Photo: RL Miller
by RL Miller in a repost
The Keystone XL pipeline symbolizes our national debate. It’s a governmental policy to be made that will set policy, for good or bad, for years to come: claimed energy security (access to friendly North American oil) and jobs vs environmental ruin and carbon bomb continuing our addiction to cheap-ish fossil fuels.
Keystone XL is a huge decision to be made at a Presidential level. However, all across America, similar decisions are being made: fossil fuel production is being expanded with the blessing of the federal government.
Consider Alton Coal.
But first, consider Bryce Canyon National Park.
Bryce Canyon is best known for its hoodoos, but the park is also the last grand sanctuary of natural darkness. High and dry on the edge of a huge plateau, Bryce has wide open skies; its isolation means no light pollution (light from human activity) and very little air pollution. The park’s Dark Rangers give over 100 astronomy programs each year. Arriving from the west via Las Vegas or Salt Lake City, a Bryce visitor probably passes through Panguitch, an Old West town of 1600 heavily dependent on tourism – 70% of Garfield County’s economy is tourism-based.
What a great place for a coal mine!
Until now, Alton Coal Development, LLC has mined 635 acres of private land in Coal Hollow. It wants to expand on to 3,576 acres of federally owned land, administered by the Bureau of Land Management. The BLM’s draft environmental impact statement, released November 4, considered three alternatives: full-bore production of 2,000,000 tons/year, operating 24 hours a day, 6 days a week; a limited mine on less land with seasonal closures to protect sage grouse and other threatened animals; and no mine at all.
Anyone who thinks the BLM seriously considered all three alternatives needs a reality check. The BLM prefers to expand a strip mine near a national park.
What’s wrong with expanding one strip mine? Everything that’s wrong with Keystone XL, and fossil fuels policy in America, that’s what:
– dangerous transport: coal trucks traveling 110 miles from mine to a railhead at Cedar City, along U.S. Highway 89, local roads, and currently unimproved dirt roads, through Panguitch, 24 hours a day, 6 days a week
– puffed up jobs claims: the mine is said to generate 100 mining jobs and an additional 60 truckers’ jobs. I haven’t seen any numbers to rebut this, but I’m skeptical given that strip mining is relatively automated compared to underground mining.
– impact on federally protected land of great scenic value: the mine will affect Bryce’s clear dark skies, both in creating light pollution (lights will be on at the mine 24 hours a day – the EIS acknowledges a “perceptible increase in nighttime skyglow”) and air pollution
– corruption of public officials: Alton Coal gave Governor Herbert $10,000 the same day its principals met with him to complain about slow approval of their permit – and the permit was immediately fast-tracked
– fossil fuel regulatory capture: one alternative presented to the BLM was to develop wind, solar, and other renewable sources, but the BLM refused to consider it as outside the scope of Alton Coal’s request.
– shipping fossil fuel far away: the coal will fuel the Intermountain Power Plant, which provides 75% of its electricity to the power grid fueling Los Angeles. Meanwhile, Southern Californians are demanding that the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power move beyond coal and phase out reliance on the Intermountain Power Plant by 2020.
– economics that make no sense: while Alton Coal desires to open this mine, Arch Coal is reducing production at another Utah coal mine due to continuing weakness in coal demand in the region
– increased carbon emissions: the BLM report estimates that the 2 million tons of coal/year emit 4.8 million tons (4.4 million metric tons) of carbon dioxide/year; for perspective, the United States in 2009 emitted 5,505 million tons of carbon dioxide. On the one hand, the EIS argues that Alton Coal mine is only 0.014% of the world’s 30,377 million tons of carbon dioxide/year. The relative size of any project compared to global emissions is the same argument being used by project proponents all across America, including Keystone XL itself.
Two key differences between Alton Coal and Keystone XL are the size of the project, and the amount of public scrutiny each has received. Keystone is the XL-sized carbon bomb, while Alton Coal is more of an IED: sufficient to inflict collateral damage, but not enough to get extra-large public scrutiny. The pipeline has become a signature environmental issue of the Obama administration, and a decision whether to approve it will be made by the President. On the other hand, the expansion of Alton Coal is being made by lower-level bureaucrats, without much public comment, and without any national policy weighing renewable energy against the fossil fuels that are slowly poisoning the planet.
Public comments will be taken at various Utah locations, including Cedar City on December 6 and Salt Lake City on December 7.
— RL Miller is an attorney and environment blogger with Climate Hawks. This piece was originally published at Daily Kos and was reprinted with permission by the author.
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You guys did it!!! Obama administration delays Keystone XL pipeline:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/10/us-usa-pipeline-idUSTRE7A64O920111110
YES
It’s a great victory — and it’s also smart politics by Obama. My take here:
http://theidiottracker.blogspot.com/2011/11/keystone-xl-on-hold.html
It doesn’t feel like a great victory, or clever politics. It’s short-term long-grass kicking move that doesn’t address the issue at all.
The world would be much better off with US political leadership that led the debate, instead of electoral-engineering around it.
