The Climate Letter Project is now in its fourth year of daily letters to the editor, and if you exclude "idiotic Republican denialists," there's probably no single topic which has triggered more LTEs than the Keystone XL pipeline.
Since Transcanada's pipeline project first reared its ugly head some years ago, it's provided me with fodder for indignant 150-word outbursts to print media outlets all over North America. Many have seen print, but far more have languished in editorial file-and-forget folders. That's okay; writing letters is what I do.
There are so many ways that Keystone is a disaster in the making. Whether it's the devastation of millions of acres of forest, the likely contamination of aquifers providing drinking and irrigation water to uncounted millions of people, the virtual certainty of spills and leaks, the nourishment of corrupt and unethical corporate sociopaths, or the massive acceleration that burning Tar Sands oil will give to the already careening-dangerously-out-of-control greenhouse effect, the pipeline offers misery to millions and the prospect of increased wealth to a privileged few.
Below the copulating croissants of hive-mind-progressivism, you'll find an assortment of letters on Keystone themes, all sent within the past 8 months.
All of them, alas, are still pertinent today. Only a few have been published. Please help yourself. Simply by rearranging a few sentences and inserting a few synonyms, you can have your very own "Why KXL Is A Terrible Idea" letter, ready for submission. It's easy.
The LA Times runs an op-ed by James Hansen, which gets picked up by the Register-Guard (Eugene, OR):
In March, the State Department gave the president cover to open a big spigot that will hitch our country to one of the dirtiest fuels on Earth for 40 years or more. The draft environmental review of the Keystone XL pipeline acknowledges tar sands are nasty stuff for the environment, but concludes that the project is OK because this oil will get to market anyway — with or without a pipeline.
A public comment period is under way through April 22, after which the department will prepare a final statement to help the administration decide whether the pipeline is in the “national interest.” If the conclusion is yes, a Canadian company, TransCanada, gets a permit to build a pipeline to transport toxic tar sands through our heartland, connecting to refineries in the Gulf of Mexico, for likely export to China.
Around the world, emissions of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide continue to soar. Australia is now finishing “the angry summer” — 123 extreme weather records broken in 90 days —which government sources link to climate change. Last year, 2012, also was the hottest year on record in the contiguous United States.
More Paul Revere analogies...coming up on Patriot's Day here in Massachusetts! April 7:
Scientists have been warning us for over fifty years that our CO2 emissions were likely to transform Earth profoundly — perhaps catastrophically. And for over fifty years our elected leaders chose to pass the problem along to someone else to solve. When they weren't simply trying to keep the scientists quiet, that is.
George W. Bush's administration censored NASA climatologist James Hansen’s report on climate change, muzzling one of climate science's most informed and articulate voices. Meanwhile, deranged talk-radio personalities incited their low-information audiences into an anti-science frenzy that brought Hansen and other researchers like Dr. Michael Mann death threats and torrents of hate mail.
Two hundred and thirty-eight years ago, farmers in a few Massachusetts towns hearkened to a midnight call, and our nation's birth can be traced to their readiness to respond to a clear and imminent danger.
Now, a modern-day Paul Revere is again sounding the alarm. Where will we be in two hundred years if we ignore James Hansen’s urgent warnings?
Warren Senders
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The Chicago Tribune runs an op-ed strongly advocating approval of the KXL. Because fuck the facts, bitches. It's all about FREEDOM.
President Barack Obama has a big decision to make about this nation's economic future. The call is an easy one, and it's long overdue.
The president should approve the Keystone XL pipeline, which would link the rich oil sands in the Canadian province of Alberta to U.S. refineries and ports in the Gulf of Mexico. Last Friday evening, 17 Democrats joined all of the U.S. Senate's Republicans in urging Obama to do just that. The 62-37 vote was nonbinding but signaled bipartisan frustration with the administration's reluctance to approve the project.
