As opposition to the proposed Keystone Tar Sands Oil Pipeline mounts the Department of State has announced a series of public hearings in each of the affected states for public input on the controversial pipeline to import Canadian oil extracted using an ultra-carbon intensive method that multiplies the carbon footprint from burning oil from Tar Sands significantly.
U.S.-Canada Keystone pipeline leaks, fuels outrage
The State Department, which needs to approve the Keystone XL pipeline extension because it crosses a U.S. border, announced Monday that it will hold six additional public meetings as part of its review process. Since the extension will run from Alberta, Canada, to the Gulf Coast, the hearings will occur in the five states the pipeline crosses: Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas.
The Environmental Protection Agency said Monday, however, that it is still dissatisfied with the State Department's supplemental environmental review, issued in April. "EPA believes additional analysis is necessary 10 fully respond to our earlier comments and to ensure a full evaluation of the potential impacts of proposed Project, and to identify potential means to mitigate those impacts," the agency said in a report.
Grassroots opposition to the Keystone Pipeline is broad based and spreading.
Environmental groups, noting the extension crosses farmland and the Midwest' s largest aquifer, have cited the spills in rallying opponents. Joining them and affected landowners are faith-based groups, 47 of which sent a letter last week to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton asking her to "respect the intrinsic value of creation, and thus, the environment as well."
The Canadian Government is even trying to conceal how much rapidly increasing carbon emissions from Tar Sands Oil extraction is driving the recent increases in Canada's cumulative carbon emissions.
Canada tries to hide Alberta tar sands carbon emissions
Greenhouse gas emissions from the tar sands are on the rise, but try finding that in Canada's official report to the UN
The Canadian government admitted this week that it deliberately left out data indicating a 20% rise in emissions from the Alberta tar sands when it submitted its annual inventory to the United Nations.
The deliberate exclusion does not amount to an attempt to deceive the UN about Canada's total emissions. Emissions from the tar sands were incorporated in the overall tally in the report. But it does suggest that the government is anxious to obscure the source of its fastest-growing source of climate pollution: the Alberta tar sands.
Greenhouse gases from the tar sands grew by 21% in the last year reported, despite the economic receission. Even more troubling, the tar sands is becoming even more carbon intensive, with emissions per barrel of oil rising 14.5% in 2009. And overall production is set to triple by 2020, according to some projections.
Congress to starting to get involved in the Keystone Pipeline issue after hearing from outraged constituents back home.
New concerns in Congress over planned Keystone XL pipelinel
With continuing spill problems on the Keystone pipeline carrying oil extracted from Canada's tar sands to the U.S., there are growing demands for a broader review before any approval of a second Keystone XL pipeline, proposed to carry the controversial product across the U.S. heartland to Texas.
In a letter this week to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa Jackson, 34 members of Congress urged the State Department to hold off on granting an international permit for the second pipeline until a range of potential concerns is addressed.
Bill McKibben writes that the Keystone Pipeline is probably already a done deal.
Barack Obama, the carbon president
But the process is apparently politically wired and in a beautifully bipartisan Washington way. Secretary of state Hillary Clinton must approve the plan for Keystone XL because it crosses US borders. Last year, before she'd even looked at the relevant data, she said she was "inclined" to do so. And why not? I mean, the company spearheading the Keystone project, TransCanada, has helpfully hired her former deputy national campaign director as its principal lobbyist.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the political aisle, those oil barons the Koch brothers and that fossil fuel front group the US chamber of commerce are pushing for early approval. Michigan Republican congressman Fred Upton, chair of the house energy committee, is already demanding that the project be fast-tracked, with a final approval decision by November, on the grounds that it would create jobs. This despite the fact that even the project's sponsors concede it won't reduce gas prices. In fact, as Jeremy Symons of the National Wildlife Federation pointed out in testimony to Congress last month, their own documents show that the pipeline will probably cause the price at the pump to rise across the midwest.
When the smaller pipeline was approved in 2009, we got a taste of the arguments that the administration will use this time around, all masterpieces of legal obfuscation. Don't delay the pipeline over mere carbon worries will be the essence of it.
Global warming concerns, said deputy secretary of state James Steinberg then, would be "best addressed in the context of the overall set of domestic policies that Canada and the United States will take to address their respective greenhouse gas emissions". In other words, let's confine the environmental argument over the pipeline to questions such as: how much oil will leak? In the meantime, we'll pretend to deal with climate change somewhere else
Hillary is being sued for access to emails between her and her pal Paul Elliot, her former deputy campaign manager turned Keystone Pipeline Lobbyist.
Environmental groups sue State Dept. for Hillary's emails on Tar Sands Pipeline
McKibben is also very critical of the Obama Administration's decision to expand U.S. Coal production (for export).
Critics on the left, right chide Obama's energy policy
But as renowned climate change writer Bill McKibben points out, much of the Powder River coal has to be moved to the West Coast, where it will be shipped to Asia to satisfy the growing energy needs of India and China. Ports in the Northwest, from Bellingham and Longview in Washington to Vancouver, British Columbia, are morphing into battlegrounds where the expansion necessary to accommodate the coal will be bitterly opposed.
If you have a chance to attend one of the State Department's public hearings on the Keystone Pipeline please take the time to do so. We need to send an unmistakable message that Americans don't want this destructive pipeline.