happening and why.
Bill McKibben wrote an article in Rolling Stone last summer about the math we face with regard to global warming. The most telling numbers for me related to the amount of carbon reserves the fossil fuel industry and fossil fuel countries such as Venezuela currently own. This number, nearly 2,800 gigatons of coal and oil and gas reserves, is almost 5 times as much carbon, 565 gigatons, scientists estimate can be dumped into the atmosphere by 2050 and still have any reasonable hope of keeping the increase in global temperature at 2 degrees celsius or below.
The 2,800 gigatons of carbon reserves are estimated to be valued at about $27 trillion. So, in order to keep our carbon dump into the atmosphere below 565 gigatons, we must somehow keep the fossil fuel industry from burning some $20 to $22 trillion of profitable carbon. Does anyone believe that is likely to happen?
To put this all in perspective and demonstrate how Keystone might impact these numbers, the Alberta tar sands may contain as much as 240 gigatons of carbon. This is nearly half of the available atmospheric space if we take the 565 gigaton number seriously.
It should be noted in “following the money” just a bit further that the Canadian government has withdrawn from the Kyoto treaty before facing fines for failing to meet its commitments.
It seems to me that stopping projects such as Keystone now and implementing an effective carbon tax is the only chance we have to avoid forcing temperatures to an unsustainable level.
That valuation depends on demand. If demand goes to alternatives, that valuation drops. If demand goes totally to alternatives, that valuation drops to zero.
The money is there only if they can choke off alternatives politically.
Which is what is going on in conservative GOP and blue dog Dem animosity against supporting high-speed rail.
Or wanting to leave in tax subsidies for fossil fuels and end tax subsidies for alternatives.
What those reserves represent is nature’s savings account. And one spendthrift generation seems to want to zero it out before finding alternatives.
TarheelDem, could you say more about the line that is your third paragraph? thanks
Conservatives and Blue Dogs are blocking line items in appropriation bills to accelerate the implementation of high-speed rail.
It is not concern about costs that is driving that but the influence of the oil industry and the trucking industry.
High-speed rail isn’t just about AMTRAK, it is also about freight. AMTRAK leases use of the rails from private companies. So these would be subsidies to private railroad companies that currently (unlike a century ago) get few government subsidies.
But increased use of rail an conversion of diesel rail to electric rail would reduce the carbon footprint of rail transport. High-speed rail offers the opportunity to shift from diesel to electric but has a high front-end cost without immediate guarantees of increases in traffic shifting away from highways. Which is why the government has to become involved.
Which is why the “small government” types in both parties have the cover to support their donors from the oil and trucking industries.
Thanks for that! I learn so much from you, TarheelDem.
Looks like we need a new verse for this song:
Where have all the statesmen gone?
===WHERE HAVE ALL THE FLOWERS GONE
words and music by Pete Seeger
performed by Pete Seeger and Tao Rodriguez-Seeger
Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the flowers gone?
Girls have picked them every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?
Where have all the young girls gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the young girls gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the young girls gone?
Taken husbands every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?
Where have all the young men gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the young men gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the young men gone?
Gone for soldiers every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?
Where have all the soldiers gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the soldiers gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the soldiers gone?
Gone to graveyards every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?
Where have all the graveyards gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the graveyards gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the graveyards gone?
Covered with flowers every one
When will we ever learn?
When will we ever learn?
©1961 (Renewed) Fall River Music Inc
All Rights Reserved.
High-speed rail isn’t just about AMTRAK, it is also about freight.
Props to you for bringing this up.
Rail freight is a BFD in terms of energy savings, but it’s not sexy, so it doesn’t get nearly the attention it should from environmentalists.
Not only is it much more fuel-efficient than trucks, but getting trucks off the highways would significantly reduce congestion and allow fuel savings for other drivers using those roads.
Ha. It’s 2000 pages. Nobody but lawyers have read it. *Some * people will have read the executive summary/abstract/whatever. 95% are relying on second hand testimony and their own gut impulses.
Well who the fuck nominated Hillary then, a martian? Did she sprout from the ground? And just what exactly in their contemporaneous senate tenures distinguished either of them in the slightest?