The president is expected to make a decision by this summer. He rejected a Keystone plan a year ago, in the midst of his re-election campaign. That was applauded by some environmental groups and angered the Canadian government. But the most significant impact was this: It kept Americans from getting good-paying jobs.
They're hardly even trying anymore.
Leaving aside the thousands of short-term construction jobs guaranteed to last exactly as long as it takes to build a segment of the Keystone XL pipeline, we can anticipate a hundred times that number in the long term. For example, the demand for toxic waste mitigation and cleanup experts will spike hugely along the pipeline's route — not to mention the need for more oncologists, pharmacists, and medical support staff. And let's not forget funeral directors!
Complex legal actions are guaranteed to proliferate, and no matter who "wins" a civil action against a Canada-based multinational corporation which inadvertently destroyed a region's water supply, lawyers on both sides will profit hugely.
But the corporate consultants who wrote the State Department's environmental impact statement say there's nothing to worry about — a "fact" that's probably a surprise to citizens of Arkansas and Utah whose communities have recently been devastated by pipeline leaks.
It is indeed an easy call to make.
Warren Senders
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Elisabeth Rosenthal has an excellent piece in the NYT on our visions for a future energy economy:
WE will need fossil fuels like oil and gas for the foreseeable future. So there’s really little choice (sigh). We have to press ahead with fracking for natural gas. We must approve the Keystone XL pipeline to get Canadian oil.
This mantra, repeated on TV ads and in political debates, is punctuated with a tinge of inevitability and regret. But, increasingly, scientific research and the experience of other countries should prompt us to ask: To what extent will we really “need” fossil fuel in the years to come? To what extent is it a choice?
As renewable energy gets cheaper and machines and buildings become more energy efficient, a number of countries that two decades ago ran on a fuel mix much like America’s are successfully dialing down their fossil fuel habits. Thirteen countries got more than 30 percent of their electricity from renewable energy in 2011, according to the Paris-based International Energy Agency, and many are aiming still higher.
Could we? Should we?
Waxing epistemological here for a minute. March 24:
Resistance to social and technological advances is always rooted in a poverty of imagination. American conservatism's failure to entertain hypotheticals ensures that their anticipated futures are merely copies of the past — thinking vividly on display in our political and media culture as the necessity of shifting rapidly away from fossil fuels becomes obvious in the light of the climate crisis.
Actually, two mutually reinforcing failures of imagination are at work here. On one hand, the resistance to renewable energy sources, while partly explained by the undeniable cupidity of corporate interests, is at its core a refusal to allow any alternative to the approved vision of a future energy economy. On the other hand is the incapacity to imagine the terrifying realities of the present moment, in which a runaway greenhouse effect is dessicating farmlands, breaking the Arctic, and casting in doubt the future of our civilization and our species.
Warren Senders
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The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports on the how-fucked-up-is-that Environmental Impact statement on the Keystone XL that recently plopped out of the State Department:
The State Department's recent conclusion that the Keystone XL pipeline "is unlikely to have a substantial impact" on the rate of Canada's oil sands development was based on analysis provided by two consulting firms with ties to oil and pipeline companies that could benefit from the proposed project.
EnSys Energy has worked with Exxon Mobil, BP and Koch Industries, which own oil sands production facilities and refineries in the Midwest that process heavy Canadian crude oil.
Imperial Oil, one of Canada's largest oil sands producers, is a subsidiary of Exxon.
ICF International works with pipeline and oil companies but doesn't list specific clients on its website. It declined to comment on the Keystone, referring questions to the State Department.
EnSys President Martin Tallett said he couldn't talk about the proposed pipeline, but he pointed out that in addition to working for the oil industry, his company works for the Environmental Protection Agency, the Energy Department and the World Bank.
"We don't do advocacy," Tallett said. "Our goal is to tell it like it is, to tell the way we see it. ... If we were the pet of government agencies or oil companies, the other side wouldn't come to us."
