Someone is piping you something, dear reader:
"Report on pipeline draws few conclusions" by John M. Broder | New York Times, March 02, 2013
WASHINGTON — The State Department issued a revised environmental impact statement for the 1,700-mile Keystone XL pipeline on Friday, which makes no recommendation about whether the project should be built but presents no conclusive environmental reason it should not be.
The lengthy document also draws no conclusions on whether the pipeline is in the United States’ economic and energy interests, a determination to be made later this year by President Obama. But it will certainly add a new element to the already robust climate change and energy debate around the $7 billion proposed project.
I'm already feeling gassy.
The study will help guide the president’s decision, but it does not make the politics any easier. Environmental advocates and landowners along the route have mounted noisy protests against the project, including a large demonstration in Washington last month, and view Keystone as a test of Obama’s seriousness about addressing global warming.
The president faces equally strong pressure from industry, the Canadian government, many Republicans, and some Democrats in Congress, local officials, and union leaders, who say the project will create thousands of jobs and provide a secure source of oil that will replace crude from Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, and other potentially hostile suppliers.
Except it's OIL for EXPORT! And we know who will win this debate; the only question is when Obama quietly approves it (late on a Friday perhaps?).
The draft report, which updates a 2011 study that essentially gave the project a green light, weighs the impact of the pipeline, which would carry about 800,000 barrels a day of heavy crude oil from tar sands formations in Alberta across the Great Plains to Gulf Coast refineries. Obama rejected the original route proposed by the pipeline operator, TransCanada, because of potential adverse effects on sensitive grasslands and aquifers in Nebraska.
Related: Obama Closes Canada Pipeline For Political Purposes
That's okay; it's why he does everything.
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"GOP uses report to renew pipeline push; Environmental impact small, US study shows" by Matthew Daly | Associated Press, March 03, 2013
WASHINGTON — House Speaker John Boehner and other supporters of the long-delayed Keystone oil pipeline from Canada say a new State Department report is the latest evidence that the long-delayed project should be approved.
The draft report, issued Friday, found there would be no significant environmental impact to most resources on the proposed route from western Canada to refineries in Texas. The report also said other options to get the oil from Canada to Gulf Coast refineries are worse for climate change....
Yeah, except.... never mind. Just keep the stuff from spilling.
After four years of what he called ‘‘needless delays,’’ Boehner said it is time for President Obama ‘‘to stand up for middle-class jobs and energy security and approve the Keystone pipeline.’’
Environmentalists see the State Department report in a vastly different light.
They say it was inadequate and failed to account for climate risks posed by the pipeline. The report also is based on a false premise, opponents say — namely, that tar sands in western Canada will be developed for oil production regardless of whether the Keystone XL pipeline is approved.
‘‘Americans are already suffering from the consequences of global warming, from more powerful storms like Hurricane Sandy to drought conditions currently devastating the Midwest and Southwest,’’ said Daniel Gatti of the group Environment America.
Oh-kay. The drought is now floods, and it is still snowing in places after another record-cold winter. Please stop it. That doesn't mean I'm for big oil, far from it. I'm a wind and solar man, but they aren't enough to power an industrial or technological society. Besides, all that money was wasted on wars, Wall Street, and corporate welfare.
Production of oil from Canadian tar sands could add as much as 240 billion metric tons of global warming pollution to the atmosphere, Gatti said, a potential catastrophe that would hasten the arrival of the worst effects of global warming.
Better to take those two words off and just say pollution. As for the rest, pfffffft.
Gatti and other opponents said development of the vast tar sands is far from certain, despite assurances by the project’s supporters.
‘‘Tar sands can be stopped, and we are stopping it,’’ Gatti said, citing a rally in Washington last month attended by an estimated 35,000 people.
Project opponents also have blocked construction in Texas and Oklahoma and have been arrested outside the White House gate.
Obviously sympathetic and approved of protests in my agenda-pushers eyes.
The pipeline plan has become a flashpoint in the US debate about climate change.
Or energy resources. Maybe when I see climate change I will start substituting that.
Republicans and business and labor groups have urged the Obama administration to approve the project as a source of jobs and a step toward North American energy independence.
Environmental groups have been pressuring the president to reject the pipeline, saying it would carry ‘‘dirty oil’’ that contributes to global warming. They also worry about a spill.
The State Department review stopped short of recommending approval of the project, but it gave the Obama administration political cover if it chooses to endorse the pipeline in the face of opposition from many Democrats and environmental groups.
State Department approval of the 1,700-mile pipeline is needed because it crosses a US border.
The draft report issued Friday begins a 45-day comment period, after which the department will issue a final environmental report before Secretary of State John Kerry makes a recommendation about whether the pipeline is in the national interest.
