The Good News: Killing The Pipeline Could Strand the Tar Sands Oil for Years

The Bad News:  TransCanada Says a Delay in Pipeline Approval to 2012 May Not Kill It

Protesters against the construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline demonstrate before the arrival of President Obama on October 25 in San Francisco.

Yesterday, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney tried to pass the buck on the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline decision, saying, “This is a decision that will be made by the State Department.”

Today, in an interview with Omaha station KETV (video here), Obama (aka The Decider) walked that back entirely:

The State Department’s in charge of analyzing this, because there’s a pipeline coming in from Canada.  They’ll be giving me a report over the next several months, and, you know, my general attitude is, what is best for the American people? What’s best for our economy both short term and long term? But also, what’s best for the health of the American people? Because we don’t want for examples aquifers, they’re adversely affected, folks in Nebraska obviously would be directly impacted, and so we want to make sure we’re taking the long view on these issues.

We need to encourage domestic oil and natural gas production.  We need to make sure that we have energy security and aren’t just relying on Middle East sources. But there’s a way of doing that and still making sure that the health and safety of the American people and folks in Nebraska are protected, and that’s how I’ll be measuring these recommendations when they come to me.

Well, the long view is that dirty fossil fuels, like the tar sands, are not merely an unsustainable source of jobs, but they are essentially fatal to efforts to protect the health and well-being of Americans (see James Hansen slams Keystone XL Canada-U.S. Pipeline: “Exploitation of tar sands would make it implausible to stabilize climate and avoid disastrous global climate impacts”).

The reporter asked Obama about “the potential for jobs, does that play into the equation at all?”  The President answered:

It does, but I think folks in Nebraska like all across the country aren’t going to say to themselves, “We’ll take a few thousand jobs if it means that our kids are potentially drinking water that would damage their health or rich land that’s so important to agriculture in Nebraska are being adversely affected” because those create jobs, and you know when somebody gets sick that’s a cost that the society has to bear as well. So these are all things that you have to take a look at when you make these decisions.

This certainly sounds like the president is giving himself rhetorical room to delay the decision (to do a better environmental impact statement or examine alternative routes) or kill the pipeline outright.

Canada’s National Post reports that the “worst-case scenario” of killing the pipeline would be “stranded oil sands — for years”:

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For the fourth year in a row, a survey conducted by independent pollster Kelton Research shows that 89% of Americans think it’s important for the U.S. to develop solar.

That’s nothing new. The last three surveys have showed the exact same thing. But this year’s poll comes at a time of severe political backlash against clean energy subsidies after the bankruptcy of solar manufacturer Solyndra.

Even with the rancorous politics around federal investments in clean energy, the poll shows that 82% of Americans think incentives like tax credits are necessary to help build the industry.

Here are some more details.

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by Eban Goodstein, cross-posted from the Bard Center for Environmental Policy

In Early September, I was sitting hand-cuffed in the back of a police paddy-wagon with two-dozen other guys. Everybody was in a good mood. We had all just been arrested in front of the White House, as part of a large-scale, peaceful civil disobedience action in which, over the course of two-weeks, more than 1200 people were sent to the DC city jail. Our intent was to convince President Obama to veto the construction of a pipeline that would bring oil from the tar sand deposits in Alberta, Canada to refineries in Houston, with much of the oil destined for export to China.

I was there out of concern that construction of this pipeline would lock in intensive development of these intensely polluting oil deposits, feed global fossil fuel dependency, and make our critical intergenerational work to stop global warming much harder. The protest was effective. The pipeline went from being a non-issue to the focus of serious national discussion, and the President has been forced to take notice.

There was a wide range of ages in the paddy-wagon, and a couple of the younger men were saying: “Come up to Wall Street next month—it is going the be huge”.  I gave them a knowing smile. “Sure it will,” I thought.  In 1980, some friends of mine tried literally to help shut the NY Stock Exchange down as part of an anti-nuclear protest—protesters encircled the doors, the cops busted it up, and nothing much happened.

I am, today, happily eating crow. It is a wonderful feeling when cynicism of the middle-aged is undercut by the accomplishments of the young. While small groups of determined people don’t always change the future, they are, as Margaret Meade famously noted, the only force that ever has.

So what’s next for Occupy Wall Street?

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In an ironic show of concern for asthma sufferers everywhere, South Carolina Republican Senator Jim DeMint has been leading a charge against a federal ban on Primatene Mist inhalers, saying the ban will harm “quality of life for Americans.”

But as one of the most outspoken climate science deniers in Congress, DeMint has consistently supported policies that would lead to increases in rates of asthma, not decreases. In August, a team of researchers at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine found that increasing levels of ozone from human-induced climate change would lead to 7% more emergency room visits due to asthma attacks among children under the age of 17.

