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February 28, 2014 at 5:15 pm #610598
wakefloodParticipantOK, so we may very well be nearing the “final” decision point on Keystone XL.
I think Obama’s been positioning the administration to let it happen.
How?
Asked for a new “unbiased” Environmental Review that he knew was going to come out of former KXL consultants. (Gee, wonder what THAT will say??) He has psuedo-scientific cover that he wanted.
Pushed the decision out to past final election.
His standard predilection for not walking the talk when it comes to environmental issues, which has led him to attempt to pre-inoculate himself two ways: One – he’s announced some other pro-environmental decisions to offset KXL. Two – he’s got Kerry to act as a heat-shield for the actual decision.
I suspect one of the reasons Kerry got this gig was to pacify the environmental lobby knowing they were going to sign off on KXL and it always looks better to the uninformed if the media can say that a “staunch supporter of the environment” endorses the project.
I really, REALLY hope I’m wrong but I think the writing is on the wall.
So…anyone else care to cast their vote on how they think this one will go?
PS – If anyone cares to try and support the project as having more upside than down, feel free – although I think that’s a losing argument. Just make sure you cast your vote not in favor of the project itself, but more importantly, what you think the administration’s decision will be, please.
February 28, 2014 at 5:22 pm #805012
wakefloodParticipantAnd btw, I think Obama knew what he wanted to do wit KXL from day one in office. He’s been laying groundwork ever since.
The process is well-known and painfully obvious. Delay, pacify, obfuscate position by sounding like you’re neutral, generate offsets, build cover, announce, drop the mic and walk offstage.
February 28, 2014 at 6:24 pm #805013
wakefloodParticipantCouldn’t resist adding a little info about KXL from a post. I’ll tell you the Congressperson who posted it if anyone cares to ask but here it is:
Today, energy independence soon will be a reality.
For China. Thanks to the Keystone XL pipeline.
Q. Cui bono? (“Who benefits?”) A. China.
The Chinese economy consists of taking raw materials and energy, making that into stuff, and then selling that stuff – a/k/a “manufacturing.” Chinese leaders understand that in order for that model to work, China needs steady supplies of raw materials and energy. By how do you get a steady supply of energy, in a world where those supplies are dominated by a cartel, and are concentrated in a part of the world prone to war? In America, we’ve been trying to puzzle that out for four decades, without success. (Wakeflood note: We ARE much more energy independent than we were for decades by…you guessed it, accessing every dirty, CO2 emitting source we have!)
Well, the Chinese have figured it out. They’re going to get their energy from Canada, a stable country, and pass it through the United States, another stable country. They will pay the Canadians the world price for oil. They will pay us nothing, or next to nothing. So Uncle Sam is Uncle Sucker.
And not for the first time. For the past decade, China has pursued an utterly unscrupulous and incredibly successful strategy in “trade” with the United States. China has been importing from the United States roughly $50 billion in goods each year, much of it food, raw materials and energy. China has been exporting to the United States roughly $350 billion in goods each year, mostly manufactured goods. And China has been buying roughly $300 billion in U.S. assets each year, mostly U.S. Treasuries. So we buy their stuff, putting their people to work. And they buy our assets, driving us deeper and deeper into debt. America loses – twice.
Now China has peeled off a tiny portion of that trade surplus, just $30 billion, and audaciously is trying to parlay that into permanent energy independence. China has put that money into Canadian tar sands.
Canadian tar sands are easily one of the dirtiest energy sources on Planet Earth. Does China care? No. As Deng Xiaoping used to say, “it doesn’t matter whether a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice.” China’s leaders are so indifferent to environmental concerns that they have no problem with 8-year-olds in Beijing contracting lung cancer from pollution – but they get upset when the U.S. Embassy in Beijing puts an air quality monitor on the roof, and posts the readings on the internet. Canadian tar sands are a very, very black cat, but China’s leaders care only about catching mice.
Chinese leaders have seized key elements of the world industrial supply chain, like rare earths. According to our government, they engage in pervasive industrial espionage. They have threatened American companies like Apple, Google and Walmart. In short, they know how to play the game.
