NY Times Editorial Urges Obama Administration To Reject Keystone XL Tar Sands Pipeline

Thu, 2011-07-21 09:42Brendan DeMelle
Brendan DeMelle's picture

NY Times Editorial Urges Obama Administration To Reject Keystone XL Tar Sands Pipeline

The New York Times editorial today calls on the State Department and President Obama to reject the disastrous Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, which it correctly labels the "wrong pipeline for the wrong oil."

The NYT editors point to the environmental impacts of the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline from Alberta to the Texas Gulf Coast, noting the destruction it would cause to Canada's boreal forests, the threats to Midwest drinking water supplies from inevitable spills and accidents, and the climate impacts of supporting the extraction of the dirtiest oil on the planet.

Hillary Clinton's State Department is correctly called to account for its abysmal attempts at drafting an adequate Environmental Impact Statement, which the EPA has labeled "insufficient" both times it has reviewed the document.

In a clear nod to the intense lobbying efforts of the pipeline's proponents, the Times urges Clinton's State Department to judge "the pipeline on the merits, not because of politics or pressure from the Canadian government, big oil and the industry’s friends in Congress."

Read the rest of the Times' concise and necessary criticism of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline: "Wrong Pipeline, Wrong Assessment" at the Times' website.

Tags: 
EPA
lobbying
hillary clinton
New York Times editorial
TransCanada
State Department
Keystone XL

Comments

Thu, 2011-07-21 13:06 — anonymous

The New York Times. The same paper that gave us Jayson Blair, Walter Duranty, and Thomas Friedman.

I wonder which one wrote the editorial?

Thu, 2011-07-21 14:01 — SteveFunk

If this pipeline crossing dry prairie states and provinces is not built, they will build one to the pacific coast through virgin rainforest wilderness to a treacherous harbor where tankers are at high risk of running aground, and sell the oil to China. Sorry, we won't learn to live without oil until we run out of it, which will be soon enough. Let's build this pipeline and buy our oil from a friendly neighbor.

Thu, 2011-07-21 15:54 — VJ

The Keystone XL pipeline would go through the Ogalalla aquifer, a source of drinking water for many, many people in those dry prairie states. Would you want heavy, corrosive tarsands oil in your drinking water?

We should learn to live without oil before we poison our land, air and water any more. Humans can adapt better gradually than if we are forced to by sudden emergency which tends to cause many deaths and much damage.

Thu, 2011-07-21 16:24 — anonymous

VJ... You go right ahead and cut all oil products out ou your life.

It wont bother me one bit.

However, I am not going to follow you and the rest of the world wont either.
So, as was said above, we will use oil as long as it is available ant then change to something else.
Since ther is only about 500 years worth available, we should have antimatter reactors by the time we run out.

And even if the US Does decide to destroy their energy security by not building the pipeline, China will buy all we can produce and happily let the US decline into insignifigance out ot stupidity.
Any way you slice it, we will sell the oil and nutbars will only ever amount to an annoyance.

Thu, 2011-07-21 16:40 — VJ

You fools, I am a lifelong Albertan and I am sick of the traitors who are poisoning my home and giving away our resources cheap to a bunch of greedy, lying foreign corporations. Alberta will become a desert long before the oil is used up from the effects of stupid selfish greedy people who refuse to face reality.

Your children will curse you for your stupidity.

Fri, 2011-07-22 11:40 — anonymous

LOL.... VJ, for your won sake, get a grip.

You have been listenening to that nutbar Hudema.

And MY children will simply laugh at the sillyness of this generation.
Yours may course you for working so hard to stifle progress.

Sun, 2011-07-24 17:11 — VJ

Who is Hudema? I read many opinions, most of them more intelligent and more honest than anonymous, and make up my mind based on the evidence.

Sat, 2011-07-23 21:25 — Steve Funk

Besides being hundreds of feet deep, this aquifer is already crisscrossed by other pipelines, and many thousands of miles of asphalt roads gradually leaching oil products, and thousands of sewage systems with varying effectiveness, not to mention millions of acres of agricultural chemical use, and a lot of oil drilling in the Bakken. What makes you think one more project will harm it?

[x]
Could NAFTA Force Keystone XL On United States?

As the public anxiously awaits the U.S. State Department’s final decision on the fate of the Keystone XL Pipeline, the discussion has largely ignored the elephant in the room: the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA.)

Thanks to NAFTA, signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1994, the State Department will likely be able to do little more than stall the pipeline’s construction. In its simplest form, NAFTA removes barriers for North American countries wishing to do business in or...

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