The State Department did not respond to questions about the 2,000-page environmental impact statement it released Friday.
And then we have this:
The State Department’s “don’t worry” environmental impact statement for the proposed Keystone XL tarsands pipeline, released late Friday afternoon, was written not by government officials but by a private company in the pay of the pipeline’s owner. The “sustainability consultancy” Environmental Resources Management (ERM) was paid an undisclosed amount under contract to TransCanada to write the statement, which is now an official government document. The statement estimates, and then dismisses, the pipeline’s massive carbon footprint and other environmental impacts, because, it asserts, the mining and burning of the tar sands is unstoppable.
Move along, move along. Nothin' to see here. Sent March 7:
While the State Department's statement on the exploitation of the Canadian tar sands is flawed, the real problem is that the document was produced in a fundamentally dishonest way. It turns out that TransCanada, the corporation behind the Keystone XL project, paid a private "consulting" firm called ERM (Environmental Resources Management) to write the findings, which claim that since the extraction of tar sands oil is inevitable, the environmental damage caused by the pipeline can simply be ignored. The statement also asserts that the giant pipeline will be safe from the effects of climate change — which, given the massive climate impact of the tar sands oil, is a breathtaking combination of folly, hypocrisy and hubris.
Fossil fuel companies already have a hugely disproportionate degree of influence on our government, but TransCanada's self-insertion in the State Department's analysis is grotesque even by these standards. While it's lucky for them that corporate "persons" are incapable of embarrassment or shame, it's not such a good deal for the rest of us.
Warren Senders
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Aw, gimme a fuckin' break. The Washington Post:
The State Department released a draft environmental impact assessment of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline Friday, suggesting that the project would have little impact on climate change.
Canada’s oil sands will be developed even if President Obama denies a permit to the pipeline connecting the region to Gulf Coast refineries, the analysis said. Such a move also would not alter U.S. oil consumption, the report added.
The lengthy assessment did not give environmentalists the answer they had hoped for in the debate over the project’s climate impact. Opponents say a presidential rejection of the project would send a powerful message to the world about the importance of moving away from fossil fuels and make it more difficult for Canada to export its energy-intensive oil.
There aren't enough faces and enough palms. March 2:
As a former smoker, President Obama should know how hard it is to overcome a powerful addiction. He is also undoubtedly familiar with the countless rationalizations smokers use to avoid coming to terms with their dependency. "One more won't hurt," "my grandfather smoked and he lived to be 97," "it helps me relax," and "I don't have time to quit right now" — all these and more have analogical equivalents in the arguments currently being presented for the Keystone XL pipeline.
Our nation's addiction to oil and coal is profoundly damaging to our planet's health; the State Department's risible dismissal of the pipeline's climate change impact sounds remarkably like a carton-a-day smoker's raspy contempt for the oncologist's warning. The dirty crude of the Canadian tar sands needs to stay in the ground for the same reason that countless smokers have finally overcome their dependency: because life is preferable to the alternative.
Warren Senders
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The Barnstable Patriot offers a column from one Richard Elrick, noted as "From the Left." Because the Right is always wrong:
The fact is that unless we substantially reduce our use of fossil fuels by 50 to 80 percent by 2050, when compared to 2000 levels, we will pass a “tipping point,” and most likely not be able to avoid the most catastrophic effects of a warming world.
The American discussion about climate change and cheap energy will be coming to a crucial crescendo soon when President Obama will have to make a decision about whether to allow the Keystone XL Pipeline to be built. If constructed, the pipeline would cross from Canada down to refineries in the Gulf of Mexico, carrying the dirtiest, most carbon-intensive oil from the tar sands and shale of Alberta.
There will be incredible pressure on the president to allow Keystone to proceed. We are addicted to cheap oil, and the perception exists for some that we “need” Keystone for the jobs and economy.