But at least the door for action on dealing with climate change hasn’t been banged shut There’s still a crack of light in it – thanks to 12,000 good souls, and maybe the whiff of establishment panic engendered by the OWS movement.
our take here in the UK too – its a clever move by Obama – he escapes the political flack now – saying “no” would outrage the Loonies – or Republicans as you call them in the States – and saying “yes” would utterly alienate the aware left –
As idiot tracker rightly says this gives a reason for radicals to support Obama – only the issue isn’t the route XL takes but the fact that it and oils sands are happening at all – and my betting is that a re-elected Obama would just say yes.
I’m with you, tim. I’ll wager that a re-elected Obama would make giving the pipeline the green light a priority, to ‘send a message’ to his plutocratic owners that it’s business as usual.
It’s good news, but not exactly a high five moment. Some of us figured that he would stall this until after the election.
Looking for a “new route” is not exactly encouraging. Why on earth didn’t he have the foresight and courage to say that burning bitumen based oil is a bad idea to begin with?
I suppose we’re supposed to celebrate small victories, but we are going to need major shifts, and soon.
I completely agree, but I’ll take any good news in these times my friend.
Yea!
Anybody with a soul who’s visited Zion and Bryce immediately senses that this is sacred country, unique in the world. It’s already girdled by transmission lines and coal pollution from Four Corners and Page.
They are once again going after public land, in order to poison us some more. They are psychopaths, and must be opposed.
All great sites of natural beauty are ‘unique’. Bryce Canyon is one of the most glorious and any who would threaten it in any way, simply to make money, are dead souls.
Since the only thing that appears to penetrate those who wear ignorance like a badge of honor, I suggest getting the information out about how many earthquakes relative to the norm happen near fracking zones. These extreme fuel efforts must be “outed” for the horrors they are.
I know, I know, how and where do we get across to the media brainwashed majority as long as they demand spectacle, as they’ve been addicted to do?
Nonetheless, there are an awful lot of backyards out there, and lots of normal people can see what’s happening. I also notice more coverage on the MSM.
left out phrase:
People steeped in media and surrounded by mainstream “culture” are unlikely to pay attention unless they are threatened in their homes. Somehow the fact that this is so needs to assume the repetitive drumbeat of a sex scandal or sports triumph or sales-driven holiday drive.
One of the priorities of the masters, achieved through MSM brainwashing and advertising’s spiritual molestation is to turn humanity into a swarm of egotistical and atomised individuals, rather than a human society. This process projects the psychopathology of the elite onto the rest of society, and demonises collective concern and action and collective virtues like empathy and compassion. The fruits of this process are strange and abundant, and they stench of their decay assails our senses.
“…all across America, similar decisions are being made: fossil fuel production is being expanded…”
Oh my goodness Yes it is being expanded! I wonder why so little attention has been given to that situation. Why has Keystone XL gotten so much attention now? We all know that Keystone has been in operation bringing down filthy tar sand “oil” since 2010. No real attention was given to this. That was phase 1. Phase 2 Keystone went into operation at the beginning of this year. But suddenly it came to the attention of the public…and they want to stop phase 3 and 4 of Keystone, also called Keystone XL. So it was OK to ship the “oil” to Cushing but we must keep it from reaching the Gulf refineries? Or do many suffer the complete misunderstanding that if they stop Keystone XL they will stop all Canadian tar sand production? Well that is simply not true. The US has been importing, and will continue to import, filthy tar sand “oil” from Canada with or without Keystone XL. Stopping Keystone XL will not keep that filthy mess in the ground. You must start the protests before the fossil fuel corporations begin production.
Good luck with Alton but we are talking about Utah after all. Is any environmental organization opposing the oil shale fracking or is it just the fracking for shale gas that is bad? Yes, fossil fuel exploration and production is being expanded and it isn’t just the Arctic that is threatened.
Fossil fuels are just crying out for a carbon tax, at source, on GHG emissions per Joule. Done intelligently — with progressive scaling up over time, and funds raised being funnelled into deploying renewables fast — it’d create a sea-change in investment attitudes.
Investment into fossil fuels of any sort (coal, shale gas, tar sands)would no longer be able to ignore the vast external costs of their extraction and use.
And maybe there wouldn’t be so many ‘tricky’ decisions like Keystone XL cropping up on the Presidential plate.
Even in Georgia, the land of the “Fair Tax” (national sales tax), people seem interested in the idea of replacing the US Income Tax with a national carbon tax collected at the mine or wellhead.
Someone, please do the math and see if this could be done. This might be the way of cutting fossil fuel usage and bring conservatives and the forces of the free market over to saving what is left of our planet.
Hurry.
18 months is a long long time right now. If Moore’s Law actually does apply to solar power at this point, then 18 months will be enough. Solar power will drop to better than competitive. This 7 billion dollar investment in unconventional fossil fuel exploitation will look a bit stone-aged.
Elizabeth Kolbert’s article in The New Yorker was 2007. That’s 4 years (good article):
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/11/12/071112fa_fact_kolbert
Horrid stuff.