Didn't he just divest his stock holdings?
Kerry has promised a ‘‘fair and transparent’’ review of the plan and said he hopes to decide on the project in the ‘‘near term.’’ Most observers do not expect a decision until summer at the earliest.
The lengthy report stated that Canadian tar sands are likely to be developed, regardless of whether the United States approves the Keystone XL pipeline, which would carry oil through Montana, South Dakota, Kansas, Nebraska, and Oklahoma.
The report acknowledges that development of tar sands in Alberta would create greenhouse gases but makes clear that other methods of transporting the oil — including rail, trucks and barges — also pose a risk to the environment.
The State Department analysis for the first time evaluated two options using rail: shipping the oil on trains to existing pipelines or to oil tankers. The report shows that those other methods would release more greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming than the pipeline.
It's the same with electric cars. Power plant burns more greenhouse gases making the electricity than is saved by the environmentally-friendly vehicle. Most of the time, environmental credits are tax shelters for the elite or tax loot cash cows for the well-connected.
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Maybe he will pull a Nixon.
About those protests:
"8 arrested in Westborough for Keystone XL protest" by Travis Andersen, Jeremy C. Fox and Todd Feathers | Globe Staff and Globe Correspondents, January 07, 2013
WESTBOROUGH — Eight protesters were arrested at the TransCanada corporate offices here Monday afternoon after they superglued their hands and chained their waists and ankles together to protest the company’s Keystone XL oil pipeline....
Jacklyn Gil, a Brandeis University junior who helped coordinate the demonstration, said Monday that the protesters were not affiliated with any other group and were opposed to the pipeline because they believe it will seriously damage the environment.
Now I see how the Globe knew.
TransCanada spokesman Shawn Howard called the protest a “stunt” and said the company’s first priority is to ensure the safety of its employees.
“This publicity stunt is another example of protesters’ attempts to stop a project that is currently providing thousands of jobs to American workers,” he said in a statement.
The Keystone XL project is a proposed 1,179-mile extension to an existing 2,150-mile pipeline system run by TransCanada that transports crude oil from eastern Alberta, Canada, to the American Midwest.
The pipeline is a $7 billion project that would ultimately connect oil sands in Canada to refineries in Texas. Though the pipeline is not designed to pass through Massachusetts, Gil said the students are acting to show solidarity with protests scheduled in Texas in coming days.
One protester, Devyn Weis Powell, 20, of Lake Oswego, Ore., a Tufts University junior, reiterated the group’s environmental concerns in an e-mail to a reporter.
I wonder if he went to the party.
“As you read this e-mail, I am locked down in a TransCanada office with seven other youth activists,” she wrote. “We are engaged in a protest against construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, because building this pipeline to develop the tar sands will lock us irrevocably into the climate crisis.”
Related: E-mail a thing of past for business, young
So are newspapers and their controlled-opposition friends.
Powell added, “Chaining myself to my seven friends is a last resort after our government, heavily influenced by corporate fossil fuel interests, has proved unable to take action against this deadly project.”
Web added all this:
After posting $40 bail each, demonstrators walked out into the police station lobby at about 9:15 p.m., hugging supporters and posing for photos.
Lisa Rose Purdy, 20, of Waltham, a Brandeis junior, said responders brought in nail polish remover to unglue the protesters but ended up just pulling their hands apart.
“It wasn’t that bad,” she said.
Purdy said the demonstrators were happy to be released but also thought their action was effective in showing solidarity with fellow protesters in Texas.
“It went really smoothly,” she said of the Westborough demonstration. “We practiced a lot and had an awesome support team.”
??????????
Allison J. Welton, 20, of Tonasket, Wash., a Harvard University sophomore, said protesters chained and glued themselves together to tell the company that it “needs to stop locking us into climate-change disaster.”
These poor souls. Totally brainwashed by the ejoucashunel sistum.
The ungluing process “hurt a little bit, but not terribly,” she said. “I think the chains were a little bit more uncomfortable, to be honest.”
Welton said demonstrators told the TransCanada receptionist they had arrived for a peaceful protest, and the woman replied no before summoning other employees.
She said those workers told the protesters the Westborough office was not responsible for the Keystone pipeline and called police.
“I think the police were largely very respectful of us,” Welton said.
I'll bet they were.
Benjamin L. Thompson, 22, of Durham, N.H., a Boston University graduate student, said he is not apprehensive about potential legal penalties.
“I think it’s important to me that I be able to [say] that I’ve done everything I can to stop climate change,” he said. “People in the past have gone through much worse for much less.”
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