Remember, these are the tar sands folks. I think Woody Guthrie sang it best:
Yes, as through this world I’ve wandered
I’ve seen lots of funny men;
Some will rob you with a six-gun,
And some with a fountain pen.And as through your life you travel,
Yes, as through your life you roam,
You won’t never see an outlaw
Drive a family from their home.
reagan-was-a-horrible-president:
The last 3 years, explained in one cartoon.
(Source: wentawaytotheskies)
Sweet victory!
The Obama administration has decided that it will not issue a permit before Feb. 21 for the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada, according to people with knowledge of the decision.
The announcement, which could come as early as Wednesday, comes in response to a 60-day deadline Congress imposed in late December on the decision-making process for the permit as part of a deal to extend a payroll-tax break and unemployment benefits for two months.
Today’s decision, expected from the State Department, would make official what the administration has said from the outset: that under current law, it cannot accelerate the permitting process, especially in light of the need for additional environmental reviews of a new path for the pipeline through Nebraska.
(via Keystone XL pipeline: Obama administration to deny Keystone XL oil pipeline permit - latimes.com)
I know I find this hard to stomach.
Standing in the very same room in which landmark laws like the Clean Air Act were written, environmental and public health advocates expressed their dismay Tuesday as House Republicans voted to pass what the advocates called a “poisoned” and “preposterous” payroll tax bill.
Their key concerns: Two extraneous provisions that would delay EPA’s regulations on industrial boilers and expedite the controversial tar sands pipeline project known as Keystone XL. The rider-laden bill is not expected to pass the Senate.
“Time and time again, House Republicans have added ‘poison pill’ riders to must-pass legislation,” Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, said during yesterday’s press conference in the EPW Committee Room. “This time these are really poison riders — because they are in essence saying we will have more poison in our atmosphere.”
read more on HuffPost
It’s not so simple, Harper, at least not to the First Nations people in Alberta. See my previous blog posts on tar sands.
Here’s a taste:
and the tarsands spin continues from the Stephen Harper conservative Canadian government!
Leo Hickman @ Guardian ~ Canadian campaign puts the spin on ‘ethical oil’: Tar sands website promotes a binary world where Canadian oil is ‘ethical’ and the rest is produced by ‘oppressors’ #tarsands #climate
Canada’s Ethical Oil Tar Sands Campaign Really Says ‘Stay Addicted To Oil’ @ TreeHugger
CBC ~ ‘Ethical oil’ campaign polishes oilsands image
Now imagine this gets into an aquifer. Can we afford the risk without further study?
By Elizabeth McGowan at SolveClimate
A single study by the U.S. Geological Survey in Minnesota is the sole source for what scientists know about crude oil behavior in aquifers
By Elizabeth McGowan, SolveClimate News
WASHINGTON—Great Plains states are risking an unknown level of environmental and economic hurt if the U.S. State Department persists in routing a controversial tar sands pipeline atop the Ogallala Aquifer without further study.
That is the scientific warning coming from a pair of University of Nebraska professors with expertise in groundwater flow and contamination.
In a June 6 letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (attached below), the two scientists laid out how their state’s fragile sandhills region is particularly vulnerable to crude oil pollution from a pipeline spill and why a research information gap needs to be closed.
Their concerns align with those expressed by Environmental Protection Agency authorities in their recent harsh critique of the State Department’s second attempt to draft an environmental review of the proposed $7 billion Keystone XL pipeline.
TransCanada’s 1,702-mile Keystone XL is slated to pump diluted bitumen from Alberta, Canada’s tar sands mines across Nebraska and five other states to Gulf Coast oil refineries via a 36-inch diameter underground pipeline.
“Uncertainty about crude oil plume behavior in waters of the Nebraska sandhills region has practical implications,” wrote John Gates, an assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, and Wayne Woldt, an associate professor in Biological Systems Engineering and the School of Natural Resources. “We feel that it is highly desirable to study contaminant risks in the sandhills in a more thorough and systematic way.”
…
In the era of extreme energy, we are indeed, “scraping the bottom of the barrel.” Because it’s environmentally unsustainable, it’s becoming politically unpalatable for Canada, our major oil supplier, to extract from tar sands, and we want more.
A group of lawmakers are calling on the Obama administration to take a closer look at the significant environmental impacts of a proposed massive pipeline that would carry Canadian tar sands oil 2,000 miles from northern Alberta all the way down to refineries in Texas and tankers off the Gulf Coast. Tar sands mining emits three times more greenhouse gas pollution than traditional oil and has come under heavy criticism from environmental and indigenous groups. Democracy Now!’s Mike Burke speaks to Clayton Thomas-Müller, a Canadian indigenous activist with the Indigenous Environmental Network.
