Posted on 02/01/2014 6:43:56 PM PST by thackney
The State Department today released its long-awaited environmental impact analysis of the Keystone XL pipeline. The analysis is key because President Obama announced last summer he would not approve the pipeline unless it was found to have no significant impact on climate change. And that’s what the analysis finds. It argues, as many other analysts have concluded, that if we block the pipeline, Canada will just ship the oil out by rail.
So, what public policy reason is there to block the pipeline? There really isn’t one. Indeed, the environmentalists' obsession with Keystone began as a gigantic mistake. Two and a half years ago, the environmentalist James Hansen wrote a blog post alerting his readers to the pipeline, which he concluded would amount to “game over” for the climate, as it would lead to the burning of enough new oil to moot any effort to limit runaway greenhouse gases. His analysis was based on a simple back-of-the-envelope calculation that turned out to be wrong in several respects, the most important being the assumption that blocking the pipeline would keep the oil in the Canadian oil sands in the ground.
The anti-Keystone movement was an accident. I recently argued that it was a huge mistake. Numerous allies of the environmental movement replied that it did make sense, after all. (See Joe Romm, Matthew Yglesias, Charles Pierce, and Ryan Cooper. All of them insisted that Keystone is indeed a good issue for environmentalists to organize around because it’s easy for people to understand. As Yglesias put it, “You sometimes need to focus on slightly eccentric issues that happen to have good organizing attributes.”)
Cooper mockingly asks readers to envision a protest where organizers shout, “What do we want?” “More stringent carbon dioxide emission regulations on extant coal-fired power plants!” “When do we want it?’ “After the extraordinarily complicated rule-writing process over which the president has no direct control!” It certainly may be easier to get people excited about opposing a pipeline. It may also be hard to get people excited about favoring new regulations.
But if your goal is to limit greenhouse-gas emissions, you need to have a strategy designed to advance policies that limit greenhouse-gas emissions. Stopping Keystone doesn’t do that. EPA regulations would. Would blocking the Keystone pipeline make it easier for Obama to issue tough regulations on existing power plants, and to negotiate an international climate treaty in 2015 after such regulations bring us into compliance with our reduction targets?
I don't see how. I think it would feed criticism by opponents that Obama is captive to environmentalists, even to the point of following their quixotic and marginal obsessions. Approving Keystone might give him more credibility to defend tough regulations. It's not guaranteed, of course. But the intuitive idea is for a movement to organize around the issues that matter, not the issues that are easiest to explain. Building a movement by misleading people is a strange choice.
No! Stop. Stop. It might help the economy.
That is why it won’t be built under Obama. Also Hillary doesn’t want it either.
Like Obamacare?
Building it would violate obama's rules of engagement:
EVERYTHING obama does either:
a) Weakens AmericaI have yet to have anyone raise a single substantive counter example in several years of posting this.
b) Distances America's allies
c) Strengthens America's enemies
d) Serves Islam
e) Harms Israel
Or some combination of the above.
(Although AJFavish did point out that I missed "increases dependency on the government")
....just what the little boy king needs, his ego inflating decision...the American citizenship depending and waiting on HIS decree. This employment creating, dependent easing weight could be made lighter on Americans. The decision has to wait tho, till the summer months, till HE is up to the task. The little boy king is bother with all these so-called scandals. The little boy king will hold off until he finishes with destroying what is still intact with America’s health system
The same people who do not want American manufacturing and American prosperity do not want Keystone built
Its more than just the Eco Extremists
If it’s approved look for a ‘deal’ for amnesty approval.
I remember when they said the ALASKA PIPELINE would never be built!
I said, “Wait till the Arabs embargo oil again, it WILL be built.”
A year later, “EMBARGO!” Gas prices again skyrocketed and the pipeline WAS built.
Eventually KEYSTONE will be built.
Uh, the statement in the article “ adding an eyesore of a giant tube across the landscape of our entire country.” makes one wonder if the author knows that pipelines are built underground.
Whether Keystone gets built or the tar sands go to China doesn’t really matter other than the potential beneficial impact on the U.S. economy which Butthead Odildo doesn’t want.
As long as the product becomes available to the world market, it helps all countries by increasing the total world supply of BTUs and it hurts OPEC since the product doesn’t originate from a source they control.
An article in the WSJ today said that the same oil is being trucked to the Gulf. Trucks produce the dreaded green house gasses. So, the pipe line would actually serve the deletions of the “environmentalist” opponents. Idiots.
That’s one example in a harsh environment. Thousands of miles in lower 48 are underground.
His cozy friendship with obama will keep his railroad monopoly intact.
Bingo. Obastard is caught between his environmental wacko pals and his buddy Warren Buffett. It would be funny to watch if the futures of 20,000 American workers weren’t at stake.
Global warming doesn’t exist, but that doesn’t stop people from believing the hoax.
The same is true of today's leftists. Their hatred for capitalism (and freedom) far exceeds the assessment of its effects. They will block the pipeline and watch every single barrel of Canadian oil and every carload of US coal be shipped off to China just so that they can exercise control over the free commerce of the average American.
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