All of the oil that passes through the Trans-Alaska Pipeline has to be sold in the United States. Why not the same rule for the Keystone XL Pipeline? But instead, we allow a tax-free zone, to facilitate Chinese energy independence at the expense of our own. Why does Uncle Sam have to be Uncle Sucker?
There are plenty of reasons to be against the Keystone XL pipeline. Environmentalists recognize it as the ultimate “bonfire of the vanities” – planet-wide carbon bonfires. The pipeline passes through an active earthquake zone. One bad spill could permanently poison the Ogallala Aquifer, which provides drinking water to millions of people, and 30% of our irrigation.
Here is another reason, perhaps the best reason of all: It doesn’t do us any good. China, yes. The Koch Brothers (who own the refining capacity that would be used), yes. Us, no.
When are we finally going to have a government with the courage to ask that simple question: Does it do us any good? Cui bono?
February 28, 2014 at 7:24 pm #805014
tom kelleyParticipantWhat I find troubling about the KXL is the lack of discussion about the alternative. The Canadians will sell the oil if not to us then to the Chinese who will burn it upwind of the U.S. To get the oil to China it will either go by rail or a yet to be built pipeline to the B.C. coast. The result will be Chinese supertankers transiting the Straight of Juan de Fuca. Google Exxon Valdes for the possible local disaster.
February 28, 2014 at 8:14 pm #805015
wakefloodParticipantThat’s a pretty large assumption, TK. What data do you have to show that BC wants the pipeline? I’ve heard anecdotally that it’s not very popular there, either.
Ask youself the question: Why would Canada try to cross an international border and 5 independent states with myriad environmental laws, load the oil onto tankers that would have to pass through a taxed Panama canal, have to ship the oil thousands of extra miles at higher costs, and fight lengthy and costly court battles, if they could run the dang thing a shorter distance across one presumably friendly provincial border and be done with it??
Does that sound even remotely logical to you?
February 28, 2014 at 8:22 pm #805016
wakefloodParticipantThe self-evident answer is that it would already have happened if it was anything close to a given. It clearly is not.
February 28, 2014 at 8:30 pm #805017
wakefloodParticipantThink about how much all that hassle adds up to in terms of $ and how much of that you’d be willing to fork over to B.C. in blackmail to just get it done? The answer is huge and you know Canada Oil floated that offer waaaay back when.
There’s a reason B.C. didn’t bite. If their own country didn’t, why should we?
February 28, 2014 at 8:31 pm #805018
wakefloodParticipantAnd I’d be appreciative if you would offer your guess as to which way the administration will go on the decision?
March 1, 2014 at 5:48 pm #805019
wakefloodParticipantI suspect either my multiple posts were either too righteously indignant or unintentionally snarky or both to elicit any responses? Apologies to all.
Regardless, I did hope this topic reached some minimum level of interest, but I am apparently mistaken. I find that disheartening. Maybe we’re all resigned to a certain fate already?
March 1, 2014 at 8:17 pm #805020
seaopgalParticipantI’ve opened this thread 10x trying to think of something meaningful to say, but the whole thing just disgusts and exhausts me. I hate that Alberta (and North Dakota) is willing to destroy its environment for jobs. I hate that we are so enamored of the endless, cheap, plastic crap that we buy from Asia that we are willing to risk our health and future to keep the iPhones flowing. I hate that the U.S. is apparently willing to do anything to worship at the altar of “energy independence” (except support the clean alternatives that would make us truly independent and secure). I hate that the Koch brothers exist …
But since you asked, I think the administration will approve the pipeline, mostly due to the “inevitability” factor: Not approving it will not stop the destruction. I hope I am wrong …
March 1, 2014 at 8:37 pm #805021
JoBParticipantseaopgal said it for me
“I’ve opened this thread 10x trying to think of something meaningful to say, but the whole thing just disgusts and exhausts me.”
