On the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, EPA rated the adequacy of the State Department’s Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) as having “Insufficient Information.”

In case you missed it, today is the last day to submit public comments to the State Department regarding the proposed pipeline that would transport 830,000 barrels of tar sands oil through the U.S. per day.

EPA’s Cynthia Giles, the Assistant Administrator for the Office of Enforcement, has submitted the agency’s public comment. They could have rated the adequacy of the impact statement three different ways: “Adequate,” “Insufficient Information,” or “Inadequate.” They rated it “Insufficient Information,” which means that they do not know enough to fully assess the environmental impacts of a tar sands pipeline traversing the continent.

Here are the reasons EPA said that State’s DEIS needs more work:

• Increased carbon pollution: EPA acknowledged the DEIS’s attempt to do a life-cycle analysis of the pipeline’s emissions, which found that emissions from oil sands crude would be 81 percent higher than regular crude, or an incremental increase of 18.7 million metric tons of CO2 per year. EPA noted that “If GHG intensity of oil sands crude is not reduced, over a 50 year period the additional CO2 from oil sands crude transported by the pipeline could be as much as 935 million metric tons.” These statistics are alarming, yet EPA’s analysis did not stop there.
• Not inevitable: Like other experts, EPA doubted State’s assurance that this tar sands oil would come out of the ground with the Keystone pipeline or without it:
  

  The market analysis and the conclusion that oil sands crude will find a way to market: With or without the Project is the central finding that supports the DSEIS’s conclusions regarding the Project’s potential GHG emissions impacts. Because the market analysis is so central to this key conclusion, we think it is important that it be as complete and accurate as possible.

  It then goes on to detail the ways in which this market analysis is incomplete: It uses outdated modeling, and the expense and infeasibility of rail shipping as an alternative to Keystone both need to be considered.

• Pipelines don’t pump themselves: EPA recommends that renewable energy be used to power the pumping stations along the pipeline, because otherwise the constructed pipeline itself will actively emit GhG emissions.
• Tar sands oil is particularly dirty to clean up: The EPA notes that diluted bitumen is very dense and sinks to the bottom of rivers and lakes. The 2010 Enbridge spill will require dredging, because normal cleanup methods do not suffice. The Keystone pipeline would be 36 inches in diameter — larger than the pipe that leaked 20,000 barrels of oil in the Enbridge spill. EPA notes that dilbit contains some very toxic materials “such as benzene, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), and heavy metals” that “could cause long-term chronic toxicological impacts” to wildlife. EPA recommends including a seriously revamped and rethought response plan as conditions before any permit is issued to build a pipeline.
• Who needs drinking water?: Though Keystone’e proponents received praise for moving the original route away from the Sand Hills, it still crosses the Ogallala Aquifer. The EPA notes there is another way: “The alternative laid out in the DSEIS that would avoid the Ogallala Aquifer is the I-90 Corridor Alternative, which largely follows the path of existing pipelines.” There were additional alternatives that State’s EIS did not address, and EPA asked it to do so.

That does not sound like the a “no-brainer” that Keystone’s advocates have described. That sounds exactly like the nation’s top environmental cops on the beat responding to an assessment of a project made by a firm being paid by the pipeline’s owner.

Secretary of State John Kerry delivered a strong Earth Day message on climate change, calling it a “clear and present danger.”

He also repeated the line from his powerful March remarks on climate change that “the science is screaming” at us to act. But that raises the question — are Kerry and his boss really listening?

The White House started sending signals last month “the president is inclined to approve the Keystone XL pipeline.” And, for what it’s worth, David Gordon, State’s director of policy planning when Condoleezza Rice was Secretary, just told a Canadian newspaper “I would say the chances are about four-to-one” Obama approves the tar sands pipeline.

Perhaps so, but then how empty would Kerry’s Earth Day message be:

This year’s Earth Day theme, the Faces of Climate Change, puts a special focus on the very real impact climate change has on people everywhere, and demonstrates just how clearly connected we all are. What one country does impacts the livelihoods of people elsewhere – and what we all do to address climate change now will largely determine the kind of planet we leave for our children and generations to come. As was clear in President Obama’s second inaugural address and in his State of the Union message, the United States is committed to meeting this challenge head on…. Dealing responsibly with the clear and present danger of climate change was a focus of my recent trip to China, and it is a challenge I will be engaging to meet everywhere I travel….

