Year 2, Month 11, Day 15: This Hurts You More Than It Hurts Me. Or Something.

The San Francisco Chronicle reprints an article from the Houston Chronicle on the Good Decision Rationalized Stupidly:

The Obama administration said Thursday that it will consider alternative routes for the Keystone XL oil pipeline to avoid ecologically sensitive areas of America’s heartland – a move that delays a final decision on the controversial project until after the 2012 election.

The move solves a political dilemma for President Obama, who risked alienating key voting blocs no matter what decision he made on the pipeline that would carry Canadian oil sands crude from Alberta to Port Arthur, Texas. The project pitted environmentalists against some labor unions and the oil industry, and Obama would have been delivering a verdict before an election that could turn on who can do the most to turn around the nation’s ailing economy.

Sheesh. Sent November 10:

Eternally cautious, the Obama administration continues to hedge on the feasibility of the Keystone XL pipeline. While the postponement of a final decision on tar sands development until 2013 was cheered by environmentalists, the White House’s public rationale ducks the issue of climate change entirely, focusing on possible damage to water supplies.

Here’s the thing: the pipeline’s a terrible idea on multiple levels. The inevitable leaks will contaminate one of the nation’s most important aquifers with carcinogens; extracting tar sands oil is going to devastate huge expanses of forest, leaving a moonscape behind and eliminating a critical carbon sink — and putting all that CO2 into the atmosphere will kick global warming into overdrive, pushing the Earth down the path to an ever-bleaker future.

Usually, “not in my back yard” denotes a local or regional concern. When it comes to the Keystone XL, we need to say “Not In My Planet.”

Warren Senders