After months and even years of grassroots protests against the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, national media are starting to take notice. CNN’s Randi Kaye featured the controversial pipeline as an “undercovered” story, in a segment with CNNMoney.com’s Steve Hargreaves. Hargreaves portrayed the battle over the foreign pipeline as one of “hopes for the economy” versus “fears for the environment.” Tar sands crude is “a little bit dirtier” than conventional oil, Hargreaves conceded, but he said that the economic benefits of building a pipeline to pump tar sands crude from Canada to Texas refineries will win out:

Ultimately it is an election year and it will create a lot of jobs and it will be a lot of money and Americans are concerned about energy, they’re concerned about energy independence, they’re concerned about high gasoline prices. So to vote — to limit the amount of oil coming in to this country especially coming into it from a place like Canada would be a very difficult thing for Obama to do while facing what’s going to be a tough re-election. So most analysts, yes, they do expect it will be built.

Watch it:

Independent analysts whose work wasn’t paid for by the oil industry believe that the claims Hargreaves made are likely false. The tar sands pipeline will be as bad for the American economy as it is for the environment:

Keystone XL Could Kill American Jobs. TransCanada and the American Petroleum Institute cite a study by the Perryman Group, commissioned by TransCanada, that claims the pipeline’s construction will generate 20,000 American jobs. The U.S. State Department’s analysis, drafted by Cardno Entrix and also commissioned by TransCanada, estimates that the construction will only involve 5,000 to 6,000 workers, including non-American employees.

The only study independent of TransCanada influence, by the Cornell Global Labor Institute, finds that even the State Department’s employment figures are too rosy. In the first stages of the pipeline project, steel from Canada and India was used, and only 11 percent of workers were local hires. The pipeline will reduce air quality in both Canada and the U.S., increasing health care costs and thus killing jobs, for decades after the brief construction period of the pipeline.

Keystone XL Will Increase Gasoline Prices. Gasoline prices are expected to rise in 15 Midwest states, because the pipeline will allow Canadian oil producers to bypass that market and reach Texas refineries for export to China and the rest of the global market. In Canada, TransCanada says that one of the benefits of the pipeline is that it will raise the price of heavy crude oil in the Midwest.

Keystone XL Will Threaten Energy Independence. Canadian tar sands oil won’t reduce American dependence on foreign oil. The Keystone XL pipeline is designed to feed the global market, instead of U.S. demand. Its primary effect on American energy policy will be to increase the profits and thus the political influence of oil industry players like Exxon Mobil and Koch Industries, while accelerating the threats of global warming. Climate change, the greatest threat to global security, could reach a point of no return if Canada’s tar sands are fully exploited.

The Keystone XL debate is not economy versus environment — it’s a battle between dirty energy and clean energy.

CNN, whose campaign coverage has been sponsored for years by the coal and oil industry, has a shoddy track record of promoting dirty, risky, and expensive fossil fuel technologies, from “clean coal” to Arctic drilling.

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The coalition against the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline has been steadily growing, adding heavy hitters like NASA scientists James Hansen. Now actor David Stathairn has stepped into the movement, encouraging people to join the November 6th protest at the White House.

Keystone XL is a proposed 1,700 mile pipeline that will bring carbon and water-intensive crude from the tar sands in Alberta to refineries in Texas. Opponents have been outraged by the perceived political influence that the pipeline builder, TransCanada, has had on the approval process at the State Department. Along with a couple key Administration officials being involved in promoting the pipeline, news broke recently that the agency’s environmental review was outsourced to a TransCanada contractor.

“President Obama ran for office speaking of the fossil fuel addiction, promising to fight climate change and full embrace a clean energy future. The Keystone XL tar sands pipeline is a dangerous step away from that commitment,” says Strathairn.

Watch the full video:

Related Posts:

• State Department Outsourced Tar Sands Pipeline Environmental Impact Study to ‘Major’ TransCanada Contractor
• McKibben Links Tar Sands Pipeline to Occupy Wall Street: It’s ‘the Poster Child for Arrogant Corporate Power’

The likely GOP nominee for President is Mitt Romney (going by Intrade Prediction Market).  And he is a member of a cult.

