Keep the Champagne on ice, environmental groups. Any exhilaration over President Obama's veto over the Keystone XL Pipeline is premature. Keystone is going to happen.
Obama rejected TransCanada's scheme to ship dirty tar sand oils from Alberta to the Gulf Coast merely on procedural grounds.
True to form, Obama made a lawyerly decision. He objected to the GOP's attempted hijacking of the State Dept.'s review of the 1,179-mile pipeline.
The Dept., which received TransCanada's application in 2012, says it "continues to review the presidential permit application for the proposed Keystone XL pipeline in a rigorous, transparent, and objective manner."
The President did not reject Keystone because it will worsen the global warming crisis. He hardly expressed agreement with green group 350.org that Keystone is the "fuse to the largest carbon bomb on the planet." Imaginge Barry using poetic imagery like that. Obama doesn't do emotions.
My gut tells me the President will ultimately come around on Keystone.
The Canadians are hell-bent on developing their oil sand assets, regardless of the degradation of the globe's climate and the poisoning of the land/water of Alberta. If not Keystone, a pipeline will transport tar oil to either Pacific or Atlantic oceans for export.
Canada is currently shipping its oil through the US via train. Oil-by-rail, a risky transportation mode, has soared because of inaction on Keystone.
The Wall Street Journal reported today that each day the equivalent of a 17-mile oil train is rumbling across the US.
Obama's oil railroad is traveling through places like the streets of Philadelphia.
That potentially explosive train is susceptible to derailments, fire, sabotage and terrorism. An accident or attack in a populated area would be devastating.
That's a much scarier proposition than a possible oil spill from a pipeline like Keystone.
Just-the-facts Obama certainly agrees.
A focus on all the ways that greenhouse gases are created, not just from fossil fuels, marks the evolution from clean energy and clean tech to climate tech, according to Melissa Mahoney from V2 Communications.
Kristin Wilson-Palmer, who has been a senior VP in Edelman’s Washington, DC office since 2021, joins the Natural Resources Defense Council as chief communications officer.
Educating the next generation to the facts and science surrounding the climate crisis.
Melanie Janin, who was executive VP at Weber Shandwick, has joined Conservation International as chief communications & marketing officer.
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