Here is the full wording of President Obama's statement regarding the Keystone XL Pipeline:

"Earlier today, I received the Secretary of State’s recommendation on the pending application for the construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline. As the State Department made clear last month, the rushed and arbitrary deadline insisted on by Congressional Republicans prevented a full assessment of the pipeline’s impact, especially the health and safety of the American people, as well as our environment. As a result, the Secretary of State has recommended that the application be denied. And after reviewing the State Department’s report, I agree.

This announcement is not a judgment on the merits of the pipeline, but the arbitrary nature of a deadline that prevented the State Department from gathering the information necessary to approve the project and protect the American people. I’m disappointed that Republicans in Congress forced this decision, but it does not change my Administration’s commitment to American-made energy that creates jobs and reduces our dependence on oil. Under my Administration, domestic oil and natural gas production is up, while imports of foreign oil are down. In the months ahead, we will continue to look for new ways to partner with the oil and gas industry to increase our energy security –including the potential development of an oil pipeline from Cushing, Oklahoma to the Gulf of Mexico – even as we set higher efficiency standards for cars and trucks and invest in alternatives like biofuels and natural gas. And we will do so in a way that benefits American workers and businesses without risking the health and safety of the American people and the environment."

Although Obama states that he agrees with the decision to deny the application for the construction of the pipeline, he does not impugn "the merits of the pipeline." The problem was not so much the pipeline as it was "the rushed and arbitrary deadline." In other words, what we have here is another argument between the president and the Congressional Republicans, not an endorsement of policies that favor the environment over the growth economy and its unlimited thirst for the energy supplied by oil.

McKibben does not even address this central aspect of the statement, let alone the claim that the administration will "look for new ways to partner with the oil and gas industry."

McKibben's "win against big oil" is not born out by the presidential statement,

You write this as if Obama actually *were* an environmentalist, instead of a corporate toady.

From the White House, yesterday:

"*This announceme­­nt is not a judgment on the merits* of the pipeline, but the arbitrary nature of a deadline that prevented the State Department from gathering the informatio­­n necessary to approve the project and protect the American people..."

Meaning: the pipeline will be back, as soon as the timeline is altered.

Like... right after the election. Gotta snow the base again, so they vote him back in.

If Obama had any intention of actually *not* eventually signing off on the pipeline, he would oppose it *on* its merits. Or lack thereof.

No, I'm afraid that his opposition is as phony as his "oppositio­n" to indefinite military detention of US citizens. He signed off on that - the end of the 4th Amendment - on New Year's Eve.

As activists get older and see no real progress in the cause for which they have worked so hard, they have choices. They can become bitter, cynical people who are overwhelmed by a sense of hopelessness. Or they can become radical and eccentric old people who don't expect to be listened to. Or they can applaud some meaningless 'achievement' to console themselves that all their hard work has not been for nothing. We now know which path Bill McKibben has decided to follow.

As other commenters have noted, the president has not rejected the pipeline outright, has not addressed the environmental impact of using Tar Sands, "Game Over" for the greenhouse gas issue, as James Hansen has mentioned.

But, I remember that Mr. McKibben was wearing an Obama button even as he was being arrested at the White House.

This reminds me that some will play up the fact that Obama "kept his promise" to withdraw from Iraq, and ignore that he tried and failed to renegotiate a SOFA with the Maliki government to allow them to stay.

On a lighter note... on logging in I noticed that I've been a member here 52 weeks, one hour.

accidental double post...

A delay in building the pipeline is not a victory.

The delay of the pipeline decision is a BIG win? Even if Bill had truly won, which would be an outright cancellation of the pipeline, this would do exactly nothing to save our planet, let alone our civilization. This is not a battle, it is more like a foot soldier stubbing his toe and claiming victory because he did not trip and fall down. Now Bill can continue to vacuum in the donations from his neophyte legions for his next vainglorious attempt a self-aggrandizement. What is even scarier, is that I believe him to be sincere, but you can lose a war winning one battle at a time. We need a general, not a corporal.

The Great Pipeline Scam:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/01/19/the-great-pipeline-scam

Another crumb thrown to the people who worked their hearts out to get him elected. Obama will wait until after the election to allow this to go forward.

