Pierce writes: "The State Department completed its months-long bag job of an environmental review of the Keystone XL pipeline, the proposed continent-spanning death funnel that will carry the world's dirtiest fossil fuel...The State Department has concluded, basically, no harm, no foul."
A mock oil pipeline is carried during a Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline demonstration near the White House. (photo: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg)
The Skids Are Greased on the Keystone Pipeline
03 February 14
he State Department completed its months-long bag job of an environmental review of the Keystone XL pipeline, the proposed continent-spanning death funnel that will carry the world's dirtiest fossil fuel from the ecological moonscape of northern Alberta to the refineries of Texas and thence to the world. The State Department has concluded, basically, no harm, no foul.
A senior State Department official was careful to note that the environmental review took no position on whether to approve the pipeline, saying: "Its analysis is only one factor in the final determination, which will also weigh national security, foreign policy and economic issues."
Golly moses, I wonder which way the administration will come down on the national security, foreign policy, and economic issues of this project, now that the environmental concerns have been swept away, those concerns being the primary reason not to build this nightmare in the first place. The State Department's conclusions are both disingenuous and preposterous. In and of themselves, and from their extraction to their transportation to their eventual use, tar sands are a climate change catastrophe. The building of the pipeline is not the point, What it carries, is. And to isolate the effect on climate change as the only environmental consideration relevant to a project built by a company that hasn't acted in good faith for 15 minutes since they dreamed up this scheme, and that has pipelines leaking and exploding already all over North America, and a project that is going to go through the breadbasket of the world and perilously close to an aquifer that's the only thing standing between us and having the Gobi Desert between Missouri and Utah, is to escape a flood by hiding in a lake.
What this is going to do is guarantee more lawsuits, and more civil disobedience, along the length of the pipeline, here and in Canada. (By the way, we learned from Edward Snowden that the Canadian equivalent of the NSA was spying on anti-pipeline activists up there because freedom. But I'm sure I just don't know how a liberal democratic state should operate.) It is also to guarantee that the administration's legacy on climate change will not be a proud one.
|
THE NEW STREAMLINED RSN LOGIN PROCESS: Register once, then login and you are ready to comment. All you need is a Username and a Password of your choosing and you are free to comment whenever you like! Welcome to the Reader Supported News community. |