No, Mormonism isn’t a cult. But Global Warming Denial is.

And Romney swore allegiance to that cult this week:

My view is that we don’t know what’s causing climate change on this planet. And the idea of spending trillions and trillions of dollars to try to reduce CO2 emissions is not the right course for us.

As TP Green reports:

“I think the EPA, acting in concert with the president, really doesn’t like oil, gas, coal, and nuclear,” Romney said in response to another question. “I really do believe that the EPA wants to get its hands on all of energy and be able to crush it to cause prices to go through the roof.” To applause, he concluded that “the EPA should not be regulating carbon dioxide.”

If it weren’t obvious before that global warming denial is a cult — and a dangerous one at that — the response of the cultists to the Berkeley study has  demonstrated it once and for all — see WashPost: “The Scientific Finding that Settles the Climate-Change Debate” and “Confirms” the Hockey Stick Graph.

Back in June, Climate Progress reported that Mitt Romney said:

I don’t speak for the scientific community, of course, but I believe the world’s getting warmer. I can’t prove that, but I believe based on what I read that the world is getting warmer. And number two, I believe that humans contribute to that….  And so I think it’s important for us to reduce our emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases that may well be significant contributors to the climate change and the global warming that you’re seeing.

Needless to say, flip flops are not unusual where Romney is concerned.  But it’s a mark of cults that those who hang around other members — such as his fellow GOP nominees and the Tea Party activists taking over the party — become more and more indoctrinated.

As HuffPost notes, “Romney’s climate denial puts him in line with most every other contender in the Republican presidential field”:

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By Ralph Izzo, Public Service Enterprise Group

As one of the largest electricity generators in the U.S., we, at Public Service Enterprise Group (PSEG), believe that EPA’s air pollutant regulations should be viewed as an opportunity to modernize the nation’s electric power infrastructure. PSEG has been a long-time advocate of these Clean Air Act regulations and has put its money where its mouth is, investing over one and a half billion dollars in improvements to its coal-fired plants. These regulations will not only improve air quality for our nation’s citizens, but will also create jobs and an active marketplace for emissions trading.

Frankly, action is long overdue. The air pollutant regulations proposed by EPA are in response to the D.C. Circuit’s rejection of two rules (the Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR) and the Clean Air Mercury Rule) originally proposed by the Bush Administration. Thus, these regulations do not come out of the blue. The regulatory process for regulating toxic air emissions commenced over two decades ago, and the court concluded CAIR was “fundamentally flawed” in 2008.

For our part at PSEG, we believed it made good business sense to be proactive in positioning our generation fleet to meet what the rules would require.  During the past five years, we have invested more than $2 billion to replace inefficient, older generating units and upgrade our existing facilities in New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania. These air quality standards are achievable with the appropriate investment. For example, nearly 60 percent of all coal-fired boilers that submitted data to EPA are currently achieving the Utility Toxics Rule’s proposed mercury standards. Existing pollution control technologies have demonstrated their mettle, and they need to be further deployed throughout the nation.

Our experience shows that it is possible to clean the air, create jobs, and power the economy at the same time. For example, our New Jersey coal plants with their various pollution-control systems have been able to reduce, by over 90 percent, emissions of mercury, acid gases and soot. Installing the systems created approximately 1,600 construction jobs and enabled us to add dozens of full-time positions. We are proud of these results and proud to have facilities that are among the cleanest coal stations in America.

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Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) has stacked his administration with global warming deniers. As a result, scientific warnings about the threat of man-made climate change to Texans is being censored. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality expurgated mentions of sea level rise caused by global warming in a report on the future of Galveston Bay. The climate scientists involved have removed their names from the paper. At a hearing this week, the commissioners and the scientists publicly confronted each other. L’Oreal Stepney, deputy director of the Office of Water at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, told NPR the commission censored the report because climate change is “unsettled science“:

It’s unsettled science, in our opinion, and that’s our position, and we’ve been clear about that.

