Promises, Promises

"Let this reflect the growing urgency we feel for the hundreds of millions of people globally whose lives and livelihoods are being threatened and lost as a result of the changing climate and environmental damage caused by our dangerous addiction to oil."
"[Rejection of the pipeline would set] a powerful precedent ... signal a new course for the world's largest economy. History will reflect on this moment and it will be clear to our children and grandchildren if you made the right choice."
Keystone XL pipeline-condemning letter to Barack Obama

AP Photo/Susan Walsh    Several hundred students and youth who marched from Georgetown University to the White House to protest the Keystone XL Pipeline are arrested outside the White House in Washington, Sunday, March 2, 2014.

 

From Yemen, South Africa, Argentina and the United States, ten Nobel Peace Prize laureates have signed a letter pleading with U.S. President Barack Obama to refuse to permit the Keystone XL pipeline to transport Alberta oilsands bitumen to Texas Gulf Coast refineries to proceed.

Former President Jimmy Carter, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and others have not seen the need to plead with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to cease murdering his people, nor Grand Ayatollah Khamenei to halt Iran's search for nuclear weapons. Nor have they chastened America for its carbon dioxide footprint in mining coal to fire energy and contaminate the environment far more than oil would do.

Eleven Senate Democrats forwarded a letter of their own to their president a week before, urging him to finally approve the pipeline by the date he had given, May 31. Chairman of the Senate energy committee, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, an oil state, will likely lose her bid for re-election if the bill doesn't pass, given the stress she is already under resulting from the Affordable Care Act.

Some supporters of the pipeline insist "We need jobs and we need energy independence. The Keystone XL pipeline will help us support both." Thousands have signed letters urging President Obama to approve the pipeline sooner rather than later.

The State Department's latest environmental assessment reached the conclusion there would be no significant increases in carbon emissions with the Keystone pipeline in operation. And with all indices on proceeding looking positive, President Obama has stated another delay represents his long-awaited response: whatever it will be ultimately, it won't likely be brought forward until next year.

"That pipeline route is central to the environmental analysis. We are, prudently recognizing that the facts agencies need to assess and analyze could change. ... We have decided that the prudent thing is to allow more time", explained a State Department official, relating to the eight federal agencies having been granted additional time to investigate the process. 

While the southern leg of the Alberta-to-Texas pipeline is completed, the northern stretch needs that presidential permit. Delayed, rail shipments of Alberta crude crossing both countries have skyrocketed. And with the shipping of oil and other allied volatile substances by rail, they represent a more dangerous form of transference over long distances in rail containers not meant to transport such substances safely.

Big-money environmentalist donors who don't seem to mind home-grown carbon emissions from dirty coal mining and coal-fired chimneys spewing their particulate matter over the atmosphere are persuasively reminding President Obama of the votes they swing his way. "We are disappointed that politics continue to delay a decision on Keystone XL", claimed a statement issued by Jason MacDonald, speaking for Prime Minister Harper.

"This project will create tens of thousands of jobs on both sides of the border, will enhance the energy security of North America, has strong public support, and the U.S. State Department has, on multiple occasions, acknowledged it will be environmentally sound."