But the truth, as NASA scientist and climate change expert Dr. James Hansen so eloquently described recently to a Keystone Pipeline supporter, is that, “The climate science is crystal clear. We cannot go down the path of the dirty fuels without guaranteeing that the climate system passes tipping points, leaving our children and grandchildren a situation out of their control, a situation of our making.”
Mr. President, the choice is yours. You can start us down the road to a sustainable energy future, or you can give way to the short-term and short-sighted political forces that need their fossil fuel fix. Posterity’s future awaits your decision.
I brought out the heroin thing again. Sent Feb. 27:
As global warming's effects get harder and harder to ignore, we can expect a gradual transformation in denialist rhetoric, from "it's not happening" to "it's too expensive to do anything." Statements of this sort are typical rationalizations of addictive behavior, and as Richard Elrick and countless others have pointed out, American civilization is addicted to fossil fuels. In refusing to address climate change, conservatives deny the grim facts of our national dependency. Similarly, attempts to promote fossil-fuel "alternatives" ostensibly less damaging to the planet's climate, such as "clean coal" or natural gas (extracted by the process of hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking"), are nothing more than the desperate bargaining attempts of an addiction.
Let's consider these claims in the light of history — in particular another national dependency of a little more than a century ago. In 1895, millions of Americans were hooked on morphine, which was freely available over the counter. It was an enormous social and medical crisis, finally solved with by diacetylmorphine, a "non-addictive" substitute, marketed under the trade name of "Heroin." Let's remember how well that worked out before we put our hopes in natural gas and "clean coal."
If humanity is to survive and prosper in the coming centuries, we need to transform our energy economy profoundly and completely.
Warren Senders
Published.
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More on the Keystone Clusterf**k, from the West Virginia Gazette:
President Obama hasn't publicly drawn a connection between climate change and the Keystone XL pipeline, but new pressure is building on him and other officials to connect those dots.
Protests are springing up from Maine to Washington, D.C., to Oklahoma urging leaders to stop the Keystone XL and other oil sands import projects on climate change grounds. The Texas-bound Keystone XL is the biggest of many projects being proposed to connect Canada's oil sands to U.S. refineries and export ports. Protesters claim the pipelines would commit the United States and other countries to a form of heavy oil that would worsen global warming.
On Jan. 26, some 1,400 people marched through Portland, Maine, against possible plans to move oil from Canada's tar sands mines to local ports for export. Days earlier, hundreds of people joined solidarity rallies across New England and in Canada, where they picketed outside gas stations, locked arms along bridges, and hoisted signs that read "Tar Sands (equals) Game Over for Climate." On Monday, indigenous rights activists in Texas and Oklahoma filled public squares to show support for efforts by Canada's First Nations to block oil sands growth.
"We're trying to build the social movement" against expansion of tar sands oil extraction, said Sophie Robinson, who organized events through the Massachusetts chapter of 350.org, a grassroots organization that focuses on climate change.
I'm gonna keep recycling the "this ain't no game" trope till it gets some traction. February 4:
Whether it's the inevitable spillage and aquifer contamination, the vast acreage of forests destroyed, the reinforcement of a global fossil-fuel addiction, or the devastating impact the Tar Sands oil will make on the already accelerating greenhouse effect, there can be no doubt that the Keystone XL pipeline project is a collection of disasters waiting to happen. But "game over for the climate," a phrase popular among anti-pipeline activists, gives a misleading picture of what those disasters will do to North America and the world.
The after-effects of a game are limited to the playing field. If your team loses, just wait for next week, or next month, or next year. But more and more scientists are realizing with alarm that the possible consequences of a 4-degree centigrade increase in planetary temperature may include a complete collapse of the agriculture upon which our lives depend. The introduction of Tar Sands oil into the consumption chain will speed that increase, possibly irrevocably.
Earth's climate is no game, and when it's over, there's no rematch, no mulligan, no "wait for next year," no reset button. It's just finished — and so are we. President Obama must block the Keystone XL.