“I think the travesty here is that this chapter was actually written for teachers,” climate scientist John Anderson said at the hearing. “They’re my target audience, and this to me is just an outward attempt to keep scientific information, scientific fact, from getting into classrooms.”

by Noreen Nielsen

Chevron announced their 2011 third-quarter results earlier today, reporting $7.83 billion in profits, more than doubling their third-quarter net income, and bringing its total earnings for 2011 to over $21 billion. Chevron ranks in as the third largest oil and gas contributor in 2011, coming in just behind Exxon Mobile and Koch Industries.

• Chevron has spent nearly $7 million on lobbying this year, the fourth highest of oil and gas industries.
• Chevron has contributed over $315,000 to federal campaigns n 2011, with 90% going to Republicans.
• Chevron is sitting on $13 billion in cash on hand. Added together, the Big Five oil companies — BP, Exxon, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and Shell — are sitting on cash resources of $59 billion and made nearly $1 trillion in profits over the past decade.
• Chevron currently ranks third in the Fortune 500 list of company profits, yet continues to receive billions of dollars in tax breaks paid for by American taxpayers.
• Chevron’s Chairman and CEO John Watson received nearly $16.3 million in total compensation in 2010, an 85% increase from 2009.

The five Big Oil companies earned over $32 billion in profits in the third-quarter of 2011, bring their overall profits for 2011 to a staggering $101 billion.

Related posts on Q3 oil profits:

• As Oil Companies Announce $24 Billion in Profits, Rep. Stearns Says, “When Somebody is Successful, Then You Give Them Subsidies”
• Exxon Mobil Profits Jump 41%, to $10.3 Billion
• Royal Dutch Shell Doubles Q3 Profits Over Last Year, Climbing to $6.9 Billion
• ConocoPhillips Announces $2.6 Billion in Q3 Profits
• BP Doubles Profits in Third Quarter to $4.9 Billion

Rep. Rob Bishop (R-UT), a lawmaker leading efforts to privatize and mine public lands across the West, spoke last week at the Western Republican Leadership Conference in Las Vegas. ThinkProgress caught up with Bishop after his speech.

After he told us that national parks are unconstitutional, we asked about Republican efforts to develop the certain national parks for mineral extraction. Bishop initially laughed off the idea, claiming that no one in Congress is looking to drill in National Parks (in fact, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) has called for drilling in the Everglades). Besides, he said, national parks aren’t “money makers.”

So, we asked about legislation by Arizona Republicans to open up the area around the Grand Canyon for uranium mining. Bishop said that the proposed mining area is only the “size of the state of New Jersey,” and it would have “no impact” on the environment or tourism:

FANG: Congressman, what do you think about some National Parks that could be “money makers,” like the Grand Canyon, where they could be doing uranium mining and some other types of mineral mining.

BISHOP: You have to realize, the Arizona strip that they’re talking about where they could do mining is the size of the state of New Jersey. So there’s going to be no mining anywhere near the size of the Grand Canyon. So in fact that land was supposed to be set aside [inaudible] for mining. Whether we mine or not will have no impact on the Grand Canyon water or tourism that happens to be there.

Watch it:

As ThinkProgress has detailed, a measure to open up the area around Grand Canyon for uranium mining has been proposed by members of Congress like Bishop, Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), and Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ). Mining lobbyists have lined up to push for the effort, but it appears to be losing traction.

Earlier this week, the Bureau of Land Management issued a report that rejects the idea of mining in the Grand Canyon area. A number of previous reports have pointed out that uranium mining in the area could damage drinking water by contaminating natural springs and aquifers.

Other key stories below: GE Invests in Spanish Solar Plant with Storage

China Solar Subsidy Storm Heads to Europe

The move reflects mounting concern in Europe and America about subsidised Chinese firms flooding the market with solar PV panels at artificially low cost.

Solarworld AG argues that China’s $30 billion of subsidies to its solar power companies violates global trade rules and constitute an unfair form of retailing below cost price or “dumping.”

“We have dumping files in the European Photovoltaics market as well as in the US market and this is a case, of course, for the European Union,” Milan Nitzschke, a Solarworld AG spokesman told EurActiv by telephone from Bonn.

