President Barack Obama will ask the State Department not to approve the construction of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline unless it can first determine that it will not lead to a net increase in greenhouse gas emissions, a senior administration official told The Huffington Post.
The policy pronouncement will come during the president's highly publicized speech on climate change at Georgetown University on Tuesday. It will add another chapter to what has been the most politically difficult energy-related issue confronting this White House.
The president has avoided weighing in on the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline for several years now, citing an executive order asking the State Department to make a determination on the project's viability first. Environmentalists have called on him to spike the project entirely because of risks that it will contribute irrevocably to global warming and potentially contaminate drinking water if it leaks. Conservatives and even some labor groups have encouraged Obama to approve of the project because of its potential to create jobs.
The new Obama policy somewhat splits the difference -- not killing the project outright, but ensuring that it meets a basic environmental standard.
#1
"The new Obama policy somewhat splits the difference -- not killing the project outright, but ensuring that it meets a basic environmental standard."
Almost. The policy is to not kill it directly because that would mean taking heat. Instead he wants to kill it with delays, hoops, etc. You know. Leadership stuff.
#8
Obama is also trying to regulate the coal business out of business in the name of the left's god; climate change. He will use the machinery of government if he can't get legislation through Congress.
#9
Let's face it: none of us will be safe until we eliminate CO2, that dangerous poison, from our atmosphere. The plants will be totally pissed, of course, but what have they ever done for us?
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.