NYTimes Destroys KXL Opponents Climate Claims – ‘The Keystone pipeline is a rounding error’
…‘Keystone Uncensored’ – Labor leader Terry O’Sullivan who twice endorsed Obama, now calls Administration ‘gutless,’ ‘dirty’ and more
‘Fossil fuels have made the earth cleaner, not dirtier’
http://dailycaller.com/2014/04/22/fossil-fuels-have-made-the-earth-cleaner-not-dirtier/…
‘Ridiculous’: Administration punts on Keystone, Obama faces Dem revolt
State Department To Delay Keystone XL Pipeline Decision Until After November
State Department To Delay Keystone XL Pipeline Decision Until After November
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/04/18/3428625/keystone-delay-midterms/
President Barack Obama arriving at the TransCanada Stillwater Pipe Yard in Cushing, Okla.
CREDIT: AP Photo/Pablo Martinez
The State Department will “extend the government comment period on the Keystone XL pipeline, likely postponing a final decision on the controversial project until after the Nov. 4 midterm elections,” Reuters reported on Friday afternoon. The organization credited the information to a 1:30 call with Congressional staff.
State will a February district court decision, Patrick Rucker of Reuters tweeted, that struck down a Nebraska law that aimed to put decisionmaking power over the pipeline in the hands of the governor.
Lancaster County District Court Judge Stephanie Stacy ruled that the law, which allowed pipeline companies to choose to submit their plans to either the governor’s Department of Environmental Quality or the more rigorous Public Service Commission, was unconstitutional.
Bold Nebraska director Jane Kleeb told ClimateProgress that the Nebraska Supreme Court will likely not issue a decision on the case until about January 2015. She also noted that South Dakota’s permit granted for the pipeline would expire on June 20, 2014 — meaning that TransCanada would have to reapply for a state permit after that date.
“The State Department is following Pres. Obama’s lead who has said all along he wants to follow the process,” Kleeb said in a statement. “The basic fact that Nebraska has no legal route is reason to delay any decision until our state can analyze a route using process that follows our state constitution.”
“Nebraska landowners will not give up their property rights with bad contract terms and unknown chemicals risking our water. This delay is yet more proof this project is not permit-able and not in our national interest.”
The post State Department To Delay Keystone XL Pipeline Decision Until After November appeared first on ThinkProgress.
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Fmr. Pres. Jimmy Carter comes out against Keystone XL pipeline: Warns ‘the climate crisis is already a daily struggle for so many’
Bjorn Lomborg: ‘The rich world generates just 0.8% of its energy from solar and wind, far from meeting even minimal demand’
Yet most Westerners still want to focus on putting up more inefficient solar panels in the developing world. But this infatuation inflicts a real cost. A recent analysis from the Centre for Global Development shows that $10 billion invested in such renewables would help lift 20 million people in Africa out of poverty. It sounds impressive, until you learn that if this sum was spent on gas electrification it would lift 90 million people out of poverty. So in choosing to spend that $10 billion on renewables, we deliberately end up choosing to leave more than 70 million people in darkness and poverty.
In the West, we take our supply of electricity for granted. After a century, we’ve forgotten that plentiful, affordable and dependable energy is the lifeblood of modern civilisation and prosperity. Discussions about saving the world seldom acknowledge the 1.3 billion people living without any electricity whatsoever. Their problems seem otherworldly to us — and we neglect the fact that the same sort of access to cheap electricity would substantially improve their lives. When it comes to helping the world’s poor, a topic like climate change seems to interest the West far more than such mundane matters as helping them power their houses.…
Four Reasons Why The Environment Movement Is Losing The Battle For Hearts And Minds: ‘Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket’
Four Reasons Why The Environment Movement Is Losing The Battle For Hearts And Minds
http://www.thegwpf.org/reasons-environment-movement-losing-battle-hearts-minds/
“Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket,” Eric Hoffer wrote more than 40 years ago.
It’s still anyone’s guess whether President Obama will approve the Keystone pipeline. Perhaps he will continue to vote “present” and attempt to postpone a decision as long as possible—perhaps even through the next presidential election cycle in 2016. The administration’s body language—and actual language from Secretary of State John Kerry—suggests a negative decision, a hope that the Democrats’ green base is doing everything possible to reinforce so as to raise the political cost for Obama to approve the pipeline to an unacceptable level.
The environmental left may yet win the skirmish over Keystone, but there are several reasons for thinking they are losing the war. Here are four of them:
First, there’s an interesting little detail in the State Department environmental impact report on Keystone—the one that said the pipeline would have no impact on greenhouse gas emissions—that I haven’t seen anyone notice. The premise of the State Department’s finding is that Canadian oil is going to come out of the ground and go somewhere; if it doesn’t come to the United States by pipeline, Canada will figure out a way to ship it here by rail or overseas to China by tanker.
However, the State Department analysis did allow that there was one condition that would change this: if the price of oil dipped back down below $65 a barrel. (It’s been around $100 a barrel for quite some time now.) At that price, Canada would be less likely to produce as much tar-sands oil—or at least not as quickly—and indeed the transportation costs to ship it to China are higher than through the Keystone pipeline. But understand what a world of $65 oil would mean: it would mean we had re-entered a world of abundant and cheap oil. (Adjusted for inflation, this price would be less that the cost of oil in the glut days of the 1980s.) It would mean the world would be using a lot more of it. While it would mean lower greenhouse gas emissions from Canadian oil, it would mean higher global emissions overall. It would mean we wouldn’t care much whether the Keystone pipeline was built. So environmentalists lose big time either way.…
Watch Now: It’s Game Over for Keystone XL opponents’ ‘Game Over’ Claims – Oil Sands
http://oilsandsfactcheck.org/2014/03/13/its-game-over-for-keystone-xl-opponents-game-over-claims/…