I really hope Hillary becomes president now. It would be just fantastic to watch the blogosphere invert itself. I genuinely doubt she will because being Secretary of State seems to have been enough to cause her body to start falling apart and she’s getting up there in years. And so to run another campaign, and then be the First Woman President and directly compete with her husband’s and Obama’s legacies? That’s a lot of stress. Retirement looks pretty good in comparison.
But I love, love, love watching the venom drip back out from the usual corners in the last, oh, five months (I forget, did something happen last November?). To watch the obots become the PUMAs and firebaggers, and to watch the baggers become the bots…it would just be fantastic.
Hillary 2016. For all the lulz.
Didn’t she sprout full grown from the forehead of Zeus?
Actually John Kerry is not Hillary Clinton, and the reasons the president nominated him are not the same reasons he nominated Hillary Clinton. The circumstances differ, not entirely, but somewhat.
Not to diminish Hillary’s talents, but picking her as SoS was a defensive move intended to shore up his support in the party and avoid a critic on the outside.
Picking Kerry was an offensive move.
The idea that there has ever been a debate on this issue is absurd. The companies building the pipeline wouldn’t have started if it was just going to get blocked down the road.
Give me one instance of environmentalists winning on an issue like this. Obama will leave office with a crap record on climate change, but any other Dem would’ve been as bad or worse. There is no constituency among the American elite for addressing climate change. None at all. And no politician in these times will fly in the face of the entire elite. This issue has been limited in how it could possibly resole for a long time, and we lose this fight. There’s just no way around it.
As for this century and the lives of our children and grandchildren, I don’t know if we’ll see 6-7 degrees C, but we’ll see 4, and that’s a scary enough thing.
If you read Mark Lynas , Six Degrees, even four is a total catastrophe, because of the feedback mechanisms that kick in at four degrees humans are helpless to stop. Four degrees means melting of the Arctic region, and permafrost, releasing much more C02 and CH4, than humanity is currently releasing by burning fossil fuels.
That is the beginning of a chain of unstoppable(for humanity) feedbacks, that will melt the Greenland ice sheet, and then Antarctica, to the tune of 20 feet in the case of Greenland ice sheet and 200 feet in the case of Antarctica of sea level rise.
Buh-Bye to any and all sea coastal areas all around the planet.
Buh-Bye to the nice relatively stable climate human organised agriculture depends on to feed us as a species.
Buh-Bye to inhabitable areas south of the Arctic and Antarctic circles, with out large scale electric grids to pump electricity for all the cooling we will need to live there in the summer heat waves, that will last 90-120 days at a time.
Buh-Bye to any idea of political stability, or organised human culture as people scramble to simply survive a doomed (for us as a species) planet.
The 10+ degrees of warming will result in reptiles sunning themselves on the north slope of Alaska like they did in the early Triassic period when all the above happened. Humans weren’t around for that and won’t be around when the reptiles return to the north slope of Alaska.
Being a warm blooded creature and needing a place to grow food for survival, we will just be a little out of climatic luck in this case. However what ever creatures that do survive till the planet’s climate returns to a sort of normal in ten or so million years will thank us all for kindly going extinct to they could survive.
However look at the upside;
But at least a few thousand people all across the planet get to live better than most kings in history ever did for a few more decades, a very small few for even a century possibly.
Assuming, …, that GWB’s tax cut is going to be approved …
Assuming, …, that GWB’s war in Iraq is going to be approved …
Assuming, …, the the “sequester,” is going to be approved …
The Clinton era was as good if not better for USA, Inc.
No wonder Americans are just tuning in the phone toys turning them on and dropping out.
Ah, the fate of the planet thrown into the Friday afternoon garbage dump. And after an awful lot of new tough prez rhetoric about how Congress needs to step up(!) and address climate change (as if). So not exactly a Profiles in Courage moment, ha-ha.
Booman and Tarheel advocate a cool calm and collected approach, since there’s a lot of complexity. And of course they are absolutely correct that no (final) decision has been made and that we peons (my phrase, not theirs) can send in our email objections, so there is that.
But you know, when 18 of the nation’s most prominent climate scientists write Obama multiple letters informing him they are absolutely unequivocally convinced that the development of the Alberta tar sands will spell the doom of our stable climate, and when the fossil fuel industry ITSELF opines that allowing the US branch of the pipeline is essential to full development of the vile tar sands, I’m not really sure how much personal “investigation” I need to do as just an ordinary schmoe who crazily doesn’t want the planet’s climate ruined forever. I think I can rely on the climate scientists (and even the professional environmental groups who are unanimously opposed to the pipeline). I don’t need to double check them, IMO.
