The US State Department finds that the proposed Keystone XL pipeline is the most environmentally friendly option compared to other transportation alternatives, such as railroads and tanker ships. Despite the significant risk of spills, a pipeline like Keystone XL is a safer, cheaper and more environmentally benign way of transporting oil, the assessment concludes. For greens, this should be a gut check—though already we’re seeing that it isn’t. But the hard truth here is that when Obama approves Keystone—and he now has every reason to do so—the green movement will have been soundly defeated not by special interests or some perverse capitalist desire to desecrate the earth, but by a very simple set of facts. --Walter Russell Mead,
The American Interest, 3 February 2014
Environmental groups are warning President Obama that his liberal base might stay home on Election Day if he approves the Keystone XL oil pipeline. “It is very likely that there will be negative consequences for Democrats if Keystone were approved,” said Kate Colarulli, the associate director for the Sierra Club’s Beyond Oil campaign. “This is a tremendous opportunity to protect the climate and build the Democratic base if Obama rejects Keystone XL.” Green groups are promising acts of “civil disobedience,” if Obama signs off on the project and contend Keystone’s approval could torpedo the president’s broader climate change agenda. --Ben Goad and Laura Barron-Lopez,
The Hill, 4 February 2014
I would say Keystone is still worth stopping, because climate change is such an enormous threat that anything with even a small chance of cutting emissions is worth a shot. But even if the activists lose the battle on the pipeline, they could still win a grand victory later. --Ryan Cooper,
The Washington Post, 3 February 2014
So, what public policy reason is there to block the pipeline? There really isn’t one. Indeed, the environmentalists’ obsession with Keystone began as a gigantic mistake. Two and a half years ago, the environmentalist James Hansen wrote a blog post alerting his readers to the pipeline, which he concluded would amount to “game over” for the climate, as it would lead to the burning of enough new oil to moot any effort to limit runaway greenhouse gases. His analysis was based on a simple back-of-the-envelope calculation that turned out to be wrong in several respects, the most important being the assumption that blocking the pipeline would keep the oil in the Canadian oil sands in the ground. --Jonathan Chait,
New York Magazine, 31 January 2014
The thing you have to understand about the fight over the Keystone XL pipeline is that it’s not a fight about reality. It’s about politics. The way the U.S. system works, the final call on Keystone rests with President Barack Obama alone. Obama has said he has to be convinced Keystone will not contribute significantly to greenhouse gas emissions. Since this is exactly what his own State Department keeps telling him, you would think presidential approval of Keystone would be a slam dunk. Except it isn’t because Obama, who is starting to resemble Hamlet in his reluctance to make a decision on Keystone, is a contradiction in terms. --Lorrie Goldstein,
Sun News, 2 February 2014
Speaking at a news conference in Port of Spain former US Energy Sec. Steven Chu said, “I don’t have a position on whether the Keystone Pipeline should be built. That is for the secretary of State and the president. But I will say that the decision on whether the construction should happen was a political one and not a scientific one.” --Curtis Williams,
Oil & Gas Journal, 3 February 2014
The support for renewable energy through the electricity price will lead consumers, especially the ones near the bottom of the income scale, to eventually revolt and say: We can’t afford this any more. ----Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder (SPD)
,BILD Zeitung, 1 February 2014
