Opine away!

President Obama’s decision on whether to approve the Keystone XL pipeline is like those Escher stairs — you keep climbing yet you never seem to get anywhere.

But it’s the metaphor from an unnamed Obama administration official explaining the umpteenth delay that caught my eye.

First, however, Reuters reported this “exclusive” last Friday:

The Obama administration is unlikely to make a decision on the Canada-to-Nebraska Keystone XL pipeline until late this year as it painstakingly weighs the project’s impact on the environment and on energy security, a U.S. official and analysts said on Friday.

The decision may not be made until November, December or even early 2014, said a U.S. official, as President Barack Obama will not rush the process, which still has a number of stages to work through. One of those stages has not even begun yet and will run for months.

The Administration is certainly giving pains. Whether it is taking them remains to be seen. But I digress.

So what kind of pains do they claim they are they taking?

“The president has to be able to show that the administration looked under every stone to ensure it knew as much as it possibly could about the impact of Keystone,” said the official, who did not want to be named given the sensitive nature of the project.

First off, yes, it’s true, the pipeline has a sensitive nature. Heck, it still cries at “It’s a Wonderful Life” not to mention “E.T.” and “Bambi.” Oh and forget entirely about watching “Titanic” with the tar sands pipeline, at least while we are rearranging the deck chairs.

Bottom line on Keystone’s sensitive nature: Almost anything will make it spring a leak. But don’t mention that in public, of course. The pipeline is very touchy about that. I digress again.

It’s this metaphor I liked: Team Obama has to show it “looked under every stone to ensure it knew as much as it possibly could about the impact of Keystone.”

Reuters notes, “The EPA had concerns about the level of emissions from Canada’s oil sands, where crude production is carbon-intensive. It also took issue with the State Department’s conclusion that the pipeline would have no effect on climate because the oil sands would make it to market whether or not the pipeline was approved.”

Team Obama is looking in the wrong place — in fact, it’s looking in the wrong direction entirely. The most worrisome impact of Keystone isn’t under every stone, heck, it isn’t under any stone. It is in the atmosphere, an accelerated change in the climate.

But whatever you do, don’t mention those climate impacts out loud. Turns out the pipeline is sensitive about them, too.

Opine away!

Opine away!

Opine away!

Via RhymesWithOrange.com.

Affection for our planet is misdirected and unrequited. We need to focus on saving ourselves.

In 2008, I wrote a piece for Salon about renaming ‘Earth’ Day. It was supposed to be mostly humorous. Or mostly serious.

Anyway, the subject of renaming Earth Day remains more relevant than ever in light of the world’s ongoing inaction on climate change, the over-running of Congress by climate zombies, Obama’s multi-year fecklessness on this gravest of threats, and the amazing climate silence of the U.S. media.

In a 2009 interview, then Energy SecretarySteven Chu said:

I would say that from here on in, every day has to be Earth Day.

Well, duh! Heck, we have a whole day just for the trees — and we haven’t finished them off … yet. If every day is Earth Day, than April 22 definitely needs a new name. So I’m updating the column one more:

Read more

Opine away!

Opine away!

Opine away.

Kayakers practice for dry riverbed competition

NY, NY (April 1, 2013) – ESPN and The Climate Reality Project are psyched to announce a joint partnership to launch ESPN 5. Nicknamed “The Cinco,” ESPN 5 will focus on new extreme sports made possible through a changing environment due to climate change. The tagline of the new enterprise will be “Extreme Sports Thru Extreme Weather – Feel the Burn!”

In its inaugural year, The Cinco will focus on bringing attention to the emerging blend of adrenaline-soaked sports competitions that have been made possible through climate change.  The initial programming will include a dizzying array of top-flight events, such as hurricane wind-surfing, dirtboarding (previously known as snowboarding), dry riverbed kayaking, blizzard soccer, hurricane sandbag-tossing events, and the reality show-inspired event, “The Amazing Race … for Water.”

“After learning that this past decade was the hottest decade on record in the continental United States, ESPN knew that it had to be at the forefront of bringing extreme weather sports to our incredible fans,” said Joe Slobotnik, senior vice president for sustainability at ESPN. “The possibilities for extreme sports are endless thanks to the prospect of rising temperatures, more severe hurricanes, and wildly uncontrollable weather patterns. Feel the Burn!”

“For too long, people have connected climate change with polar bears, melting ice caps, hurricanes, and other boring stuff, instead of the awesome new sports carried by The Cinco,” said James N. Taylor of the Climate Reality Project. “The American public no longer wants to see winter athletes competing in the snow, or baseball games on a warm summer day.  What people really want to see is the world’s fastest athletes outrun wildfires in the West, run ultra marathons on just dirt-based energy bars, and play beach volleyball—in Iowa!”

With the growing popularity of the X Games franchise, The Cinco will debut the “V Games” later this summer.  This televised spectacular has already received crucial underwriting from some of the world’s largest supporters of extreme weather sports, such as Exxon-Mobil, Koch Industries, TransCanada, and many others. A complete list of programming will be made available closer to the event.

– A Climate Reality Project news release