Over the years, DeMint has consistently voted to stop regulation of greenhouse gases, voted against raising fuel standards for automobiles, and voted against expanding mercury standards. The League of Conservation Voters gave DeMint a lifetime score of 7 on his environmental record. No, that’s not 7 out of 10. That’s 7 out of 100.

Politico reports on DeMint’s amendment — which was just voted down in the Senate — that would have prevented the Food and Drug Administration from banning a specific type of inhaler:

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The chart above illustrates the comparison between the cost of power from a rooftop solar array purchased as part of a group buy versus grid electricity.

by John Farrell, in an Energy Self-Reliant States cross-post

Back for a second round, the Open Neighborhoods organization in Los Angeles has organized another group purchase of residential and commercial solar PV, bringing the cost of solar incredibly close to the cost of grid power. With grid prices constantly rising, the lifetime savings of going solar have never looked better.

The savings from the group purchase are enormous.  With prices are around $4.40 per Watt installed for solar, Open Neighborhoods gets residential solar for $2.00 cheaper than the average prices reported by the Solar Energy Industries Association for the second quarter of 2011.  That equates to a 6 cents per kilowatt-hour savings on solar over 25 years.  Even with solar typically being cheaper in California, the group advertises savings of as much as 33% on a residential solar array.

The low group purchase price means that those who go solar will have cheaper electricity from their rooftop panels than average grid electricity by 2015.  If the solar user is on a time-of-use pricing plan, they’ll already have cheaper electricity from solar than from their utility.

John Farrell is a senior researcher at the Institute for Local Self Reliance.

Speaking at a federal sustainability conference, one of Northrop Grumman’s top climate scientists expressed grave concern about society’s resilience to global warming. Glenn J. Higgins, the Atmospheric Sciences and Engineering Department Manager at the military contracting giant’s Information Systems division, spoke at the GreenGov 2011 Symposium about his work analyzing the increased risks of sea level rise related to climate change. He emphasized the need to build resilience to extreme events whose likelihood is rapidly increasing in a changing world.

In the question and answer period, ThinkProgress Green asked Higgins whether he believes our society is sufficiently resilient to give his children and grandchildren the same chance at health and happiness his generation has seen. While expressing confidence in humanity, the scientist said that “radical changes” that include rapid reduction of carbon pollution must happen more quickly:

I think the world’s going to be different than it is today. I have faith that humanity has ways to survive, but I think that the trends suggest that it’s not going to be business as usual. Places that you’re familiar with are going to be different.

I don’t think the the will is there yet anywhere to make rapid changes to put in place mitigation strategies to make a significant dent in the trends that we’re seeing. I have concerns and I don’t see the radical changes that I think are needed are happening fast enough.

In May, Northrop Grumman hosted a climate security conference to discuss the global risks human civilization faces from the destabilization of our atmosphere by billions of tons of fossil fuel pollution.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney tried yesterday to pass the buck on the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, telling reporters the decision to approve the dangerous fossil project “will be made by the State Department“:

This is a decision that will be made by the State Department, or is housed within the State Department. And they are taking into . . . they are in a phase now of taking into account public comment and comments certainly from experts, both environmental, as well as energy experts. So this process includes a full review of various concerns from all areas.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is responsible for recommending whether the pipeline is in American national interest, but the final decision does fall to President Obama to issue the final Presidential Permit. The Environmental Protection Agency can formally force the issue through the National Environmental Policy Act, but has not done so.

However, last week President Barack Obama personally recognized the “deep concern” with the tar sands pipeline and said that “we will address it.”

A hallmark of Obama’s presidency has been his repeated assumption of final responsibility for the actions of the federal government. Obama has said the “buck stops with me” on the jobs crisis, on AIG bailout, on national security, and on the BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

Activists expect that the buck stops with President Obama on the pipeline as well. They’ll be surrounding the White House on Nov. 6 in a mass action to keep the pressure on the president to protect the climate system from fossil-driven greed.

by Tom Laskawy, in a Grist cross-post

Now that we’re surrounded by 7 billion of our closest friends, it’s probably a good time to talk about how we’re going to feed them. The government, along with corporations like Monsanto, Syngenta, Dupont, and others who are part of our current industrial agriculture system, will tell you that feeding the world is all about more. More yield from crops, more chemicals, more fertilizer, more genetically engineered seeds. More, more, more!

Of course, it’s easy to say that when you’re willing, as they are, to ignore the health effects, climate and environmental impacts, resource constraints, and every other real world consequence of large-scale industrial agriculture.

