The EPA Sends the State Department a Rejection Letter

By Charles Pierce, Esquire

05 February 15

amn, the Environmental Protection Agency is just daring the newly opened monkeyhouse on Capitol Hill to defund it completely and scatter its bones to the four corners of the earth. At the very least, it's cruising for a bruising from our neighbors to the North.

The Final SEIS also finds that the incremental greenhouse gas emissions from the extraction, transport, refining and use of the 830,000 barrels per day of oils sands crude that could be transported by the proposed Project at full capacity would result in an additional I .3 to 27.4 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents (MMTC02-e) per year compared to the reference crudes.2) To put that in perspective, 27.4 MMTC0 2-e per year is equivalent to the annual greenhouse gas emissions from 5.7 million passenger vehicles or 7.8 coal fired power plants.3) Over the 50-year lifetime of the pipeline, this could translate into releasing as much as 1.37 billion more tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.4) Until ongoing efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with the production of oil sands are more successful and widespread, the Final SEIS makes clear that, compared to reference crudes, development of oil sands crude represents a significant increase in greenhouse gas emissions.

The hirelings and the sublets in Congress, of course, are agog.

"We will know if the president will side with American jobs and North American energy security or not," House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said. "I hope that the president will look at how Republicans and Democrats worked together to pass this bill and will reconsider his veto threat."

The letter is addressed to the State Department, where the decision on our old friend, the Keystone XL pipeline, the continent-spanning death funnel, is still hanging fire. (The monkeyhouse is preparing to pass an idiot bill to remove the State Department's jurisdiction over this particular project, but the president likely will veto it, and it's doubtful that the votes are there to override him.) The president said he wouldn't approve the pipeline if it could be shown that building it would significantly increase the carbon emissions tied to climate change. The EPA just told him, through the State Department, that it would do just that. Notice that this letter mentions the immediate dangers to the people and the land through which the pipeline would run, but that it primarily focuses on the fact that, if the world is serious about saving itself from environmental disaster, this stuff should stay in the ground until when and if we can find a way to use it without further demolishing the climate. That basically says to Canada, and to all the corporate oligarchs who will make a buck from this poison, including the brothers Koch, that their profits literally should remain buried for a while. Politicians -- to say nothing of gozillionnaires --get testy when you tell them that. If I were the EPA, I'd hereafter check every morning to make sure that there isn't a maple-leaf flag flying above headquarters, and that nobody has changed the lock on the office.