Warren Senders
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The Washington Post runs an AP story on John Kerry's stance on climate change and the Keystone XL pipeline:
In his opening statement before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Kerry said that American foreign policy “is defined by life-threatening issues like climate change,” along with political unrest in Africa and human trafficking across the globe. Kerry, the panel’s outgoing chairman, has made the issue of global warming central to his career in public service. The Massachusetts Democrat has traveled repeatedly to international climate negotiations and pushed in the Senate — unsuccessfully — for a limit on national greenhouse gas emissions.
Later this year, the State Department must decide whether to grant TransCanada a presidential permit to build the 1,700-mile Keystone XL pipeline extension, which would carry heavy crude oil from Canada’s oil sands to America’s Gulf Coast refineries. Climate activists warn that the project would be devastating to the planet, while proponents say it would boost the nation’s energy security and generate short-term construction jobs.
We'll see about that. Sent January 26:
Given his record of respect for evidence and expertise, John Kerry's acceptance of the scientific consensus on climate change is unsurprising. Conservatives arguing that action on global warming is too expensive operate from a stance of multiple denial: they reject the climate science substantiating the greenhouse effect's dangerous consequences, they reject the economic evidence that investment in clean energy and sound environmental practices are net positives for job creation, and they reject the fact that a significant majority of Americans recognize that climate change is a problem with huge repercussions for our nation and the world. It's no accident that these same fact-rejecting politicians are the ones advocating strongly for the Keystone XL pipeline, a project whose likely contribution to climate change could well tip the balance from disastrous to catastrophic.
As Secretary of State and as a member of the "reality-based community," Mr. Kerry must block the pipeline project.
Warren Senders
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The Toronto Star reflects on the Keystone XL:
Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall, joined by 10 U.S. governors, released a letter recently urging President Barack Obama to swiftly approve the Keystone XL pipeline project.
As always, the argument is simple, and narrowly framed: 1. Canada has a lot of oil and the U.S. needs oil. 2. We don’t have enough pipeline capacity to handle our ambition for unconstrained growth in oilsands production. 3. Building the pipeline will create jobs.
What could be simpler? Nothing — as long as you pretend climate change doesn’t exist and don’t make it part of the conversation.
Post-Hurricane Sandy and scorching heat waves in the mid-west, that’s becoming a less tenable argument, at least in the U.S. In his second inaugural address, Obama called attention to the need for action on climate change, calling for America to lead the transition to sustainable energy sources. It’s an important reminder that we need to look at the issue through a different frame, one that pipeline project proponents and many in government are trying hard to avoid.
Scientists are telling us that, to avoid the worst effects of climate change, greenhouse gas emissions need to peak by 2017 and drop drastically by 2050. The International Energy Agency (IEA) — a leading voice on energy research and analysis of which Canada is a member — recently reported that unless we change course, by 2017 the energy infrastructure will be in place to produce the emissions that will take us across the 2°C warming threshold. The U.S. and Canada (under our current federal government), along with many other countries, have agreed to work to avoid crossing this threshold, the point at which our climate may become seriously destabilized.
Never mention the CC word. Ever. Sent January 24:
The economic arguments for exploiting the tar sands — oil is cheap; society needs that energy to continue economic growth — are analogous to the self-serving rationalizations of addicts everywhere.
Oil's always been expensive; we've just left its significant costs for our descendants to pay. Neither post-extraction cleanup or public health impacts are usually included in our calculations — and, of course, the catastrophic consequences of accelerating climate change must never be mentioned or considered.
The economic growth argument is a failure both on intellectual (we live on a finite planet) and moral (recall Edward Abbey's statement that growth for its own sake is "the ideology of the cancer cell") grounds.
The Keystone pipeline's not just a single disaster in the making, but multiple disasters on different scales of size and time. For the sake of our posterity, the Tar Sands oil must stay in the ground.
Warren Senders
Published.
