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NY Times Editorial Makes The Climate Case Against Keystone

The March 11 editorial in the New York Times says the overriding reason President Obama should reject the Keystone XL pipeline is climate change. [New York Times]

India’s breakneck pace of industrialisation is causing a public health crisis with 80-120,000 premature deaths and 20m new asthma cases a year due to air pollution from coal power plants, a Greenpeace report warns. [UK Guardian]

etc.

NY Times Editorial Makes The Climate Case Against Keystone

When to Say No to the Keystone XL Pipeline: A NYTimes Editorial

The State Department’s latest environmental assessment of the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline makes no recommendation about whether President Obama should approve it. Here is ours. He should say no, and for one overriding reason: A president who has repeatedly identified climate change as one of humanity’s most pressing dangers cannot in good conscience approve a project that — even by the State Department’s most cautious calculations — can only add to the problem.

When to Say No to the Keystone XL Pipeline: A NYTimes Editorial

State Department Keystone XL Report Written By TransCanada Hiree

Shocking news. The government has been lying to us.

The State Department’s draft environmental impact statement for the proposed Keystone XL tarsands pipeline was released last Friday and it was, to say the least, disappointing.

State Department Keystone XL Report Written By TransCanada Hiree

State Department hides the real cost of Keystone

You know the news is going to be bad when it’s buried at 4 p.m. on a Friday. If you dump news then, it’s because you hope nobody will pay attention.

But that’s when the State Department’s deeply flawed analysis of the Keystone XL oil pipeline proposal was released. If the timing of the unveiling was a sign the State Department knew it would be controversial, the content is an indicator that the department did not do its duty to thoroughly analyze the impacts of this dirty and dangerous project. 

State Department hides the real cost of Keystone

Earth Hurtling Towards Temperatures Not Seen in 11,000 Years

"Under all plausible greenhouse gas emission scenarios," the world is on track to surpass temperatures not seen since the dawn of civilization, according to new research.

Confirming "unprecedented" global warming, the new study published in Friday's issue of the journal Science shows that the earth's temperatures catapulted in just the last century at a rate that had previously taken 4,000 years.

Earth Hurtling Towards Temperatures Not Seen in 11,000 Years

Large rise in CO2 emissions sounds climate change alarm

The chances of the world holding temperature rises to 2C – the level of global warming considered "safe" by scientists – appear to be fading fast with US scientists reporting the second-greatest annual rise in CO₂emissions in 2012.

Carbon dioxide levels measured at at Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaiijumped by 2.67 parts per million (ppm) in 2012 to 395ppm, said Pieter Tans, who leads the greenhouse gas measurement team for the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The record was an increase of 2.93ppm in 1998.

Large rise in CO2 emissions sounds climate change alarm

J. Mijin Cha: Fracking Is No Breakthrough

One way to undermine movement on climate change is to create a false dichotomy that pits advocates against each other. Unfortunately, this is exactly what is happening now in the fracking battle. Using the term "fractivists," some environmentalists are blasting celebrities that advocate against fracking and as representatives from the Breakthrough Institute claimed, "anti-gas = pro-coal." In fact, not only is this claim absolutely false, it serves to destroy the climate movement, not make it stronger. As long as we are stuck in the simplistic mindset that we can only advance coal or natural gas as our main energy sources, we will never have any meaningful movement on climate change.

J. Mijin Cha: Fracking Is No Breakthrough

‘State Department’ Keystone XL Report Actually Written By TransCanada Contractor

The State Department’s “don’t worry” environmental impact statement for the proposed Keystone XL tarsands pipeline, released late Friday afternoon, was written not by government officials but by a private company in the pay of the pipeline’s owner. The “sustainability consultancy” Environmental Resources Management (ERM) was paid an undisclosed amount under contract to TransCanada to write the statement, which is now an official government document.  The statement estimates, and then dismisses, the pipeline’s massive carbon footprint and other environmental impacts, because, it asserts, the mining and burning of the tar sands is unstoppable.

‘State Department’ Keystone XL Report Actually Written By TransCanada Contractor

Critical Part of Keystone Report Done by Firms with Deep Oil Industry Ties

The State Department's recent conclusion that the Keystone XL pipeline "is unlikely to have a substantial impact" on the rate of Canada's oil sands development was based on analysis provided by two consulting firms with ties to oil and pipeline companies that could benefit from the proposed project.

Critical Part of Keystone Report Done by Firms with Deep Oil Industry Ties

Where Is the Climate Leadership?

Mr. Secretary, I am disappointed. I thought that we all understood that to fight climate change, we have to be able to say "no" to dirty energy projects. Our friends around the world are looking to us for climate leadership and it starts with drawing the line at tar sands expansion. It also means that we need to give health and environment a fair shake in the environmental review of a dirty energy project such as the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. Yet the draft environmental review prepared by the State Department for Keystone XL misses what folks in industry themselves are saying: the Keystone XL project is necessary for expansion of tar sands. We know this means that Keystone XL will make climate change worse.

Where Is the Climate Leadership?