Obama Approval Of Keystone Means Environmentalists Will Have Leverage, Sez Flat World Tom

[hatrack]

EDIT

FRIEDMAN: Yeah, you know, I come to the whole environmental climate story, I don't come from the rainforest. I come from Beirut. And what I mean by that is I've always understood this is a hockey game, that it's about who has leverage and who doesn't. And so there's a lot of people who've been advising the environmental movement, and Bill McKibben, kind of a tut, tut, tut, you know, you guys really should be focused on more important things, like a carbon tax, or something like that. And I would agree a carbon tax would be wonderful, but you're not going to get it without leverage.

And right now, the green movement has some leverage. There is this pipeline being proposed. It has many people in the oil and gas industry who want it. The president probably has some inclination toward it, because it would create jobs. But to me, it's something that the green movement should use for leverage to get other things, and that if the president's going to approve it, I want him to feel enormously guilty about it. So he will consider doing things that will have a - make a sustainable difference - carbon tax, basically raising the standard - emission standards of existing power plants and all the things of that nature.

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CONAN: All right. What - I think I hear you. But Tom Friedman would - one of the big things President Obama might be able to get from the decision where he says to, essentially, the Republicans and the oil people in the oil states, all right, I made your decision. Here is your pipeline. I need something big in response. Let's have a rule. Let's have a zoning rule. Every new house that built, every apartment building, every shopping center has to put solar panels on the roof.

Ed. - Yes, I'm sure that would work.

FRIEDMAN: It could be that. You know, the president in the State of the Union, Neal, referred to his desire to have, basically, a national building efficiency standard, something that California already has. The average building wastes about 30 percent of its energy. And if every new building in the country were built to California standards, it would have a very, very big effect.

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http://www.npr.org/2013/03/12/174119115/the-president-the-pipeline-and-environmental-politics

Let's set aside little things like cementing full exploitation of tar sands into the climatic history of the planet, and mass extinction and all of that.

Let's just consider the prospect of President Obama approving Keystone XL, and then "reaching out" to the environmental community for their support in getting his Bold New Initiative (whatever that is) through Congress, which is rather like kicking your father in the balls and then, while he's writhing in pain and seething with rage, asking if you could borrow $1,000.

[blm]

1. Yep, but, a deal was made years ago and it's likely other international deals made by Clinton are

now contingent on that Keystone deal. The actual signing was just held off to now to protect Hillary 2016. Hillary doesn't care that Kerry will be the one smeared with her deal, when has she ever cared about the legacy of others? Kerry, the good soldier is accustomed to taking the hits, the slings, the arrows, and he'll do it here again for Obama and for Clinton.

Grist reported back in summer of 2011 it was a done deal.