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Obama Tar Sands Delay May Put Decision in Romney's Hands
The Obama administration has decided to delay a decision on the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline until after the 2012 election. This is an extraordinary achievement for the thousands of grassroots activists who put ourselves on the line -- and is clear evidence for the environmental movement that directly targeting President Obama works, and probably works better than any other strategy (kudos especially to 350.org, Bill McKibben, Bold Nebraska's Jane Kleeb and Friends of the Earth).
November 6, 2011 - Tar Sands Action Surrounds the White House As amazing as this progress is, however, let's not delude ourselves: President Obama is just kicking the climate can down the road to a point when he may not even be in a position to decide its fate. In the not-unlikely scenario that he loses re-election, approving the tar sands pipeline will be an easy way for President Romney to give Big Oil a huge thank you gift for all the help they provide him during the 2012 election. This decision just puts off a green light for the tar sands by a year. And it's unclear to what extent the administration is really reconsidering the pipeline, or just reconsidering the poorly chosen pipeline route.
That's why I'm a little dismayed at suggestions that this kick-the-can decision means environmentalists will enthusiastically back President Obama in 2012. Is the price of an environmentalist's vote a year's delay on environmental catastrophe? Excuse me, no.
We cannot abandon the tough approach that brought victory even as the administration throws us a bone. Shifting the pipeline route is helpful, but it doesn't get at the bigger problem that exploiting the tar sands is a climate catastrophe and deadly to millions of acres of boreal forests and their songbirds. The fuse on the tar sands carbon bomb was just made a year longer, but let's not forget that it's still burning.
And let's not forget that despite quite positive moves on fuel efficiency, the Obama administration weekly announces what RL Miller has called mini-Keystones: greenlighting major fossil fuel projects relatively under the radar like a coal mine on public land outside Bryce Canyon, massive expansion of offshore drilling, failing to regulate coal ash sufficiently, or letting coal plants off the hook on water use.
In other words, the climate crisis is still spinning out of control and Obama is seeking to split the difference. Unfortunately, splitting the difference doesn't work when you're dealing with planetary physics. It's getting a lot hotter out there, more species are dying, more states are bursting into flames and countries drowning in floods. Obama's instinctual conflict avoidance just isn't going to cut it when it comes to the existential task of saving the planet. For the sake of the planet and our country, he's got to get over it.
Bill, Jane, and thousands of activists have got Obama on the ropes on this one. Let's push a little more and defuse this carbon bomb once and for all.
52 Comments so far
Show AllOne thing the delay WILL accomplish is that of showing Mother Nature's hand. She's hardly slacked off over the course of the past 2 years with major events impacting nation after nation almost without pause. Lately it's been the floods in Thailand, the great Arctic melt-down, and the small quakes beginning to jostle the tectonic plates under our own presumably stable continent. These wake-up calls might even break through the defenses of the most hubristic climate change deniers... Truth Happens!
Not only does Mother Nature bat last, but She IS causing more and more major hits, as humanity slowly awakens to our Planets distress calls.....LISTEN and RESPOND !
Sioux Rose: " These wake- up calls might even break through the defenses of the most hubristic climate change deniers". Wishful thinking, it seems to me. One has to wonder what kind of a wake-up call it would take to wake up the Mammon people and their fellow sybarites. From my perspective, the perdition of the planet will not wake them up until some kind of world wide plague! Where they personally fear for their lives. But I would love to be wrong!
Well, Paul, I've got good news and bad news for you.
The good news, you will LIVE to see the answer to your question.
The bad news, the wake-up call will be anything but painless.
You know I love the way mythology's wisdom finds its way into the astrological archetypes, and the story of Demeter stopping the harvests in protest to Zeus' lack of concern for the fate of her daughter is TIMELESS and about to become contemporary.
When the seasons fall out of joint, when rains no longer aim at the regions where crops are planted, hunger can strike very quickly. That fate is exponentially increased by things like the toxicity of the waters, the dying coral reefs, the loss of forests and places where wildlife once thrived. As if people could eat concrete or "Soylent Green."
Imagine the cognitive dissonance for those who attend churches or political groups that tell them climate change is a lie... when their own homes are under water (not just financially), hit by freak tornadoes, fires, or another symptom of nature radically OUT of balance? How long can ideology trump direct experience? Mother Nature is talking...
