Shortsighted Hillary Clinton Permits New Tar Sands Pipelines

Secretary of Hypocrisy

OK, enough! Tar sands oil is being forced down the throat of the American people by our government, and the most vulnerable people are the ones who will suffer from its extraction, processing, transportation, and its use.

Secretary Clinton has signaled the world that climate change is no big deal to her,  and this week she has OK’ed the Alberta Clipper dirty oil sands pipeline.  This is especially ironic in the face of her climate change talks with other countries, and it’s the height of hypocrisy from Secretary Clinton.  It’s clearly a “Do as we say, not as we do” signal to the world, and if I lived in India, or China, I don’t think her pleas about climate change would hold much weight in the future.  Way to go, Secretary Clinton, you have let us down again. As a message to the world on climate change, this stinks.

Clinton has not exactly been impressing anyone as Secretary of State, and on the issue of clean energy diplomacy,  she is a failure (to date).  We’ll see if the Chinese or Indians feel like taking climate change advice from someone who doesn’t practice what she preaches.  Most people expected Clinton to take a strong stand against climate change.  After all, during the campaign for president, she talked about what a serious problem climate change was, and how we needed an Apollo Program to deal with it.  Instead she pisses off very environmentalist in the country and allows the expansion of the dirtiest oil to be used and disseminated by the United States.

This pipeline will come through my state of Minnesota, messing up ecosystems, polluting the environment, and crossing a large American Indian land; the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe.  Many of them have protested this pipeline but of course, when you are a native American up against a powerful Secretary of State,  people don’t tend to listen to you.  People don’t tend to listen to anyone on this issue who doesn’t have clout or connections.   Mrs. Clinton has also demonstrated that you don’t need to know much about the environment to go about seriously destroying it, even as you tell people that global warming is important.  To her, it’s obviously not.  According to some environmental groups, a court challenge is being prepared to overturn decision.  Good. This story is from Dirty Oil Sands.

Flying in the face of a growing host of military experts and research showing the contrary, Secretary Clinton decided that Enbridge’s Alberta Clipper dirty oil sands pipeline is in the U.S. national interest. Presidential Executive Order 11423 allows the Secretary to permit the pipeline ONLY if she judges it’s in the national interest.

The Alberta Tar Sands is the world’s largest energy project, ultimately covering an area the size of Florida. And it produces the world’s dirtiest, most expensive, and arguably most dangerous oil. And if the Alberta Clipper pipeline is actually built, 450,000 more barrels of it, per day, will be burned in the U.S. – releasing five times as much greenhouse gas as conventional oil.

THE FIGHT IS NOT OVER
Although this permit is definitely a setback — both in the fight against dirty oil and for the clean energy economy, the fight is by no means over for the Alberta Clipper or against dirty oil sands.

Giant dump trucks move across Athabasca tar sand fields in Alberta, Canada. These deposits bitumen (tar) are said to rival the light crude oil reserves of Saudi Arabia, but they are more costly to process and require relatively large energy inputs and environmental reclamation. While the hydrocarbon fuel that results is of high quality, it still releases large amounts of greenhouse gases and other environmental contaminates. Photo courtesy of Syncrude Canada.

As Sarah Burt of Earthjustice said, speaking for an international network fighting the expansion of the oil sands,

“The State Department has rubber-stamped a project that will mean more air, water and global warming pollution, particularly in the communities near refineries that will process this dirty oil. The project’s environmental review fails to show how construction of the Alberta Clipper is in the national interest. We will go to court to make sure that all the impacts of this pipeline are considered.”

In addition to the lawsuit against the State Department, many of the groups involved also have appealed the U.S. Forest Service over its willingness to allow the pipeline to traverse parts of the Chippewa National Forest in Minnesota. Also, a group of tribal members have apparently gathered enough signatures on a petition to hold a referendum on the Leech Lake tribal council’s agreement to allow the line through tribal land.

…. this clearly contradicts President Obama’s campaign promise to create a clean energy eeconomy.

Perhaps Obama’s talk of a green energy economy was complete BS.  More and more that looks to be the case.  Natural gas?  Emits greenhouse gases.  Clean coal?  Doesn’t exist.  Green jobs?  So far, mostly blue collar jobs for men, building roads and weatherizing buildings, or so we are told.  Carbon Capture and Storage?  Probably won’t work and is horribly expensive.  What are you really planning to do about climate change, if anything, Mr. President?  Support for cap and trade?  Won’t stop climate change in time.  Won’t do much of anything but create wealth for the already rich, in fact. I’m losing patience.

I think at this point, we need to get mad, if you aren’t there already.

“Perhaps that’s why they issued the permit as if they had something to hide. Ordinarily when a permit like this is going to be granted, the government publicly announces the Record of Decision two weeks before issuing the permit.  Those two weeks allow for exposure of the decision to the sunlight of public and sister agency review — if it can stand that review, the permit is issued two weeks later.  However, in a move reminiscent of the Bush administration, the State Department hid the Record of Decision from the public — and announced both the ROD and the actual permit yesterday.

OBAMA’S CHANCE TO MAKE GOOD
On September 16th, President Obama will meet one on one for the second time with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper (see results of first meeting).  For the second time, oil sands is likely to be on the agenda.

If President Obama’s clean energy economy promises are not empty, he will stand strong against special deals for tar sands.  No exemptions to climate agreements for tar sands.  No public assumptions that unproven, pie-in-the-sky, Big Oil “carbon capture” fantasies will take care of the global warming dangers.  And no further commitments to dead-end pipeline infrastructure projects that will make true action on reaching climate goals more difficult.

I know for a fact that the Alberta tar sands are not on most people’s radar, but they are out there ready to provide Americans with the dirtiest oil in the world, all so that we don’t have to buy “ferrin oil” from the Saudis (funny how ferrin oil from Canada is just fine!)  and they are the dirtiest, most polluting oil on the planet.   That’s why I did a podcast on it, and why people  need to learn about it.  We have to stop it.

Stay tuned to this site for more information on the legal battle and whether we can all get involved, and how.

Read more about all of this at  DIRTYOILSANDS.ORG BLOG