The science is screaming at all of us and demands action. From the far reaches of Antarctica’s Ross Sea to tropical wetlands in Southeast Asia, we have a responsibility to safeguard and sustainably manage our planet’s natural resources, and the United States remains firm in its commitment to addressing global environmental challenges.

One can’t, of course, “sustainably manage” the tar sands.

A must-see 2012 video explains how tar sands development threatens the carbon-rich boreal forests and their vital ecosystems. A 2012 study found that existing industry plans for exploiting the tar sands will destroy over 29,500 hectares (65%) of local carbon-rich peatland (aka bogs, moors, mires, and swamp forests) — which in turn will release the equivalent of up 173 million metric tons of CO2.

The bottom line is that Keystone is a gateway to a huge pool of carbon-intensive fuel most of which must be left in the ground — along with most of the world’s coal and unconventional oil and gas – if humanity is to avoid multiple devastating impacts that may be beyond adaptation.

Is Kerry going to accelerate the ruination of the whole world’s climate in return for not bloody much.  To paraphrase Sir Thomas More in A Man for All Seasons:

“It profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world … but for 35 permanent jobs!”

The Center for American Progress has filed its own comments on the Keystone XL Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement explaining why the pipeline is not “in the national interest”:
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Worried that the disaster-for-the-climate Keystone XL pipeline will get construction approval to pump 51 coal plants’ worth of carbon into the atmosphere? Feel free to speak your mind.

The last day that the State Department will accept public comments on what should be done about the Keystone pipeline proposal is Monday, April 22nd. This will end a 45 day period that started with the placement of the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) in the Federal Register. That draft statement becomes final on June 21st, and then in a matter of months, the State Department will issue a National Interest Determination. At that point, it would be difficult to reverse a decision, so the time for the public to tell the Administration how burning tar sands oil will impact the climate is now.

Not sure what to write in a public comment? Here are some ideas:

• 51 coal plants: Former NASA climate scientist James Hansen called Keystone the “fuse to the biggest carbon bomb on the planet.” A completed pipeline would emit the CO2 equivalent of 51 carbon-polluting coal-fired power plants. The science is clear: increasing CO2 emissions is bad for the climate.
• Just 35 jobs: The Keystone Pipeline would not create 20,000-100,000 temporary jobs, as some have said. It would create 3,900 temporary ones, and only 35 permanent.
• Not a done deal: The State Department’s Draft (EIS) concludes that the tar sands oil would be extracted even if the pipeline is not constructed. This is not true: the pipeline would move 830,000 barrels of oil each day, whereas moving it by rail is not feasible.
• National security pipe dream: Some say the pipeline would be good for national security, but that is a myth. Here is the reality.
• Drill here, drill now, send abroad: Though people often make the case that more tar sands oil from Canada helps American energy security, it is clear that much of this oil would just be shipped abroad into the international petroleum market.
• Incomplete assessment: The draft EIS was completed by a consulting firm paid by the pipeline’s owner. There are more complete reviews of the full environmental, economic, and climate impact of the pipeline.
• Thank you for spilling: Tar sands oil spills onto American soil with alarming frequency. Some Representatives think Exxon spilling 200,000 gallons of tar sands oil from a pipeline into Mayflower, Arkansas is not a big deal — in fact, the corporation should be thanked for the whole ordeal.
• Think of the Canadians: Stopping the pipeline would be doing Canada a favor.
• Morality: Opposing the pipeline is the right thing to do for our generation and the ones that follow us. Allowing it to happen is a sign of “cowardice.”

Anyone can submit as many comments as they wish. Some created a compelling video about why Keystone is “all risk, no reward,” but not everyone has to do that. Some protest President Obama to let them know that this decision matters for the climate, but that tactic, while important, is not for everyone.

Making a comment is easy: the State Department asks people to address them to this mailbox: keystonecomments@state.gov. Groups like 350.org, Sierra Club, CREDO Action, Chesapeake Climate Action Network, League of Women Voters, Sum of Us, and others have made it easy to compose a letter.

Whether it is snarky or serious, weigh in below if you left a comment regarding the “biggest carbon bomb on the planet.”

