U.S. Further Delays Final Decision On Canada’s Controversial Keystone Pipe

A Brief Bit of Breaking News and a Commentary from NAL publisher Doug Draper

Here is some good news on this Good Friday and just a few days before this coming Earth Day, Tuesday, April 22^nd, 2014.

One of many protests near White House in past year over Tar Sands pipeline

The U.S. State Department announced this April 18^th that it is now delaying a final decision on construction of the Keystone and KL pipeline from Calgary’s tar sands through the U.S. Midwest to Gulf area where it would be refined until the end of this year.

U.S. environmental groups and citizens who are opposing the pipeline are greeting this as good news because it pushes a final decision by President Barack Obama and his Democratic administration past mid-term to take place across America this coming fall – elections in which any rejection of the Keystone pipe beforehand might be used by Republican candidates funded by the petro-chemical industry to go after their Democratic rivals.

Environmentalists are also saying they hope the delay means the Obama administration wants more time to study the potential risks of the pipeline and the contribution Canada’s tar sands operations are making to greenhouse emissions and climate change.

In a report posted onoline this April 18^th by The Globe and Mail, Hannah McKinnon of the Torntoo-based citizen group Environmental Defence, said “the tar sands are high cost, high risk and high carbon and this is another clear signal that their future is anything but certain”

“The tar sands,” she added, “have a devastating impact on land, air, water, communities and our shared climate and it is critical that the president get it right and reject this pipeline.”

Meanwhile, Canada’s Stephen Harper government released a statement calling the State Department delay disappointing and a case of American politics getting in the way of a project it insists would be beneficial to both countries in terms of jobs and the economy.

Just a couple of final thoughts here from this commentator.

I don’t think any reasonable person, however green their shades may be, sees the tar sands operations shutting down anytime too soon.

But if, as the Harper government and its allies in the petro industry keep telling the United States, there are thousands of jobs that could be created refining this stuff, why don’t we build refining capacity right here in Canada and keep the jobs, for however many years they last, in our own country?

Finally, we should all know that as this 21^st century unfolds the conversion to greener, more renewable forms of energy is coming and a number of development countries, including China, believe it or not, are reportedly working on better technologies for generating now. 

As Obama once said, those countries that take the lead in perfecting those technologies will emerge as they great economic powers of this century. So why isn’t Canada’s federal government just as interested in exploring energy alternatives as it is in exploiting the tar sands?

Maybe those are a few things to think about this coming Earth Day.

To read the story The Globe and Mail posted on Keystone this April 18^th, click on http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/energy-and-resources/us-once-again-delays-decision-on-keystone-xl-pipeline/article18066497/ .then share your views below with us.

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