Posted on 01/03/2013 9:40:27 AM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson.(Reuters / Jonathan Ernst)
The head of the US Environmental Protection Agency announced she will step down from that role in the coming weeks, but a new report suggests her resignation may in fact be motivated by a 180 to be expected from President Obama.
EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson tells reporters that her decision to walk away as the top environmental regulator in the country after nearly four years comes at a time when she is “ready in my own life for new challenges, time with my family, and new opportunities to make a difference.” According to the New York Post, though, politics may indeed play a role in her pending resignation.
The paper reports that Jackson, a chemical engineer who has rallied to bring down greenhouse gas emissions under the Obama administration, is relinquishing her role because she believes US Pres. Barack Obama will put his weight behind the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline at any moment.
Last January, Pres. Obama put a hold on the Keystone project, essentially stalling progress on plans to install a system that would route Canadian tar sands to the Gulf of Mexico over the course of 1,700 miles of pipeline. At the time, Pres. Obama said, “Congressional Republicans prevented a full assessment of the pipeline's impact, especially the health and safety of the American people, as well as our environment," and asked for the application that would have allowed international construction to be denied.
Environmental advocates who have expressed grave concerns over the damage the pipeline could cause lauded Pres. Obama for stopping the construction in 2011. The Post says that insiders with knowledge close to the project expect the commander-in-chief to change his mind, however, and perhaps at a moment’s notice.
“Obama early this year rejected the Keystone project, but the pipeline’s operators have refiled their applications. And Jackson has told insiders that the president will approve the project this time — perhaps as soon as March or April,” The Post claims.
Speaking anonymously, the Post’s so-called “Jackson insider” claims that the administrator’s announcement is in response to Pres. Obama’s rumored intentions to give the pipeline his stamp of approval.
“She was going to stay on until November or December,” the source says. “But this changed it. She will not be the EPA head when Obama supports it [Keystone] getting built.”
Critics of the Keystone project say laying the extensive pipework will involve colossal efforts to clear land, environmentally devastating a large chunk of the American Midwest. Actually extracting and burning oil sands in Alberta, Canada raises whole other concerns, however, since opponents of the pipeline say the amount of greenhouse gas emissions released in the process will be hazardous not just to the land, but for the people of North America.
In 2011, Jackson opened up about the Keystone project, saying, "This isn't a little tiny pipeline, this is a pipeline that cuts our country literally in half.”
In a statement released last week, Jackson said she would step down from the EPA after Pres. Obama’s upcoming State of the Union address. She was appointed to that role by President-elect Obama in December 2008 and has in all spent around two decades with the agency.
bump
Years ago, during the hideous, slow slide to oblivion at Digital Equipment Corp. (DEC) created by new psychotic management hired in 1985, adherence to a prehistoric business model, and the hiring of a new, rapacious CEO who was rumored to actually eat employees at lunchtime, a very senior VP lost a political battle and left "to become a visiting professor at Nosebleed University in Idaho and to spend more time with his family."
I am comforted to see that the same laughable PR is still used today in "the most open and transparent administration in history." LOL!
Two things:
First of all, Lisa Jackson is an embarrassment to the engineering profession. The pipeline “cuts the country in half” - you mean like every one of the dozens of oil and gas pipelines already in place, not to mention every interstate highway?? It’s a miracle that chunks of the country have not fallen into the oceans, the way it’s been cut into pieces by infrastructure!
Second, although I’d be happy to hear that Keystone XL moves forward, why is it that jug-ears napoleon gets to “change his mind” on a construction project, and dictate whether it gets built or not? The developer applied for a permit based on existing law, it was either accepted or rejected, and then the project either gets built or not. I guess we used to be a nation of laws, now we are a nation of the whims of the anointed.
One notes that this month is the 15th anniversary of the death of DEC as it was bought by Compaq. Ah, the tales we DEC alums could tell...!
First of all, Lisa Jackson is an embarrassment to the engineering profession. The pipeline “cuts the country in half” - you mean like every one of the dozens of oil and gas pipelines already in place, not to mention every interstate highway?? It’s a miracle that chunks of the country have not fallen into the oceans, the way it’s been cut into pieces by infrastructure!
She hasn’t read her Soviet history. “No enemies on the left”.
Canadian tar sands will end up in one of two places. Either they end up in a US refinery operating under the highest environmental standards on the planet and having all sulfur removed. Or they end up in a Chinese refinery with zero environmental standards and no sulfur removal. Guess which one this EPA director prefers.
I’ll believe what “Richard Windsor”/Lisa Jackson has to say when I actually see the Blue-Lipped Usurper announce approval of Keystone on TV.
.... because so far, he’s been mouthing all the shopworn excuses of the enviro-left to justify NOT approving Keystone. His team did all they could to shut down oil production in the Gulf; why would they feel any different about the midwest?
These people are hostile to oil, period.
Is Buffett the modern day Cornelius Vanderbilt in this Rockefeller/Vanderbilt replay?
I believe it.
This administration clearly has no fear of investigations, since they’ve so successfully quashed the whole Benghazi mess.
On the other hand I think it likely that Obama is about to throw his green allies under the bus and build the pipeline. Plus he will frack baby frack. He has no choice really, he will need that revenue to continue his project of growing the government. (for one thing lots of requests for bailouts will shortly be coming from state and local governments)
Buffet is also deep in the life “reinsurance” business.
Those are usually HUGE cases.
Those cases are usually done for estate tax shelter purposes.
These so called environmentalists don’t give a rat’s rear about the environment or anything else except power to tell someone else what to do and how to live their life.
How do they explain (they are never required to) flying around the country (world) using the same ‘dirty oil’ they protest?!
Good grief! These people are so stupid how do they remember to breath?
White man's steel road cut land in half keep buffalo from migrating.
From her picture I can see why restricting the movement of buffalo would bother her.
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