environment Politics: Keystone XL Tar Sands
by Warren
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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
environment: corporate irresponsibility Keystone XL
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Year 2, Month 11, Day 9: Why, They Couldn’t Hit An Elephant At This Dist…..!
Dr. James Knotwell of Lincoln, Nebraska, writes a piece for the Wauneta Breeze (NE). It’s a long and thoughtful analysis of why the Keystone XL is full of shit:
In trying to dissect and comprehend the theater that is the current Keystone XL controversy, I’m wondering whether to characterize its genre as comedy, tragedy, or farce; it contains elements of all three, but one must prevail.
It’s comical, for instance, to view the special legislative session as anything but a political move designed exclusively for CYA, but that’s the only way this “development” project could be considered funny.
Similarly, TransCanada’s faux concern for presumed accrual of economic benefits, as Charlie Litton and the Nebraska News Service ably demonstrated in last week’s Breeze posting, reveals the farcical nature of the Keystone XL escapade.
But that the Keystone XL project will end up as surefire tragedy for Nebraskans is a stone-cold, lead-pipe lock.
Of course the pipeline will ultimately fail with the fragile Nebraska landscape bearing the brunt of that failure, it might happen in months, it might happen in decades, but it will happen, and the actual cost then will be much greater than however much of the $4 billion in annual profits accumulates in the pockets of producers, transporters, and investors, who by then will have made themselves invisible or invulnerable anyway.
The real tragedy in this scenario, though, is the further undermining of community sovereignty by industrial investors — those financial overseers located everywhere else but here.
Only a few years back, with the wind-energy frenzy providing the fuel for industrial deception of magnitude comparable to TranCanada and its Albertan tar sands pipe, I found myself an insider in the construction of a private transmission line designed to move the wind-generated electricity of central Texas southeastward.
The procedure for building such a massive piece of linear infrastructure is dubious because it is highly secretive and frenetically paced.
There’s more. You should read it; the guy is very good. Sent November 5:
As Dr. James Knotwell points out, the Keystone XL project is a perfect example of corporate sovereignty trumping the needs of individual localities and regions. Oil company spokespeople say our economy cannot grow without the dirty crude of the Alberta tar sands, when what they really mean is that their balance sheets won’t grow nearly as fast. TransCanada’s advocates cynically trade off the pipeline’s inevitable environmental and health impacts with the sop of a few locally-based jobs.
Dr. Knotwell’s morally-charged analysis gains force when applied on larger scales of place and time. Extracting the tar sands’ oil endangers the environment upon which all earthly life depends; the CO2 released into the atmosphere is going to take centuries to dissipate — and our civilization will be threatened in ways we can barely imagine. An economy in which corporate profits outrank the long-term survival and prosperity of our species is profoundly immoral.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Barack Obama Keystone XL Tar Sands
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Year 2, Month 11, Day 7: We Break It, We Buy It
The Washington Post notes that President Obama is going to “take ownership” of the decision on the Keystone XL project:
President Obama said Tuesday that he will decide whether to approve or deny a permit for a controversial 1,700-mile Canadian oil pipeline, rather than delegating the decision to the State Department.
The proposal by the firm TransCanada to ship crude extracted from a region in Alberta called the “oil sands” to Gulf Coast refineries has become a charged political issue for the White House. Labor unions and business groups argue that it would create thousands of jobs in the midst of an economic downturn. Environmentalists — who plan to ring the White House in a protest on Sunday — say the extraction of the oil will accelerate global warming and the pipeline itself could spill, polluting waterways and causing severe environmental harm.
Anything is better than our hopelessly corrupt State Department. And anything is better than writing another damn letter about Richard Muller. Sent November 3:
In his November 2008 election-night speech in Chicago, Barack Obama offered a vision of the country that extended a century into the future, contrasting the life of a centenarian voter with the lives his two young daughters could expect to lead.
It is depressingly rare to find national leaders in our country who are capable of thinking beyond the next election cycle; America’s great historical figures, by contrast, are the ones who have risen above political exigency to address the needs of our longer-term future. That night in Grant Park, our president-elect showed himself capable of thinking in centuries.
We must remind Barack Obama to start thinking long-term once again when it comes to the oil of the Canadian tar sands. If he addresses the needs of the coming centuries rather than those of the fossil-fuel industry, he’ll recognize that the Keystone XL pipeline is a multi-generational disaster in the making.
Warren Senders
environment: corporate irresponsibility Keystone XL Tar Sands
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Year 2, Month 10, Day 10: Crude Cash.
The October 6 edition of the Lincoln, NE Journal-Star includes a piece on an upcoming meeting between TransCanada’s big cheeses and Nebraska government officials:
Three Nebraska lawmakers will meet Tuesday afternoon in Norfolk to discuss concerns with TransCanada officials over the route of the company’s proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline through the state.
The meeting was arranged by Speaker Mike Flood of Norfolk, who said Wednesday that the Legislature must move cautiously but deliberately in dealing with the pipeline issue.
The $7 billion, 1,700-mile pipeline proposed by TransCanada would carry oil from tar-sands deposits near Alberta, Canada, to refineries along the U.S. Gulf Coast.
The project has drawn fire from people who fear an oil leak would be disastrous because the pipeline would pass through Nebraska’s Sandhills region and over the massive Ogallala Aquifer, which provides irrigation and drinking water to a wide swath of the central United States.