The cosmic clock is ticking fast...
Nicely put, Sioux Rose. Paul
Sioux Rose and others,
Unfortunately whatever Mother Nature throws at us is not likely to have the impact we're hoping for. Last week I gritted my teeth and watched (on C-span) an English writer giving a speech at some ultra right conference. His name was something on the lines of "James Delafield, or Delapole", I didn't bother to remember it. The point is, he didn't deny climate change, his argument was entirely that the earth's climate has changed many times in the past, it's a regular occurence, and has nothing to do with humans putting too much carbon in the atmosphere. He kept calling carbon dioxide "plant food" as well. How's that for a new low in framing?
So now the 1% can just shrug their shoulders at fire, drought, flood and extinctions and say, "That's just Nature doing her thing; we just have to adapt". I think the plan is: " Let the billions die; we'll be safe behind our security walls eating the last morsels of food on planet earth before we leave for one of those habitable planets NASA is looking for now....
3645: This is why media in the hands of a few corps proves so dangerous.
Note that Acorn became the fall-guy for what the banks did in the way of the housing implosion.
Note that Obama is often referred to as a Progressive, which of course works to taint what real Progressive values mean (or amount to).
I am WELL-aware of the campaign of lies and obfuscation that's taking the will and muscle out of the equation that's needed to alter the systems we live by IN TIME for a smoother transition. Our climate has built up so much, in the way of CO2 and poisons, that it will NEVER go back to what it was, at least not within any foreseeable generation. The issue then is LIFE'S sustainability, altogether.
Still, I like to think there's a spark of truth in every heart, and when one's own existence (or survival) is ON the line, all the BS ends up not meaning shit to a tree (to quote Gracie Slick, the singer)... and Truth Happens.
I believe in reincarnation, and believe further that Indigenous wisdom is stored in most of us, perhaps in one of the unused files of the brain, part of the 90-95% reserves that brain researchers say are never utilized. Could well be that Genetic or Soul memory will open to trigger the security system of last resort... it's something indigenous and innate within us that recognizes all systems are failng, the living world coming apart, in spite of news as trustworthy as the causes, like testimony taken from "Curved Ball" that was used to go to war.
Lies don't last... the penetration of the Truth of Daylight.
Whether the decision is in Mittens' hands or in Oblahblah's, it will be the same decision. Don't kid yourselves.
This is standard operating procedure for Obama...push serial regressive actions into the second term...start Obamacare in 2014...
Indeed. Obama, now being free of the burden of constant forked-tongue speak in an attempt to keep the idiots fooled to get those votes, will instead be looking forward to a lucrative post-Presidency career and that involves bending over backwards for those predominant underwriters in his drive to be the first BillIon-Dollar POTUS. This article was refreshing. When I first started reading my first reaction was oh, no, not another one falling over in gratitude to the Obama, and then I read on -- how refreshing.
The decision has been made. When has the will of the people mattered to the political class? Obama/Romney are the same. The Tar Sands project is going to happen. The oil industry wants it to happen. The oil industry has say - you don't. This is just shuck and jive till after the election. Just like the coming cuts to Medicare. The Super Committee cuts take effect in 2013, right after the election. We are being played as usual. In 2013 We get to play the blame game. Barney Franks' name will surely come up!:>)
And pobably we're going to continue to be taxed for our medicare coverage. And since we're going to be forced to pay the taxes I propose that we relax more at work. We who have jobs should go to work, but be less productive. Pretend to work as workers would do in the Late Great Soviet Union. Perhaps this could lead to more employment as more persons would be required to produce the same amount of product as before.
And then why not sell our cars if we need them to get to work? Why not relax on a bus, enjoy the scenery or chat with other riders. Cancel your car insurance. If not public transport, start riding your bike to work. With your new slim toned body, cancel your health insurance.
One can go on and on creating new ways to live. Why fret? Just curtail your need for making money and don't worry about your medicare taxes.
Of course it will. Republicans can & will get it done after this guy is gone next year.
Perhaps McKibben & Co. can now focus on the biggest polluters of the planet: The United States Military. Its true.
Then again, perhaps that's just too much real work, eh?
