Since last fall, a steady stream of damning evidence about questionable relationships, lobbying practices and political bias have been flowing from the Keystone XL pipeline process. This weekend's outrageous revelation that TransCanada supervised the environmental review has poisoned the process beyond repair.
It's time to KO Keystone XL. It is irreversibly polluted.
Dozens of emails between State Department employees and the chief lobbyist for the company behind the pipeline, TransCanada, reveal a cozy and solicitous relationship.
An earlier 2009 cable obtained by WikiLeaks found another State Department higher-up was caught advising Canadian officials on how to spin their message to win favorable media coverage of Canadian crude.
These murky relationships and end-runs around science were hallmarks of previous administrations that disdained science. Has the Obama administration signed on as well? It may not have been your intent, but the State Department looks like just another agency on a mission to protect Big Oil.
The pipeline itself represents what would be an environmental disaster of epic proportions. The pipeline would send the world's dirtiest oil -- from Canada's tar sands -- over 1,700 miles through farms, over ranches, and across towns. It would run directly through the Ogallala Aquifer -- the source of drinking water for 2 million people -- and across nearly 2,000 rivers, streams and other water bodies.
The risk of major oil spills and chronic contamination of drinking water is real. Look what happened in the Kalamazoo River last summer. Is this an Obama Administration priority?
For climate change, the news is even worse. One of the world's foremost climate experts, NASA's James Hansen, calls it "essentially game over" for the climate if we allow Alberta Tar Sands to be developed.
Last year, we all saw both the hottest year on record and the greatest amount of global warming pollution in history. Extreme weather events are taking place around the world.
This is an Administration that promotes clean energy alternatives and better fuel efficiency. Or does it?
Approving XL is like sanctioning a drug cartel to fuel future oil addiction... and making today's oil just a gateway drug to the nasty bitumen from tar sands. And like a drug cartel, there will be violence, in this case to our reservoirs, rivers, and streams.
To be sure, policies to reduce climate risk and a transition to clean energy are challenging with our current partisan politics. But does the State Department want its first major environmental decision to be locking-in more CO2 emissions and putting more of our precious fresh water at risk?"
The Keystone XL pipeline will pollute -- just as the Trans-Alaska pipeline has. And the first victim is the reputation of the State Department and this Administration. It's time for the State Department to restart the process. It's all just gotten too oily.
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Sen. Ron Wyden: Is the Keystone XL Pipeline a Good Deal for Americans?
Conrad Black: Global Warning: Trust Scientists, Not Shamans
You'd be better off pushing a robust carbon tax but oh that's right, that can't happen b/c the global left has bungled the carbon tax sale job by relying on algore, Obama (of crony capitalism and cap and trade fame), the IPCC and East Anglia. They have compounded their bungling by conflating global warming which is strictly an atmospheric anomaly with "social justice", global redistribution of wealth and "global governance."
Americans are yawningly uninterested in global warming; fifteen years after the Kyoto treaty, the public couldn’t care less.
Your only chance for a carbon tax is the LMAD plan. Get onboard!
LMAD is more than just a carbon tax: Healthcare-for-All? It’s in there. Balanced budget? It’s in there. CARBON TAX? It’s in there. Rational taxation? Amnesty? Border Security? Limited government? Social Security and Medicare solvency? It’s all in there; it’s all paid for and it’s all scalable and optimized for economic growth.
Blog: letsmakeadeal-thebook.com/
Ecosystems and biological diversity are in the eco-nomics of life itself or oxygen releasing, fresh water, climate regulation and moderation, the gaseous composition of the atmosphere, the nitrogen cycle and a long list of vital, life giving cycles, functions and systems, including, all ecosystems create the very life zone of Earth or the biosphere. All ecosystems are interconnected, and all have feedbacks and loops to the atmosphere and the climate.
Deforestation of ecosystems inherently heats up and dries out the climate, and to-date, man cannot re-create an ecosystem. He can grow trees, but ecosystems are beyond man's capacity as ecosystems are so complex and so dependent upon their biological diversity, from microorganisms in the soil, all the way up the chains of life.
Can you seriously blame them for ignoring the Environmentalists?
Time after time, Environmentalists have threatened to pull support from President Obama - but they never do. You can only threaten doomsday, and have it REPEATEDLY not happen, before people just start tuning you out. Environmentalists have lost their credibility, and until they follow through with their threat to pull support from the President and the DNC, the president will ignore them.
Tragically, the financial economy and the Earth's eco-nomy are integrated, one to the other.
http://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2010/09/athabasca-river-how-many-politicians_07.html
The halo of contamination around the mine site is at least 50 kilometres in diameter and is impacting Aboriginal settlements downstream from the operations.
There was no particular reason to blame the oil sands, especially given that contaminated water is not released into the Athabasca river.
Removing the plant biological diversity [deforestation], not only heats up and dries out the climate, it kills the homes/habitat, food and shelter of all animal biological diversity, and the bare soil [hotter than a forested plot] is opened to the heat of the sun. The springs and waterways will then dry out, resulting in a drier and hotter climate.
The extinctions of biological diversity also causes dead planet as all plant and animal biological diversity are the creators and job-holders of and in ecosystems. All ecosystems are integrated; they all have feedbacks to the atmosphere and climate, and they all create the life zone of Earth, the biosphere.
Yarnold expects us to be shocked that the State Department was in close communication with TransCanada Pipeline.
Of course they were. The State Department was evaluating the pipeline - how could they not be? They probably had hundreds of questions. But I bet the State Department was also in close communication with dozens of other stakeholders in the project, including its critics.
Really, this is silly.