Just because these people control billions of dollars is no reason to trust them an inch. Sent Oct. 6:
There are a great many factors Nebraska lawmakers should be considering when they meet with representatives of TransCanada, the corporation behind the Keystone XL pipeline. Some are obvious: all pipelines leak, and a proposed route that carries staggering quantities of extremely “dirty” oil over the Ogallala Aquifer is a disaster waiting to happen.
TransCanada officials won’t acknowledge that spills and leaks are inevitable, but they’ll probably offer the stringent regulations they’re imposing on pipeline operators (in Nebraska and other states along the way) as assurance that the project is extremely safe.
Lawmakers should remember that the oil industry has a long and ugly record of ignoring its own protocols, stonewalling investigations, manipulating evidence, and using its financial resources to corrupt the government agencies responsible for enforcing compliance with environmental regulations. Absent a vigorous, well-funded and incorruptible enforcement agency, TransCanada’s promises of safety aren’t worth a single drop of Ogallala water.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: corporate irresponsibility Keystone XL Tar Sands
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Year 2, Month 10, Day 7: Such Models Of Friendship Are Precious And Rare
The Omaha World-Herald reports on the latest FOIA release of correspondence between a TransCanada lobbyist and his former employees — the U.S. State Department:
WASHINGTON — A group opposed to the Keystone XL pipeline says a fresh batch of emails it released Monday shows the State Department is biased in favor of the project.
In one email exchange from a little over a year ago, pipeline lobbyist Paul Elliott forwarded a press release to State Department official Marja Verloop touting an endorsement of the pipeline by Montana Sen. Max Baucus.
“Go Paul! Baucus support holds clout,” Verloop responded.
Environmental advocacy group Friends of the Earth describes that email as a State Department employee literally rooting for the lobbyist and his effort to win approval of the Keystone XL.
The pipeline would carry 700,000 barrels of oil a day from tar-sand strip mines in western Canada to oil refineries on America’s Gulf Coast. It would cross Nebraska’s Sand Hills and the underground Ogallala Aquifer along the way.
This is the second round of emails that Friends of the Earth has obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and then released. The company behind the pipeline, TransCanada Inc., and the State Department have both said there have been no inappropriate interactions.
Well, they would, wouldn’t they? Sent October 3:
When our political environment has been so thoroughly contaminated by the vast financial power of multinational oil corporations, we shouldn’t be too surprised at an incestuous connection between a lobbyist for the Keystone XL pipeline and his former bosses in the State Department.
This pollution of our political environment is all too likely to find its counterpart in the “real world” of complex interdependent ecosystems. Calling TransCanada’s project a catastrophe waiting to happen is like calling Beethoven’s Ninth a “nice tune.” At multiple scales, from the inevitable leaks along the pipeline’s length to the destruction of vast swaths of boreal forest, and the potential for a devastating escalation of global climate change, the Keystone XL is a symphony of disaster.
It’s distressing that the U.S. State Department and its erstwhile employee turned pipeline lobbyist are singing from the same page. President Obama should revoke the Department’s authority over the pipeline.
Warren Senders
environment: corporate irresponsibility Keystone XL Tar Sands
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Year 2, Month 9, Day 21: I Love You. The Check Is In The Mail. I Promise Not To Leak Oil In Your Aquifer.
More specious pro-pipeline nonsense, this time reprinted in the September 16 issue of the Sacramento Bee:
Opponents object for two main reasons: First, they want to discourage the mining of oil sands. No question, tearing up boreal forests and ancient peat bogs to get at the petroleum within can’t help but degrade the land. The resulting semi-solid form of oil is dirtier than the smooth-flowing crude just below the Arabian desert. As with any fossil fuel, burning it pumps carbon and other pollutants into the atmosphere, and emissions from processing this particular form of fuel pose a problem as well. On the plus side, the technology used to exploit oil sands is improving from the old strip-mining techniques, curbing the environmental costs.
The other big worry is more of a scare tactic than a valid concern. Pipelines can leak. But to hear the anti-Keystone crowd tell it, you would think this one is about to be connected to kitchen sinks and lawn sprinklers from coast to coast. The fear-mongering about aquifers being polluted and wildlife habitat destroyed has no basis in reality. On the contrary, plans call for a state-of-the-art system, subject to rigorous inspections. America already has oil and gas pipelines crisscrossing the country and the Canadian border. This one, an expansion of a pipeline that already runs to downstate Illinois, will be built to a high safety standard.
Assholes. Sent September 17:
Advocates of the Keystone XL pipeline never state some of the crucial assumptions underlying their words. When we hear statements like “America is going to need that oil,” we should make a point of questioning them a little more assertively, and responding with some questions of our own.
Are millions of acres of boreal forests less important than our right to drive multi-ton vehicles to work — alone? Are poorly insulated homes more valuable than uncontaminated aquifers? Is the prospect of an irreversible climatic tipping point less scary than the thought of the world’s oil tycoons sacrificing a few profit points?
And we should remember BP’s excellent-looking plans for spill protection and remediation in the Gulf of Mexico, and ask: why should we believe TransCanada’s promise of a “state-of-the-art” pipeline, complete with a rigorous inspection schedule? Since when has the oil industry ever exemplified truthfulness, responsibility and good citizenship?
Warren Senders