Even the reported aspects of the State EIS make clear that it is a contrived, artificial and intellectually dishonest evaluation, which does not use fossil fuel’s admissions against it, does not address the actual argument of the climate scientists, does not marshal or credit the strongest environmental evidence, does not address realistic probabilities, ignores industry motivations, and throws out garbage like the arguments that all that tar sands crud won’t increase the amount of oil being refined in the Gulf(!) and that since railroads still exist, the pipeline isn’t really “essential” for transportation—even though the industry and its bankers say it is. Sound persuasive?
Yes, indeed, Rightwing Canada COULD in theory run a pipeline through the Canadian Rockies, exiting somewhere in beautiful Vancouver Bay (even though there is massive grassroots opposition), so since this option exists in theory that means the tar sand are CERTAIN to be fully developed! Therefore the Keystone Pipeline is utterly irrelevant! So even though the fossil fuel industry has spent $200 million lobbying for the US pipeline, and has admitted it is essential to development, Keystone is not really crucial to whether the tar sands will be developed. Now that’s an intellectually honest approach!
Yes, we can all wait until whenever to go ballistic. And yes, we must all write our online comments to State about their appalling, corrupt maladministration of the nation’s future well being.
But what would have been easier for Obama and Kerry? Having faceless bureaucrats make the unremarkable decision that giving fossil fuel an easy and cheap and preferred means of exploiting the environmentally catastrophic tar sands is not “environmentally insignificant” (duh)? Or having all the agency evaluations conclude “Oh, it’s not that big a deal, it’s gonna happen anyway” and then stepping in at the eleventh hour to deny the permit? Would any politically astute and embattled prez ever do it the second way?
Even as our scientists unequivocally tell us we are on the brink of total climate meltdown, our braindead society and “system”, even with a rational, informed and caring prez, cannot say NO!! to developing every possible goddam gallon of oil for our fucking cars.
Just.Can’t.Do.It. That will be our epitaph.
You know, I may come around to agreeing with you 100%. But I’d like a little more information that just a press release from paid lobbyists for environmental groups before I adopt their rhetoric.
One point you made that deserves a little pushback is that the industry has been arguing that the pipeline is essential because they want the pipeline. If you are allowing that spin to convince you that the pipeline is essential, I think you are a taking a counter-spin argument and actually believing it.
It’s effective as rhetoric. The idea that that amount of money will remain in the ground if only this pipeline is denied is wishful thinking. It is is to be stopped, Canadians will have to organize.
Other than that, I don’t have a problem with your reasoning, and you are certainly entitled to it. As I said, I haven’t even read the report and people better informed than me may have no reason to delay the screaming.
Er, Kerry and Obama have not finalized their decision yet. Likely not until August or September. What was dumped was the second draft of the environmental impact statement. The strategic response is to read it and make cogent comments on it on the EPA-managed website for review (supposed to be up next Friday or so).
If you want to do more there always involvement in Tar Sands Blockade.
See Timeline from Canadian Tar Sands to Texas USA … Isn’t Canada (Harper) in the pocket by Koch Bros.?
The Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement released yesterday is State’s response to EPA’s July 2010 objections. So did State do their homework on “greenhouse-gas emissions, air pollution, pipeline safety, as well as the project’s likely impact on wetlands and migratory-bird populations”?
I might be willing to trade a cap and dividend scheme for approval of the pipeline.
I don’t think the pipeline should be approved under any circumstances.
The pipeline is more symbolic than anything, so in that sense I agree with you. But for all practical purposes, if there is a hard cap, maybe even with a tax, and then a dividend scheme along the lines of Hansen’s idea, it could be worth it. the additional cost from the cap and/or tax wouldn’t make the oil that profitable to produce.
It could be that the political opposition is more important in this circumstance, though.
Environmentalists actually want fuel to be both in short supply and expensive in order to make clean energy more competitive.
And that dumps the costs on the poorer of this world, American and not.
Those are unavoidable costs dumped on the poor no environmentalist will calculate when yelling about the alleged costs of alleged global warming being dumped on the poor.
Only an idiot thinks only advocates of fossil fuel use can be liars.