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The Pasadena Star's Steve Cauzillo wonders about our President's taste for the fight:
"I am a firm believer that climate change is real, that it is impacted by human behavior and carbon emissions. And as a consequence, I think we've got an obligation to future generations to do something about it."
-President Barack Obama, Nov. 14, 2012
THE president has been sending signals on the environment like policy test balloons. He mentioned climate change twice since re-election, once during his victory speech and during a press conference at the White House.
Though he was cautious to say the inordinate number of freak storms lately (i.e., Superstorm Sandy in the Northeast) can't be traced with cause-and- effect accuracy to climate change, he did confirm his belief that the globe is getting warmer. He and 98 percent of all the scientists in the world agree that humans contribute to global warming, mostly due to industrialization which produces more greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane.
Of course, the next four years will be about avoiding the fiscal cliff, fixing tax policies, lowering the deficit and creating an economy in which employers can expand and new businesses can sprout.
But, even in that context, Obama told the press that much has been accomplished to reduce energy use. Cars are getting better gas mileage due to stricter standards. Wind, solar and biomass plants are opening up to provide electrical energy.
"If, on the other hand, we can shape an agenda that says we can create jobs, advance growth, and make a serious dent in climate change and be an international leader, I think that's something that the American people would support," said the president.
Now we're talking.
We shall see. Sent November 18:
While the President often talks a good game on climate issues, it is often disturbingly evident that other members of his staff regard them as irrelevant distractions — presumably from the economic questions that dominate the news cycle and the rhetoric of the President's conservative adversaries. Mr. Obama's apparent renewal of commitment to addressing climate change can have no more definitive test than his approval or rejection of the disastrous Keystone XL project.
Keystone is catastrophic on multiple levels of scale. The destruction of millions of acres of boreal forest in order to exploit Canada's tar sands is already an environmental blunder of huge proportions. Transporting the filthy oil across the US offers the potential for hundreds of local and regional disasters from leaks and contaminated aquifers — and, or course, burning all that oil will send the greenhouse effect into a drastic runaway zone from which recovery may be impossible. If President Obama allows the pipeline project to proceed, we will know that his commitment to the fight against global warming is inadequate to the magnitude of the crisis.
Warren Senders
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The Minneapolis Star-Tribune runs a McClatchy article titled,"Pressure builds on Obama over oil pipeline: Jobs vs. climate change." SOS:
WASHINGTON - President Obama's decision on whether to approve the controversial Keystone XL pipeline looms huge now that the election is over, and it could define Obama's legacy on energy and climate change.
The oil industry, which is pushing hard for approval, describes the choice as the president's "first test to the American people."
Environmental groups are promising that thousands of activists will demonstrate against the pipeline on Sunday outside the White House, just the beginning of the efforts that are being planned to sink the project.
Energy analyst Charles Ebinger said he thought two weeks ago that there was little chance Obama would kill the pipeline. But he's increasingly less sure about that.
Gotta stop the pipeline; gotta stop the "jobs vs. environment" bullshit meme. Sent November 18:
The notion that responsible environmental policies are "job-killers" is one of the most egregious falsehoods promulgated by fossil fuel spokespeople. The economy and the environment are only in opposition to one another if our notion of economic well-being is predicated on continuous consumption and continuous growth — inherently impossible on a finite planet. Wise economic policy recognizes that wealth is derived from the sustainable stewardship of Earth's natural resources. This self-evident truth is ignored by those whose self-interest depends on maximizing short-term profits.
Coincidentally, theirs are the same voices eagerly pressing for Administration approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, a fossil-fuel exploitation strategy of near-sociopathic irresponsibility. Yes, the Keystone XL will generate jobs: cleanup specialists, leak stoppage crews, and (eventually) oncologists. If fossil fuel corporations could rebrand themselves simply as energy delivery corporations, their technology and resources would make them essential to the sustainable economy our country needs so urgently.
