Posted on 03/16/2013 5:10:52 PM PDT by smoothsailing
March 16, 2013
Stanley Kurtz
Deciding whether to approve the Keystone XL pipeline is surely one of the toughest challenges of Barack Obama’s presidency. He hasn’t made up his mind yet, of course. Or has he?
Bloomberg reports that the Obama administration “is preparing to tell all federal agencies for the first time that they should consider the impact on global warming before approving major projects.” Up to now, under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), federally approved projects had to consider potential impacts like dangerous spills or air pollution, but not global warming. Directing all federal agencies to take climate change into account under NEPA will transform environmental policy in this country, putting a huge new drag on the economy in the process.
But let’s concentrate on Keystone. The Bloomberg report makes it clear that Obama’s order opens the way for further litigation and substantial delays on Keystone, whether the federal government officially blocks construction or not. That’s because NEPA allows citizens and environmental groups to file claims against projects even after they win government approval.
So the Obama administration could green-light the pipeline, file a report that stops short of calling Keystone a major global-warming hazard, and still find the project delayed for years by environmental groups bringing court challenges under the new NEPA guidelines.
In this scenario, headlines loudly proclaiming Obama’s approval of Keystone would shield him from Republican attacks. Simultaneously, the president could mollify the left by claiming credit for guidelines that effectively allowed his allies to stop the pipeline. And that would be right. Obama can publicly “approve” Keystone, while simultaneously handing the left the tool they need to put the project on semi-permanent hold. Environmentalists would take the political heat, while Obama would get off scot-free. Pretty clever.
Now maybe Obama is going to nix the pipeline outright. That’s what Lawrence Solomon predicts. At this pont, however, Obama’s formal public decision may not matter. The Keystone XL pipeline may have already been effectively stopped by Obama’s quiet new directive. The only remaining question would be how much credit or blame Obama wants to openly take for a block that’s already been thrown.
Surprising no one.
These studies are going to make a whole lot of Obama’s friends rich.
It’s all about the money.
How can anyone be so pathetically stupid to write such a sentence?
How can a U.S. President be so bitterly destructive to decide against such a project?
An honest study of Keystone and GW would be that it would be worse if we did not build the pipeline since the oil would have to be transported to the West coast then to China to fuel their industrial expansion.
Because nobama's best bud Warren Buffet is making a major killing right now transporting the oil via his trains.
People may eventually catch onto this anti-American commie.
Glabull-Crap Warning. Huge numbers of scientists have jumped off that wagon... the evidence is overwhelming- manmade climate change is bunk...
But that doesn’t help their globalist, Marxist agenda...
Then he did it.
EVERYTHING he does either:
A) Weakens America
B) Distances America's allies
C) Strengthens America's enemies
D) Serves Islam
E) Harms Israel
Or some combination of the above.
I guess China needs Alberta’s bitumen than you guys.
Is he a two-faced weasel?
The turkey is good at figuring out a way to appease those who support him.
KXL pipeline is dead. Buffett Table’s railroad will make billions hauling oil, with wrecks, leaks and spills. Count on it. China or Russia will get the oil. Canada is PO’d.
Bingo. I live next to the railroad not far from where they load the tanker cars.
Buffett’s railroad is taking close to a million bbls of oil out a day
Bingo!
Yes, they will, which is why the pipeline can have no impact on global warming. The oil will be used somewhere.
The physician’s motto: “First, do no harm”.
Obama’s motto: “Do the most harm first”.
That may indeed be Obama’s plan.
Anything to hurt us and put money in Buffett’s pocket.
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