Even if BO is not gone next year the XL pipeline is a done deal. It is great that the protesters got the decision delayed, but you have to know with billions of $ on the line it does not matter who wins in 2012 as both parties are owned lock,stock, and barrel by Wall Street and big oil.
"XL pipeline is a done deal.
uh-huh, all about dollars and no sense.
What I find missing from this is that even an Obama victory will almost certainly mean approval of the pipeline. Once in their second term presidents have little reason to care how their 'base' feels, and the Democrats won't be expecting to take a third consecutive term in the White House anyway so they'll have nothing to lose by caving.
This president has already shown he doesn't care how his base feels.
Worthless POS and liar.
... and simultaneously with delaying the pipeline okay, he approved equally disastrous oil leasing in the arctic and off the coast of Alaska. This is what McKibben calls a victory??? 'sides, while a firm no can become a yes, the opposite never happens. What happened to the concept of representatives who vote your interest w/o massive demonstrations?
Iconic animation: Uncle Sam becomes a hit man for Capitalistic Pig and destroys the planet: www.earthens.net
This article is rife with contradiction.
The title says "Obama Tar Sands Delay May Put Decision in Romney's Hands" and Hurowitz goes on to comment that by delaying, Obama may be setting the stage for a "not-unlikely" "President Romney to give Big Oil a huge thank you gift for all the help they provide him during the 2012 election."
But, in the opening lines of the piece, Hurowitz calls the delay of the decision until after the election "an extraordinary achievement for the thousands of grassroots activists who put ourselves on the line -- and is clear evidence for the environmental movement that directly targeting President Obama works, and probably works better than any other strategy"
So, putting the decision in Romney's hands and giving him an unsigned thank you note to Big Oil is better than any other strategy??!
With "winning" strategies like that, who needs winning tactics?
You've put your finger on some of the cognitive dissonance I'm experiencing from this piece.
Another thing that seems odd to me... Consider this passage:
"Unfortunately, splitting the difference doesn't work when you're dealing with planetary physics. It's getting a lot hotter out there, more species are dying, more states are bursting into flames and countries drowning in floods."
And yet Hurowitz doesn't mention the most important action Obama needs to take to address these problems: directing Special Envoy Todd Stern to negotiate binding carbon emissions at the climate talks in Durban. Everyone seems to have already written off Durban as a meaningless exercise. But the United States would be in a position to make international climate negotiations productive, if Obama took global warming seriously.
Yep, JBJ, it's called "doublethink" in George Orwell's novel, "1984." The author of this article has simultaneously maintained two contradictory ideas, expressing one side or the other as the occasion requires. Unfortunately, this is a common trait of the loyalist Dem crowd thinking. The sellout of the public interest in matters of public policy, accompanied with the simultaneous expression of high ideas, has gone on for so long that paid opinion-makers like this guy don't see the contradiction. Do Common Dreams editors see it? Not so sure.
" Do Common Dreams editors see it ". It is a no brainer that the Democrats are a fake opposition party ( kind of like good cop, bad cop ) and that is for sure, whether CD editors sees it or not.
We do not have double think so much as double screwed! By both Wall Street and MIC parties!
If Obama had intended to veto the pipeline he would have done it now and claimed an environmental victory; as others here have written he has no one to appease after 2012 other than the energy lobby.
Agree. There is no reason to delay the decision another year. The detrimental effects of this project to the planet are so massive, that no further study is needed to measure whether economic benefits outweigh the damage this project does to the planet. Obama extending and expanding the Bush-era tax cuts also occurred following the mid-term election (no coincidence).
Obama supporters thought Obama said "Make me do it" when what he actually said (if you listen very closely) is "Make me delay it".
Another promise fulfilled.
Obama is a spineless weinie and yes this is a kick the can tactic and yes if he or Romney makes this decision it will look exactly alike. Just what the corporate masters ordered.
Don't vote for him. There is no sense in pretending he's a progressive candidate.
"There is no sense in pretending he's a progressive candidate."
uh, when both him and Bill Clinton were running for president, they both vehemently denied that they were even liberal candidates. It was the liberal and progressive opiners who kept referring to them as liberal. To Democrats, liberal and progressive are political bents that dare not speak their name.
Kyle, I understand what you are saying but the sub-thrust of this article and others like it is that Obama is the "best" under the circumstances. Get stuck in the semantics if you want but the really corrosive idea is that settling for sloppy seconds is the best we can do. Don't vote for him; that's the point.