Warren Senders
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Joe Nocera, in the New York Times, tries to reconcile the Keystone XL with the problems of climate change:
Here’s the question on the table today: Can a person support the Keystone XL oil pipeline and still believe that global warming poses a serious threat?
To my mind, the answer is yes. The crude oil from the tar sands of Alberta, which the pipeline would transport to American refineries on the Gulf Coast, simply will not bring about global warming apocalypse. The seemingly inexorable rise in greenhouse gas emissions is the result of deeply ingrained human habits, which will not change if the pipeline is ultimately blocked. The benefits of the oil we stand to get from Canada, via Keystone, far outweigh the environmental risks.
Uhhhhhhh-huhhhhhhhhh. Sent February 14:
The planetary environment is already well on its way down the tubes, thanks to the past century's worth of CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. From that perspective, the debate over the Keystone XL pipeline's contribution to our civilization's ongoing climaticide is all but irrelevant. Why deny a comforting cigarette to a terminal-stage lung cancer patient?
But Bill McKibben and other environmental activists aren't prepared to accept the inevitability of doom. From their perspective, it is absolutely crucial that, having recognized we are in a deep and inhospitable hole, we stop digging as quickly as possible.
The pro-pipeline rationale is (rather like the tar sands oil itself) a toxic mix of ingredients. Part petro-boosterism, part profit-mongering, and part "hippie-punching," the arguments of Keystone XL proponents embody both moral and imaginative failures. Our long-term energy economy must be sustainable if our species is to survive the coming centuries.
Warren Senders
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The Arkansas Times-Record runs a story about purported jobs purportedly at stake from not doing the Keystone XL:
Rep. Lee Terry, R-Neb., pointed to the fate of 60 employees of Welspun Tubular as reason to support construction of the Keystone pipeline.
“They say miles of pipeline are on the property and that has caused five dozen employees to lose their jobs,” Terry said. "The pipes would be part of the Keystone oil pipeline which is a project running from Canada to Texas."
“The president has said he would veto the bill," Terry said. "Mr. President, this is about creating jobs. Please join us."
Sen. John Boozman, R-Ark., brought up the same issue Wednesday on the Senate floor.
“Welspun Tubular Company, which makes pipes for the oil industry, has been producing pipe for the Keystone project. Unfortunately, due to the administration’s delay on Keystone, the company has already begun to lay workers off in Little Rock. They have 500 miles of pipe that was produced for the project, ready to go, that is just sitting at the facility,” Boozman said.
Boozman blamed politics for the delay, noting that the State Department has said a permit decision could not be delivered until after November 2012.
“President Obama needs to quit pandering to the radical environmentalists. He needs to do what is best for the country, not what he perceives is best for his re-election,” Boozman said.
Boozman, has also co-sponsored legislation that would require a construction permit to be issued within 60 days of passage.
Sociopaths. Hypocrites. Weasels. Sent Dec. 16:
In accusing President Obama of "pandering to radical environmentalists," Senator Boozman's remarks on the Keystone XL controversy inadvertently describe his own party's pro-oil strategy. For decades, Republicans have branded many genuinely concerned and patriotic Americans with such grossly misleading descriptions — but the real pandering is taking place on their side of the aisle.
As for the "radical" tag, there are indeed those who espouse extreme action on environmental issues; their positions should be repudiated by any responsible citizen. Perhaps the most drastic thing these malefactors are advocating is the actual physical alteration of the air we breathe; these extremists propose to increase atmospheric CO2 levels to levels last found when dinosaurs walked the Earth. Surely that's far more radical than the statements of anti-pipeline activists, who are simply pointing out that the long-term health and prosperity of our species should take precedence over the return-on-investment demands of multinational corporations.
Warren Senders
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The ideas in these letters are everyone's property now. If anyone reading this wants to make me happy, steal my stuff.
And if you're in Massachusetts, plan on coming to this Friday's Climate Concert.
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