Pipeline opponents applaud EPA letter

[LiberalAndProud]

Source: Lincoln Journal Star

The EPA has fired shots at one of the underpinning arguments for building the Keystone XL pipeline: that the project would not significantly worsen climate change because Canadian crude oil would get to market regardless of whether it’s built.

Keystone XL opponents say the letter issued by the Environmental Protection Agency on Monday gives President Barack Obama ammunition to reject the controversial proposal to build an underground oil pipeline that would stretch 1,179 miles from Hardisty, Alberta, to Steele City in southern Nebraska, where it would connect with existing pipes that lead to refineries along the U.S. Gulf Coast.

“The Environmental Protection Agency drove what may prove to be a final nail in the coffin of the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline linking the project to an expansion of the tar sands and a significant increase in greenhouse gas admissions,” Anthony Swift, a policy analyst with the national environmental action group National Resources Defense Council, said during a conference call with reporters Tuesday.

Read more: http://journalstar.com/news/pipeline-opponents-applaud-epa-letter/article_09812af6-9652-578c-833a-3ac6f611aadf.html

[freshwest]

1. If only this was a nail in the coffin of the GOP/Koch/Libertarian/Boenher/Rand BS...

And clearly why they all insist on eliminating the science heavy EPA. Mustn't get in the way of the divine free market. Or profits from polluting, to be more accurate.

[lonestarnot]

2. I believe that is our job.

[IDemo]

3. The GOP are the "I'm not dead yet!" character from the Holy Grail movie

Or was it the Black Knight character?

Facts are as irrelevant to them as the Constitution; they're in it for the political posturing.

[eridani]

4. Charles Pierce commentary

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/28436-focus-the-epa-sends-the-state-department-a-rejection-letter


Damn, 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