This morning I watched some of Naomi Klein's comments on the postponing of the "decision" on this pipeline as if it is a "win". I found myself thinking that maybe Ms. Klein and the rest of us need to remember her book "The Shock Doctrine."
This is no time to be talking about having won anything.
If anything, in a year or so the economy will be in worse shape than it is now. This continuing decline is what is desired by Wall Street.
I will not be surprised if petroleum prices skyrocket and people start demanding that this pipeline of egregious toxicity be completed. This decision to postpone will then be used as the corporate proof that the pipeline be portrayed as even MORE necessary.
If petroleum prices are not used as leverage against sanity, then they can just as likely come up with something more horrible.
This delay is an inconvenience to the owners of Washington.
They do not respond well to being inconvenienced.
If you are celebrating this lack of a decision, you are setting yourself up for a rude awakening.
There is nothing Obama has done or said which leads me to think this is anything more than part of the corporate game.
The question all of the activists who have been arrested need to ask themselves is why Obama did not intervene (he was too busy golfing) on their behalf.
He chose to let the police make a little money off of the unconstitutional arrests and he is now pretending it is not a done deal.
"Kudos" schmudos, wake up.
I heard Naomi Klein also, and it made my stomach turn that she called the postponement a win. Very short-sighted of her. In her interview, she discussed that the Obama Administration is going to focus its environmental review on whether to reroute the pipeline. The elephant in the room isn't the pipeline but the actual extraction of the oil from the tar sands. Another study isn't needed for that. In addition, Klein made it sound like just postponing pipeline will make investors drop the project. I believe this is naive optimism but I welcome to be proved wrong.
It was a loss, not a win. The pipeline will be approved no matter who wins the election. That he would make such a transparent move is an indication of how gullible he thinks his base is. Many may be moved to vote for him in spite of the fact that he has been moving the republican agenda forward faster than the republicans ever could.
There is no mention that the project is being delayed by concerns of the people of Nebraska. Hardly a progressive bunch, they are concerned that the pipeline threatens the Ogallala Aquifer which is the true liveblood of Nebraska
Similar efforts should be exerted to educate the peoples of Montana, South Dakota, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. And with elections coming up, people must be educated to the consequence of their votes. It is time to think globally and to act locally.
Obama's delay is clearly a defeat for the people who cared about tar sands environmental issues and signals that he will approve the deal after the election. Unfortunately, Glenn Hurowitz, takes this betrayal of the Dem voter base and poses the bogeyman Romney against it, transferring Obama's obvious support for the tar sands project to the hated figure of Romney. I think that psychologically, the effect of this association is intended to push support for Obama even after his obvious betrayal of his voter base.
An honest editorial would note that the public has no representation from the two parties on this important issue. That point of view is missing from this essay. I want to direct my thoughts here to those readers who didn't understand this aspect of this editorial.
The art of propaganda consists in not spreading absolute falsehoods, but to mix a little truth in with a very narrow perspective that lacks broad support. Clearly, this piece is one of those types of persuasions. "Yes, mistakes were made, but ..." is the formula. It's designed to get you to vote for the Dems in 2012, who won't represent your interests on this topic (neither will the Repugs).
So, recognize what this article is trying to do and vote accordingly. You know it cannot be for the Dem/Repub duopoly. If you care about this issue, don't throw away your vote. Work to change the entrenched system by growing a strong third-party movement. It's slow, painful, with lots of losses along the way, but it's the only viable path forward (besides revolution, of course, which has its uncertainties). Be on mental guard and practice intellectual self-defense. This is not cynicism, by the way, but is just a part of your daily critical thinking skills that require cultivation over a lifetime. If you were nodding your head in approval to this essay, think again about whether the author is correct in his presumption that there will be a difference in representation on this issue if Obama or Romney is elected.
Good post, Thoughts_Into_Action, and I agree, for the most part. But I DISAGREE with your first sentence: "Obama's delay is clearly a defeat for the people who cared about tar sands environmental issues ...".