The Keystone XL Pipeline has been catapulted back in the spotlight of the House of Representatives this week, with Republicans continuing to waste taxpayer dollars rehashing who has the power to approve the project. Meanwhile, the State Department will be hosting a public hearing in Nebraska today to give residents a chance to comment on the pipeline that will disrupt their local communities.

Earlier this week, both the House Subcommittee on Energy and Power and the House Energy and Commerce Committee approved the Northern Route Approval Act (H.R.3), which would usurp the State Department’s right to decide on Keystone and allow TransCanada Corp. to build the northern leg without a cross-border permit. Republicans in both hearings regurgitated typical Big Oil talking points, claiming Keystone would create thousands of jobs for American workers while providing a boost in U.S. energy security.

During his opening statement on Tuesday’s Subcommittee hearing, Representative Ed Whitfield (R-KY) said:

At this point we are all familiar with the benefits of this project that would bring more Canadian oil to Midwestern and Gulf Coast refineries. The estimated 20,000 direct and 100,000 indirect jobs alone would likely make it a more successful jobs program than any project in the $800 billion dollar stimulus package or any other job creating effort the president currently has in the works.

In reality, Keystone would create 3,900 temporary jobs and only 35 permanent, while providing “negligible socioeconomic impacts,” according to a report by the State Department. While Republicans may try to blame the administration for the less than ideal jobs numbers, the report was actually written by a private consulting firm with links to the pipeline’s owner, TransCanada Corp., as well as Exxon Mobil, BP and the Koch brothers.

Multiple other GOP members made reference to the supposed boost in national security the pipeline will supply, but the State Department’s report made clear that at least some of the Keystone oil will be refined and then exported in response “to lower domestic gasoline demand and continued higher demand and prices in overseas markets.” This means Keystone adds nothing to U.S. energy security and that the pipeline is a way for the industry to get access to steeper oil prices in foreign markets.

Once again, analysis has discovered that Big Oil has paid to secure their yea votes on Keystone, with members of the Energy and Commerce Committee who voted to approve H.R.3 having received eight times more in career contributions from the oil and gas industries. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, members voting to approve the pipeline received $8,686,427 while members voting against received only $1,020,631.

Nebraskans will have a chance to express how they feel about Big Oil buying votes today, with a public hearing held by the State Department beginning at 12pm in Grand Island, Nebraska. The All Risk, No Reward Coalition and other environmental groups have released ads reminding Nebraskans that oil will spill frequently as it is pumped through the U.S. on its way to be exported out of the country.

Tiffany Germain is a Senior Climate/Energy Researcher in the Think Progress War Room.

The State Department’s Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline permit, released on March 1, concludes that dirty tar sands oil will move to U.S. Gulf Coast refineries by rail if the pipeline is disapproved. Therefore, the State Department asserts, there will be no difference in the amount of carbon pollution emitted from the increased production of tar sands oil regardless of Keystone approval.

An in-depth analysis of this claim by Reuters reporter Patrick Rucker debunks it. Reuters determined that “Oil-by-train may not be a substitute for Keystone pipeline.” If only small amounts of the dirty tar sands oil can move to the Gulf Coast by rail, then approval of Keystone would indeed facilitate a huge increase in tar sands oil production and carbon pollution.

The Canadian government and big oil companies claim that there will be a huge expansion in tar sands oil regardless of whether Keystone is built, so its approval will not lead to an increase in carbon pollution. The SEIS declares on page ES-15:

Based on information and analysis about the North American crude transport infrastructure (particularly the proven ability of rail to transport substantial quantities of crude oil profitably under current market conditions, and to add capacity relatively rapidly) and the global crude oil market, the draft Supplemental EIS concludes that approval or denial of the proposed Project is unlikely to have a substantial impact on the rate of development in the oil sands, or on the amount of heavy crude oil refined in the Gulf Coast area.

Reuters investigated this assumption, and found it uninformed and unlikely:

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On Wednesday, Secretary of State John Kerry told the House Foreign Affairs Committee that he wasn’t touching the Keystone pipeline decision with a ten-foot pole:

“I am staying as far away from that as I can now so that when the appropriate time comes to me, I am not getting information from any place I shouldn’t be, and I am not getting engaged in the debate at a time that I shouldn’t be,” Kerry told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday.