Our ability to feed this expanding population (let alone reduce world hunger) is generally discussed in terms of bushels of grain or total calories produced. It’s as if other aspects of the food production system — from agriculture’s carbon footprint, to the amount of crops now used for biofuels and animal feed, to the availability and price of oil and other depleted resources like phosphorus, a key fertilizer — are somehow irrelevant.

So it’s nice to see an article in the preeminent science journal Nature that tries to look at the big picture of world agriculture, warts and all.

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by Tom Kenworthy

Some things do improve over time. Among them is the Obama administration’s plan for using government lands to anchor the renewable energy revolution.

Ten months after the Interior Department issued a draft plan for siting large solar energy projects in six western states, and after listening carefully to the views of conservationists, developers, utilities, and others, the Obama administration has made significant improvements.

Last week, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and other department officials unveiled the latest version that sets the rules of the road for siting utility-scale solar developments on public land in California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico.

The revised plan will give the solar industry more certainty, accelerate the critical task of getting many thousands of megawatts of clean, inexhaustible electric power on-line, quickly boost jobs in the solar sector of the new energy economy, and provide more protection for fragile desert environments.

The takeaway: Interior has produced a plan, formally known as a supplement to its Draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement, that sets a new, more rational standard for managing energy production on public lands and that promises fewer conflicts and therefore faster development.

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Key Stories in the Round-up Below:  China Airline Operates First Biofuels Flight; Opposition in Australia Tries to Stop Carbon Trading Program

Zuma: Climate Negotiations to be Stormy

The United Nations climate change negotiations set to take place in Durban at the end of November are going to be difficult, President Jacob Zuma warned on Monday.

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Welcome to Clean Start, ThinkProgress Green’s morning round-up of the latest in climate and clean energy. Here is what we’re reading. What are you?

GLOBAL BOILING

Devastation from a rare and deadly October snowstorm lingered in the Northeast where 1.6 million homes were still without power on Monday, schools were closed and downed trees and powerlines snarled traffic, with 13 deaths, most on slippery roads. [Reuters]

The storm that spooked the Northeast with a blanket of wet, branch-snapping snow forced cities and town to discourage or postpone Halloween festivities — decisions that did not sit well with legions of ghosts, goblins and princesses who were already homebound due to widespread school cancelations. [AP]

The snowstorm that struck the US north-east over the weekend has caused unprecedented damage to woodlands and parks, with 1,500 trees lost in New York City alone. [Guardian]

Another water-logged weekend — the third in an October that water managers said will go down as one of the five wettest on record — swamped much of South Florida, leaving roads and yards looking like lakes and flooding parking lots, garages and some homes in low-lying areas. [Miami Herald]

Allstate Corp. said its third-quarter net income fell 55 percent after climate disasters cost the insurer $1.08 billion. [AP]

The worst one-year drought in Texas history has produced a statewide hay shortage that has more than doubled the price of large round and small square bales, forcing many ranchers to sell or even abandon all of their cattle and horses because they cannot afford to feed them. [New York Times]

KEYSTONE XL

Nebraska may try to draw a line in the sand when it convenes a special session of the state legislature on Tuesday to debate whether to seek changes to the planned $7 billion Keystone XL tar sands pipeline traversing the state. [Reuters]

Canada is toughening its tone on the Keystone XL pipeline, warning the Obama administration that rejection of TransCanada Corp’s $7 billion project could prompt Ottawa to concentrate on selling its oil-sands-derived crude to Asian customers instead. [Reuters]

Facing challenges about Canada’s environmental record from the foreign business community, Canadian diplomats were urged to continue touting tar sands in messages crafted by the Alberta government to “temper negative coverage” of the oil and gas industry, says a newly released internal government report. [Financial Post]

DIRTY OIL

A fossil-backed thinktank with ties to the Koch brothers is suing climate scientist Michael Mann, charging he manipulated data to receive government grants. [Institute for Southern Studies]

by Ben Dimiero, in a Media Matters cross-post

By any reasonable measure, last week was not a good one for conservative media figures that believe climate scientists are somehow fabricating the theory of climate change.

Richard Muller, a physicist at University of California, Berkeley, announced the results of new research from the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project affirming that the planet is getting warmer and confirming the accuracy of several other existing global temperature records.

A single winter storm does nothing to disprove that the planet is getting warmer, but that doesn’t stop scientifically illiterate pundits from hi-fiving and telling nonsensical jokes about Al Gore every time it snows. Indeed, in what’s becoming an increasingly-tedious yearly tradition, several conservative media figures pointed to this weekend’s snowstorm as evidence that the theory of climate change is falling apart. It isn’t.

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