You couldn't be more WRONG. What would have been a certain defeat, not just "for the people who cared about environmental issues," but for all, is an approval of the pipeline and an attempt to explain it away as a "heart-wrenching decision" after weighing all aspects or some such nonsense. Another thing I feared was that this approval would be made in the middle of another major crisis, possibly a cooked-up crisis, that would absorb everyone's attention, and when not many were paying attention to this thing. So, we need not call this a victory. But an approval would have been a defeat. A delay is better.
And here's something to keep in mind:
This delay is not the whole story. Obviously. Here's a partial repost of my comment from another thread:
A significant, binding treaty on emissions reduction at the upcoming Durban climate meeting later this month is CRUCIAL. So far there has not been much encouraging news on that.
Without a binding international treaty on GHG emissions, there is little to stop the Canadians from proceeding with the tarsands operations by building another pipeline (called the Northern Gateway pipeline to the west coast, already very much on the cards) to ship the tarsands oil to Asia. Canada's finance minister Jim Flaherty is already on record that they are looking at Plan B:
>>“The decision to delay it that long is actually quite a crucial decision. I’m not sure this project would survive that kind of delay. ...It may mean that we may have to move quickly to ensure that we can export our oil to Asia through British Columbia.”<<
That last quote is from today's news. So it is NOT just what the US does that matters here . And that is why it is critical to have a binding international treaty at Durban THIS YEAR.
Well, I am reading the tea leaves a bit, Alcyon. If the deal can be killed by something else with a little time, then great. But I don't think that's the intent at the Obama administration. In fact, Obama could have gained strong political points with his base for Election 2012 by simply killing the deal. He didn't. If he had approved it now, it might have cost him some votes. In my view, that doesn't spell victory - it's just a tactical delay decision for electoral purposes.
I guess the whole interpretation of victory or defeat here depends on one's reading of Obama's intentions. I haven't seen anything in Obama's energy and environmental policies that bodes well on this issue. He's for nuclear and "clean coal," and BP is now in the docket for some more deep-sea oil drilling (Obama embraced Sarah Palin's "drill baby drill" policy after the 2008 election).
I think activists should decide beforehand what victory is. To my mind, it's killing the project. That didn't happen. The project's on the table.
TIA, I think Alcyon had some very good points and so do you. I agree that Hurowitz leaves the door open for assuming we all need in the end to vote for Obama, since this delay is at least something, even if it's a "bone." Because Romney would be way worse. The usual liberal narrative. No thought ever given to the possibility that third parties might begin to erode the barriers against real change the duopoly erects.
It all comes down to not much more than praying that Obama and at least some of the Dims will start acting like progressives. Because the only other alternative is Repugs. Such thinking will never get us off the train to hell the duopoly has us all imprisoned on. Some of us know there will be a pipeline, either from Alberta to Texas by some route, or from Alberta to B.C. and California to Asia--with either Obama or Romney. We're screwed either way, but Hurowitz and McKibben can't seem to comprehend this simple and obvious fact.
"President Romney??" Nice try. Your subliminal fantasy wouldn't have anything
at all to do with Mitts recent statement that Israel will determine US foreign
policy in the middle east would it????
wishy-washington dithers again. the biggest challenge to the obama administration
in next year's election will be to overcome its own first 4 years. the republicans have no competent candidate, so many people won't bother voting at all.
Hurowitz sez: "... approving the tar sands pipeline will be an easy way for President Romney to give Big Oil a huge thank you gift for all the help they provide him during the 2012 election."
***
President Obama must be bumming about his own campaign not getting any energy company funding.
Remember after Obama won the 2008 election, and he had to decide whether or not to escalate the number of troops in Afghanistan? Oh, he supposedly spent days and days "weighing his options," he gathered his war council around and listened to their "sage advice," he watched the coffins arrive at Dover all night, and once all that PR was out of the way...he called for a troop escalation.
How many times will people allow this con man to betray them before they finally say: "Enough!"
Obama or Romney. Lesser of two evils claptrap. They're equally evil.
"Remember after Obama won the 2008 election, and he had to decide whether or not to escalate the number of troops in Afghanistan? "
Left,
Actually, that was the only issue where he told us the truth. In the campaign he made it clear that the focus would be on Afghanistan. (The good war..) It is the only promise he kept...(although he also extended the war beyond Afghanistan)
It is all one war of aggression.