Right now, Kerry has the State Department’s Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement, but if that is all he information he relies on, he won’t get the full picture. While he will see that the project will only bring 35 permanent jobs, which is true, he would also see almost no discussion of the pipeline’s impact on the climate. (Oddly, he will be able to read an extended discussion of climate change’s projected impacts on the construction and maintenance of the proposed pipeline.)

So where is a Secretary of State sincerely concerned about climate change to go to find the climate consequences of approving the Keystone XL pipeline? He could peruse a new report out yesterday from Oil Change International called: “Cooking the Books: How The State Department Analysis Ignores The True Climate Impact of the Keystone XL Pipeline.”

The report’s recommendation:

In a world constrained by the realities of climate change, the proper measure of any project’s climate impact should not be based on the assumptions inherent in a business as usual scenario that guarantees climate disaster. Instead, the State Department should base these critical decisions on whether the project makes sense in a world that is actually seeking to minimize the real dangers of climate change. On this basis, we recommend that decision-makers consider the total amount of carbon that will be released by the project into the atmosphere.

How do they back that up?

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ExxonMobil’s recent oil spill dumped some 200,000 gallons into Mayflower, Arkansas, killed wildlife, and caused 22 homes to be evacuated. As the Natural Resources committee takes up another bill to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, Rep. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) argued at a hearing that the spill is more evidence the Keystone XL pipeline is a safe bet for Americans.

Comparing the safety of a pipeline to other transportation methods, Mullin said there is no reason to make a “big deal” about the spill:

“Would we really rather ship oil across the oceans? You’re talking about a catastrophe, we’re buying the oil. The percentages of barrels that are shipped daily from rail, from road, and from water the accidents versus the pipeline accidents, it’s a fraction. Your group is making a big deal about this ExxonMobil spill? I think Exxon should be patted on the back for the way they handled this. Yes this was horrible, yes we don’t like to see it, but they handled it. They did a great job handling it. I think they showed an example of what could be done when a catastrophe happens.

Watch it:

In fact, Exxon has been heavily criticized for its public dismissal of the harm and scope of the spill. And thanks to a technicality, the company can avoid paying taxes toward the federal Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund — an exemption that applies to most tar sands crude.

Mullin also claimed the pipeline would reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil, which he linked to acts like the Boston Marathon bombing. “I mean, would we rather buy oil from the Middle East that sponsors the acts that we see like at the Marathon that we just saw yesterday?” he said. “I don’t know if that was actually sponsored by them or not but that’s the acts that they support.” Setting aside his sheer speculation over the cause of the tragedy at Boston, Mullin’s claims about reducing foreign oil dependence just don’t add up. Keystone XL guarantees more oil is shipped overseas, not less: The pipeline moves Canadian oil across the U.S. straight to the Gulf of Mexico, where it is refined and then exported. A Department of Energy analysis noted that Keystone XL will have virtually no impact on Middle East imports.

For the record, oil and gas companies rank among the freshman congressman’s largest donors.

Van Jones and I have an op-ed in “The Miami Herald” and many other McClatchy newspapers. I will have more on the moral dimensions of climate change in later posts.

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” wrote Martin Luther King Jr. from a Birmingham jail on April 16, 1963. “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.”

The Atlanta-based King was explaining why he was in prison for nonviolent demonstrations so far from home, responding to a critical public statement by eight Southern white religious leaders. His words are timeless and universal in part because King was a master of language but primarily because he viewed civil rights through a moral lens.

The greater the moral crisis, the more his words apply. The greatest moral crisis of our time is the threat posed to billions —  and generations yet unborn — from unrestricted carbon pollution. Now more than ever, we are “tied in a single garment of destiny,” cloaked as a species in a protective climate that we are in the process of unraveling.

Many have criticized the demonstrations against the Keystone XL pipeline, which would open a major spigot to the Canadian tar sands, as unwarranted and untimely — unwarranted given our broad dependence on fossil fuels and untimely because of our struggling economy. We disagree.

We think there has been far too little direct action, given the staggering scale of the threat. As the International Energy Agency has explained, we must leave the vast majority of fossil fuels in the ground if we are to preserve a livable climate and avoid levels of warming that “even school children know” will be catastrophic for us all. The tar sands would be near the top of any list of the largest, dirtiest pools of carbon that must be forsaken for the sake of humanity.

King explained in his letter, “In any nonviolent campaign there are four basic steps: collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist; negotiation; self purification; and direct action.”