March 2, 2014 at 12:21 am #805022
wakefloodParticipantI feel both of you. It turns my gut just thinking about it. But I might be slowly coming to the conclusion that this one is something I have to fight. I don’t know what else I can do besides the letters and petitions and a few $s but I may need to find something else.
I was hoping that there would be sit ins or other demonstrations I could attend. We only lose when we give up and I may rage against the dying of the light on this one…
March 2, 2014 at 4:37 pm #805023
JoBParticipantwake.. i have been fighting from my keyboard from the beginning.. and i haven’t stopped.
Someone re-posted a Bernie comment on facebook this morning..
basically.. the Canadians sell their oil.. China gets oil… the Koch’s get profits from their refinery.. America gets all the risk..
this is a bad bad deal for America
March 2, 2014 at 8:31 pm #805024
elikapekaParticipantI think it’s a go. I agree it’s a bad deal for us. But keep an eye on the lawsuit in Nebraska. That could throw a wrench into things.
March 2, 2014 at 8:43 pm #805025
seaopgalParticipantAnd now for something even more depressing because it’s local … although perhaps a greater opportunity for action just because it is local: the proliferation of oil trains through Washington State and corresponding oil tankers through the Salish Sea.
http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2023010436_biztaltoncol02xml.html
March 2, 2014 at 8:44 pm #805026
dobroParticipantThere’s a big protest going on right this minute. You won’t hear it on the media. Oscars!!!!
you can see it on livestream…
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/03/02/1281534/-Breaking-Anti-KXL-March-to-White-House
March 2, 2014 at 11:10 pm #805027
JanSParticipantwas just reading an article about the protest…interesting comments about it from uninformed people…
March 2, 2014 at 11:51 pm #805028
JanSParticipanthere’s another like telling about the protests: be sure to read some of the comments.
March 3, 2014 at 1:29 am #805029
dobroParticipant398 people have been arrested. Any reports in the MSM?
March 3, 2014 at 6:45 pm #805030
wakefloodParticipantWell Dobro, I didn’t see anything last night, nor did HuffPo even bother to post it that I can see?
Man, it sure feels like the fix is in, doesn’t it?
March 3, 2014 at 7:13 pm #805031
seaopgalParticipantI did see a HuffPo post, plus Canadian Broadcasting, Chicago Tribune … small article with bad photo in today’s Seattle Times. Nothing on NBC national news last night, although they did cover a protest by Hollywood workers concerned about their jobs moving to NYC.
March 3, 2014 at 7:24 pm #805032
wakefloodParticipantI have nothing to back this thought up but it occurred to me recently that there’s one strategic reason to do KXL and maybe Obama (and others) are enamored with the idea of it.
It’s not energy independence – since most of this oil is promised to China BUT there’s a corollary: That being that after 50yrs. of being held at knife point by energy cartels, KXL represents an opportunity to hold the knife.
The owners of this country I feel, would DEARLY love to have some way to blackmail China should it ever need to – and there’s lots of reasons to think that day could come (cybersecurity, military expansion, owning our debt, etc.). If China pushes too hard, we can shut off the tap.
How many other opportunities would we have to yank their chain? We got nuthin.
Hmmm…
March 4, 2014 at 5:30 pm #805033
wakefloodParticipantA new article on KXL from yesterday. It is a report from the UK that points out how the US State department rigged the latest EIS. (Nothing like telegraphing your decision, eh?)
A short excerpt:
“…under ALL the Keystone-generated-emissions scenarios THAT WERE CONSIDERED in the State Department’s report, the U.S. would fail to meet the target of cutting emissions by 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020, the goal the U.S. has established in the context of international climate negotiations. The emissions estimates are also not consistent with the goal of limiting global warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius, which world leaders agreed to at the 2009 climate summit in Copenhagen.
Other groups, like the U.S.-based environmental group Oil Change International, have argued that none of the scenarios for future energy use used in the FEIS would put the U.S. on a path to meeting those stated climate coals. “The State Department is assuming failure in meeting our climate goals,”.
Here’s the report: http://www.carbontracker.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Kxl-The-Significance-Trap_FINAL_03_03_2014.pdf
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