Obama Counting on Environmentalists Not Having Any Place to Go in 2012

amborin

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Fri Aug-26-11 07:00 PM
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Obama Counting on Environmentalists Not Having Any Place to Go in 2012

Edited on Fri Aug-26-11 07:04 PM by amborin

Hansen Says Obama Will Be 'Greenwashing' About Climate Change if He Approves Keystone XL Pipeline

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......But there is a risk for the president, said Julian Zelizer, a professor of public history and public affairs at Princeton University. If he approves the pipeline, he could lose environmentalists in swing states such as North Carolina, where environmentalists stand as a key Democratic swing vote in moderate, suburban areas, he said.

"The president is counting on the fact that environmentalists don't have anywhere else to go in 2012," said Zelizer. "The risk is that they won't do much to help him get re-elected, and that can make a huge difference in key districts."

Nine of the nation's green groups signaled this week that Keystone XL is a political test, writing a letter to the president with the words: "If you block it, you will trigger a surge of enthusiasm from the green base that supported you so strongly in the last election. We expect nothing less." Yesterday, Kenny Bruno of Corporate Ethics International said protesters would not give up and would put their bodies in front of bulldozers and pipes to stop the pipeline if Obama approves it. ....

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Others say that Hansen is unlikely to change the political dynamic, considering that the State Department is set to conclude in a final environmental impact statement that the pipeline has "limited adverse environmental impact," The Washington Post reported yesterday.

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http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2011/08/26/26climatewire-hansen-says-obama-will-be-greenwashing-about-72041.html?scp=3&sq=environmentalists%20and%20obama&st=cse

limited environmental impact?

740,000 Acres of Canada's Boreal Forest (arguably more important for the planet than Brazil's Amazon) are at stake:

Tar Sands and the Carbon Numbers

August 21, 2011

This page opposes the building of a 1,700-mile pipeline called the Keystone XL, which would carry diluted bitumen � an acidic crude oil � from Canada�s Alberta tar sands to the Texas Gulf Coast. We have two main concerns: the risk of oil spills along the pipeline, which would traverse highly sensitive terrain, and the fact that the extraction of petroleum from the tar sands creates far more greenhouse emissions than conventional production does.

The Canadian government insists that it has found ways to reduce those emissions. But a new report from Canada�s environmental ministry shows how great the impact of the tar sands will be in the coming years, even with cleaner production methods.

It projects that Canada will double its current tar sands production over the next decade to more than 1.8 million barrels a day. That rate will mean cutting down some 740,000 acres of boreal forest � a natural carbon reservoir.
Extracting oil from tar sands is also much more complicated than pumping conventional crude oil out of the ground. It requires steam-heating the sands to produce a petroleum slurry, then further dilution.

One result of this process, the ministry says, is that greenhouse gas emissions from the oil and gas sector as a whole will rise by nearly one-third from 2005 to 2020 � even as other sectors are reducing emissions. Canada still hopes to meet the overall target it agreed to at Copenhagen in 2009 � a 17 percent reduction from 2005 levels by 2020. If it falls short, as seems likely, tar sands extraction will bear much of the blame.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/22/opinion/tar-sands-and...