Has there ever been a problem where more facts from more unimpeachable sources have been collected and ignored than climate change? Every major scientific body and international group has taken to begging and pleading for action.

Last fall, the World Bank — no bastion of eco-consciousness – issued a report aimed to “shock us into action.” It warned that “we’re on track for a 4-degree Celsius warmer world marked by extreme heat-waves, declining global food stocks, loss of ecosystems and biodiversity, and life-threatening sea level rise.”

If we don’t act now, then, within decades, a large fraction of the world’s 9 billion people will find themselves living in places whose once stable climate simply now can’t sustain them – either because it is too hot or arid, the land is no longer arable, their glacially fed rivers are drying up, or the seas are rising too fast.

The overwhelming majority of those suffering the most – in this country and especially abroad – will be people who contributed little or nothing whatsoever to the problem.

This would be the greatest injustice in human history, irreversible on a time scale of centuries.

Has there ever been a problem subject to more failed negotiations? The international climate talks have been going on for a quarter century, full of sound and fury, but thwarted in large part by a U.S. Senate that itself talks to death every serious climate bill.

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Unlike gay rights or similar issues of basic human justice and fairness, climate change comes with a time limit.  Go past a certain point, and we may no longer be able to affect the outcome in ways that will prevent long-term global catastrophe. We’re clearly nearing that limit and so the essential cowardice of too many Democrats is becoming an ever more fundamental problem that needs to be faced. We lack the decades needed for their positions to “evolve” along with the polling numbers.  What we need, desperately, is for them to pitch in and help lead the transition in public opinion and public policy.

Instead, at best they insist on fiddling around the edges, while the planet prepares to burn.

Is the Keystone XL Pipeline the “Stonewall” of the Climate Movement?

And If So, Is That Terrible News?

By Bill McKibben via TomDispatch

A few weeks ago, Time magazine called the fight over the Keystone XL pipeline that will bring some of the dirtiest energy on the planet from Alberta, Canada, to the U.S. Gulf Coast the “Selma and Stonewall” of the climate movement.

Which, if you think about it, may be both good news and bad news. Yes, those of us fighting the pipeline have mobilized record numbers of activists: the largest civil disobedience action in 30 years and 40,000 people on the mall in February for the biggest climate rally in American history. Right now, we’re aiming to get a million people to send in public comments about the “environmental review” the State Department is conducting on the feasibility and advisability of building the pipeline.  And there’s good reason to put pressure on.  After all, it’s the same State Department that, as on a previous round of reviews, hired “experts” who had once worked as consultants for TransCanada, the pipeline’s builder.

Still, let’s put things in perspective: Stonewall took place in 1969, and as of last week the Supreme Court was still trying to decide if gay people should be allowed to marry each other. If the climate movement takes that long, we’ll be rallying in scuba masks. (I’m not kidding. The section of the Washington Mall where we rallied against the pipeline this winter already has a big construction project underway: a flood barrier to keep the rising Potomac River out of downtown DC.)

It was certainly joyful to see marriage equality being considered by our top judicial body.  In some ways, however, the most depressing spectacle of the week was watching Democratic leaders decide that, in 2013, it was finally safe to proclaim gay people actual human beings. In one weekend, Democratic senators Mark Warner of Virginia, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Tim Johnson of South Dakota, and Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia figured out that they had “evolved” on the issue. And Bill Clinton, the greatest weathervane who ever lived, finally decided that the Defense of Marriage Act he had signed into law, boasted about in ads on Christian radio, and urged candidate John Kerry to defend as constitutional in 2004, was, you know, wrong. He, too, had “evolved,” once the polls made it clear that such an evolution was a safe bet.

Why recite all this history? Because for me, the hardest part of the Keystone pipeline fight has been figuring out what in the world to do about the Democrats.

Fiddling While the Planet Burns

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A group called “All Risk, No Reward” aired ads opposing the Keystone pipeline yesterday during the Sunday news shows and will soon be targeting Democratic donors and youth.

This new ad makes the case that the oil will spill frequently as it is pumped through the U.S. on its way to be exported out of the country. This would not help American energy security and only create 35 permanent jobs:

This second piece features a rancher who’d rather not see other countries benefit from a toxic sludge going through and endangering his land:

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