Congress is about to sabotage Obama’s historic climate deal

[babylonsister]

Friday, Nov 14, 2014 01:35 PM EST
Congress is about to sabotage Obama’s historic climate deal
China and the U.S. came to long-overdue climate agreement this week. So why are we still talking about Keystone XL?
Bill McKibben


If you want to understand why the China-U.S. climate deal announced this week is going to be hard to meet, and if you want to understand why the Democratic Party is such an annoying institution, meet Tom Carper, Democratic senator from Delaware.

Tom Carper is very happy with the president’s climate deal with China. “Yesterday’s climate change agreement with China is yet another example that when the United States takes a leadership role in addressing our greatest global environmental challenges – other countries will follow,” he explained, which is the kind of self-satisfied vacuity Washington folks routinely utter. (Anyone who thinks the U.S. has taken a leadership position in addressing climate change needs to reconsider the last quarter century).

But here’s his real folly: Later the same day Carper announced he would vote in favor of the Keystone Pipeline, because he’s had “enough already” of the fight waged by more environmental activists than on any issue in a generation. “He is hopeful that moving forward with this bipartisan bill will pave the way for Congress to work together on other measures to increase our energy independence while also addressing the real environmental and public health threats we face from greenhouse gas pollution,” said a Carper spokeswoman.

His rallying cry: “Let’s clear the decks” by giving the GOP what it wants on Keystone.

By now it should be clear that giving in to the Republicans does not “pave the way” for future compromises — that’s the Lucy-with-the-football lesson that President Obama has spent his entire term in office learning. Much more fundamentally, though, the problem is this: you can’t cut carbon without, you know, cutting carbon.

The president’s accord with China doesn’t actually do anything except set a target. To meet that target you have to do things. If you don’t do things — if you keep approving pipelines and coal mines and fracking wells — then you won’t meet the target.

more...

http://www.salon.com/2014/11/14/congress_is_about_to_sabotage_obamas_historic_climate_deal/

[woo me with science]

1. You cannot push for TPP and TISA

and simultaneously claim to care about and be working to protect the environment.

This is the surreal, Orwellian bullshit we are fed by corporate politicians.

[scarystuffyo]

3. haha

I just posted the same thing a couple of minutes ago in another thread

[Historic NY]

2. Me thinks he Carps about too much....

were going to build a pipe line for a foreign country. most likely using foreign labor and call it an American success. All for oil we neither need or want, so Canada can sell it to China.