“Our Chinese competitors are going to Greece and telling people: ‘You can buy our products and solar modules and we are here with the Chinese bank of construction and they will give you the money for that,’” Nitzschke explained.

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Harsh GOP Response to EU Emissions Trading System Risks Disaster for U.S. Industry

by Andrew Light and Rebecca Lefton

On Monday the U.S. House of Representatives took the unusual step of passing a bill, the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme Prohibition Act of 2011, which would forbid U.S. airlines from participating in an EU law requiring that CO2 emissions from all commercial flights coming in and out of the European Union be accounted for in the EU Emission Trading System, or ETS, regardless of the nationality of the carrier. This move by the House risks an unnecessary diplomatic flare-up between the United States and its closest allies in the midst of an economic emergency in Europe. And it will do nothing to stop the EU program.

What the EU law does

All parties involved, including U.S. aircraft operators, knew for years that the European Union was moving toward this new rule, which will become effective January 1, 2012. Several years ago, when the European Union announced their intention to fold all airline emissions in their airspace into the ETS—the principal mechanism for capping and reducing carbon pollution across Europe—they asked all commercial carriers to begin gathering data on the amount and intensity of their emissions on flights in and out of EU airports. All U.S. air carriers have so far complied.

Starting next year those same carriers will have to begin purchasing permits for carbon emissions above a set cap calibrated to hit economywide goals in the ETS. The initial goal for this part of the ETS is to reduce total commercial airline emissions 3 percent from average 2004 to 2006 levels by 2013.

Legal wrangling over the law

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Speaking at the Consol Energy Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney reversed his earlier stance on climate change pollution and rejected man-made global warming. Because “we don’t know what’s causing climate change,” Romney said, the United States should not reduce carbon dioxide emissions:

My view is that we don’t know what’s causing climate change on this planet. And the idea of spending trillions and trillions of dollars to try to reduce CO2 emissions is not the right course for us.

Watch it:

“I think the EPA, acting in concert with the president, really doesn’t like oil, gas, coal, and nuclear,” Romney said in response to another question. “I really do believe that the EPA wants to get its hands on all of energy and be able to crush it to cause prices to go through the roof.” To applause, he concluded that “the EPA should not be regulating carbon dioxide.”

In June, Romney told a New Hampshire audience that he believed in man-made global warming, and that reducing greenhouse pollution is “important“:

I don’t speak for the scientific community, of course, but I believe the world’s getting warmer. I can’t prove that, but I believe based on what I read that the world is getting warmer. And number two, I believe that humans contribute to that. I don’t know how much our contribution is to that, because I know that there have been periods of greater heat and warmth in the past but I believe we contribute to that. And so I think it’s important for us to reduce our emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases that may well be significant contributors to the climate change and the global warming that you’re seeing.

As governor of Massachusetts, Romney presided over plans to regulate carbon dioxide as a “pollutant,” and was advised by Dr. John Holdren, now President Obama’s scientific adviser.

(HT: New Hampshire Primary 2012: Green)

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As we approach 7 billion people, Climate Progress is featuring a variety of opinions on population (see links below).

by Carl Pope and Carmen Barroso

Any day now, if it hasn’t happened already, the 7 billionth baby will be born on our small planet.

While many may assume that the environmental and reproductive health movements have divergent agendas—the health of the planet vs. the health of the people—we agree on one very simple principle: everyone, whether born into the bustling streets of New York or a remote village in Nicaragua, is entitled to a set of fundamental human rights. These include the right to live in a healthy and safe environment, and the right to decide if and when to have children.

Today, more than ever, those rights are deeply intertwined. The 7 billionth baby will inherit a planet facing enormous threats and challenges. And while environmental and reproductive health organizations have different missions, we know, based on decades of experience, that the health of our planet and our people are inseparable. We can be mindful of our environment and improve the lives of women, men, and youth worldwide.

Environmental justice and reproductive rights are mutually reinforcing; when people have the knowledge, right and tools to decide how many children are right for them, they typically chose to have smaller, healthier families.  This has positive ramifications on the surrounding environment and the health of families and communities.

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