Thomas Gilbert-
What is flying under the radar is that TransCanada Corp., the $28.4 billion foreign-based corporation that spent $1.3 million in lobbying fees this year, is working overtime to ram this pipeline through the Amerikan heartland.
The SCOTUS ruled that corporations (foreign or domestic) are people and that anonymous corporate contributions equal free speech. One can only imagine the train loads of foreign money that are flowing into the legalized bribery of our so-called elected representatives through its surrogates like the US Chamber of Commerce and other business-friendly powerhouses.
I have no doubt Obama will approve it shortly after he is re-elected if he is. We know the delay was in the interest of his campaign.
We may have no need of a pipeline anyway. With all the oil on the Gulf beaches, why import oily sand?
Aahhhh, now I see why Obomber delayed it - perfect!
1. no need to further frustrate liberal voters before 2012,
2. he'll be able to rack up more petro dollars through the election and
3. he'll use this as something to hold over our heads if he is not elected - excellent!
I can hear the shrill of the Obomabots now... If the election is real close, he will probably flat out say he will stop it if elected, but of course his word is worthless, and once in, he will support it. Why? Because that's WHO HE IS.
The fact that some have called Obama's delay a victory is a perfect example of what is wrong with some self-styled "progressive leaders".
As with alcoholism and other drug addiction, admitting you have a serious problem is necessary before you can ever hope to deal with it.
Saying that you can continue to take a few drinks for a while and it won't hurt anything ain't going to cut it.
What Obama did should not be deemed "acceptable" to anyone because it is NOT acceptable.
Instead of proclaiming victory, McKibben should be telling Obama in no uncertain terms that if he does not nix the pipeline deal BEFORE the election, he will not vote for him -- period.
Otherwise, all of McKibben's talk about this being a litmus test for Obama will have been just that: talk.
A few points:
TransCanada Pipelines executives are the ones saying "a delay will kill the project", so it might be dead. They are now looking to the west coast/Asian markets, but we stopped the Gateway line [to the Kitimat port] and "No Tankers on BC coast" means other ports are out too.
About the Tar Sands - the "carbon bomb" idea doesn't hold much water because other crude oil is comparable to Tar Sands crude, and besides that, 85% of emissions comes from "yours and mine tailpipes" so we need EVs and solar panels, not just "no tar sands" to reduce CO2.
The horror of the Tar Sands is the local cancer rates - natives communities downstream have seen a huge spike in a particular cancer.
The real stupidity* of the Tar Sands is in the NATURAL GAS and the WATER drawn from the Athabasca river [which is just a trickle in winter, now, and the Tar Sands suck so much of it that oxygen levels get too low to support aquatic life].
{*stupidity wrought of corrupted capitalism, where the economics works out for using a clean fuel to extract a dirty fuel because they don't pay royalties on that natural gas, and water is more or less free.}
The "best we can hope for" with Tar Sands is NO EXPANSION - with no new markets for bitumen [tar sands crude] expansion will be a bad investment.
Noah says:
"and besides that, 85% of emissions comes from "yours and mine tailpipes.."
I don't have the statistics in front of me, but this figure is WAY off.
The military uses a big chunk & raising livestock for the beef/pork market uses another huge chunk.
Your argument is another take on "blame the individual consumer" as if that's where the real power is. Not when the ecological clock is ticking, buddy...
Kicking the can down the road is perhaps the best that can be accomplished presently. Not a bad strategy really, because in 2012 two new solar technologies are coming online, and into production, that will make solar much cheaper to produce, and more efficient at the same time! The pipeline will no longer be a priority, and will have less support. The new solar age is going to be the 49 gold rush times a billion. Tar sands? YUCK! The oil bubble is going to pop and drop!
"Kicking the can down the road is perhaps the best that can be accomplished presently. Not a bad strategy really,"
If you are Obama -- or one of his apologists -- nothing could be truer.
(Obama is obviously getting great advice from Broderick Johnson, former lobbyist for the Keystone project who just joined the Obama campaign: "Put it on the back burner until after the election")
The rest of your comment is just wishful thinking (ie, not based in reality)
As noted by others:
1) The pipeline will be approved if Romney wins.
2) The pipeline will be approved if Obama wins.
3) Wall Street LOVES Obama. He not only saved their skins, but allowed them to further consolidate their stranglehold on every facet of American institutional power. He is going to win. And we are going to lose.