Bill Moyers interviews environmental activist Bill McKibben on the choice facing President Obama on the Keystone XL pipeline:
McKibben argues that stopping the pipeline is a necessary first step to stopping the dirty tar sands industry and saving the climate.
McKibben’s web site is 350.org
I think people were naive in believing they had won the day when Obama said he was postponing a decision until after the 2012 election.
Obama’s a company man and he serves his masters well. Everyone else, well not so much, but thanks for the vote over that Romney guy.
Unfortunately, the “stop the pipeline” people are living in a fools paradise. The oil will get to market one way or another. Personally, I think the whole “we can solve” this hype is just that, hype. No one even begins to consider the social upheaval that would result from any serious effort to stop the ever accelerating runaway train we’re one. Don’t get me wrong, wish I didn’t think this way but can’t see it any different. The human animal is going to do this period. And blaming the government is simply a way of avoiding our own responsibility. In fact, I find the issue of blaming the president, whomever it is, an exercise in ignorance and a total inability to face reality. It’s America and ALL Americans who are responsible for the situation. But if you want to hide behind a partisan rant press on.
I think President Obama will probably approve the Keystone XL pipeline maybe toward the end of his second term. He wants to wait because he knows that he will be excoriated by the protesters. And that white paper recently issued from the state department cited there would be no catastrophic danger to the environment. But the environmentalists have been rather naive when it comes to how politics work in the halls of Congress and in the Oval Office.
“He wants to wait because he knows that he will be excoriated by the protesters.”
Have you ever looked at any polling on the Keystone pipeline? It is ridiculously popular, like 2:1 in favor. Approving it would be a huge political boon for Obama.
If he was basing his decision on political considerations, the excoriation by environmental activists who are on the wrong side of the American public’s opinion would be last on the list of his concerns. Approving the project just before the 2012 elections would have helped him, and it would have helped his party in Congress. I can think of a quite a few Democrats in the mountain states who would have been thrilled to include footage of environmental activists excoriating the President in their 2012 campaign ads.
And so, I find that explanation of his behavior fairly unlikely.