Pipeline approval delayed is a good event. Want Keystone to happen? Get the Republican elected POTUS in 2012. You can always say there is no difference between the candidates later, and then bitch about stupid wars and tax cuts for the rich, while admitting you voted Nader or some other loser.

I'm glad to see that nobody (except Bill McKibben) has been fooled by Obama's latest false attempt to appear to have a shred of human decency.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/keystone-aftermath-arrives-canada-pledges-sell-oil-asia-us-becomes-source-uncertainty

And speaker John Boehner owns a large share of stock in one of the companies building the pipeline, suprize, suprize. Typical, what is this Haliburton?

Bill McKibben, Obama's "useful innocent."

Decision delayed. Obama gets much needed votes for re-election. And then it passes in his 2nd term.

This is Victory?

Sounds like more BS from the fraud in the WH.

There are people who still believe in this guy??? Amazing.

I am sure that Bill McKibben is sincere and means right, but from my perspective, he still supports Obama, when Obama absolutely does not support Bills 350.org agenda. And like I posted in the last election, Obama's theme song should be : Oh yes, I am the great pretender.

Like any good con man, Obama agrees with your objection, before he screws you!

Sorry about the cross-posting. I did not see this article by Bill McKibben at first:
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The most important thing here is the decision to delay (even if the headline talks about "Obama's denial" of permit). "Temporary reprieve" is what came to my mind when I first heard about it. And a reprieve at this stage is very important. I hope people do not miss that point, notwithstanding their other annoyances on this matter.

However, if it is going to take THIS MUCH work to get even a temporary reprieve, that is a clear indication of the challenge ahead. And a clear warning for the activists to reevaluate their strategy, going forward. And to link up with others on this battle. That should be the take away lesson from all this. That, and a clear recognition of every small "victory" or "reprieve".

Those who insist that this is NOT a "victory" should offer a better strategy AND seriously consider participating in implementing it. Because a better strategy IS needed right now.

As for "linking up with others", I know what I said on the other thread about alliances and potentially unreliable partners in the larger fight on global warming. I still think that relying on NIMBY-ism alone is a dangerous strategy, given that none of the other states except Nebraska along the pipeline route has raised this kind of an objection. So it is a tenuous support to depend on, one that the pipeline pushers will be targeting right now.

Also, the terms "climate change" or "global warming" have NOT been used by the protesters on this fight as the main reason (maybe a tactical decision), and the Obama administration has been operating as if that is NOT a factor at all! Maybe that is reality in a country where most of the citizens do not give a damn about global warming.

But relying on NIMBY concerns alone will NOT work on the larger fight. This can be seen from the total lack of enthusiasm among the public to shut down the coal power plants, except among some activists, scientists and those living in or around the coal mining areas.

Even at this stage, the opposition to the pipeline from the people of Nebraska comes from fears over contamination of the Ogallala aquifer. On the other hand, the future of the Ogallala aquifer is threatened by an ongoing bad practice:

From "The Food Revolution: How Your Diet Can Help Save Your Life and Our World" by John Robbins,

>>"At the present time, more than 13 trillion gallons of water are taken from this enormous aquifer every year, with the vast majority used to produce beef.
More water is withdrawn from the Ogallala aquifer every year for beef production than is used to grow all the fruits and vegetables in the entire country.
America’s grain belt, often called “the bread basket of the world,” actually produces far more grain for factory farm and feedlot animal feed than bread for humans.

Ominously, the Ogallala’s water tables are dropping precipitously, and some wells are going dry. In northwest Texas, by the early 1990s, one-quarter of the Texas share of the aquifer had been depleted. By then, more than a third of the land in Texas that had been irrigated in the 1970s had lost its water, and had become parched and unable to grow food. Without water, these once fertile farmlands will be deserts forever.

If we continue pumping out the Ogallala at current rates, it’s only a matter of time before most of the wells in Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Colorado, and New Mexico go dry, and portions of these states become scarcely habitable for human beings. This scenario may seem like bad science fiction, but it is being predicted by many leading environmentalists."<<

From time to time, someone will say, "don't talk about climate change, talk about pollution" so as to get people's participation. But what if the pollution at the local level is not so visible, and yet the climate crisis is intensifying all the same? What if the pollution directly due to our consumption is taking place in China? What if the future of the Ogallala aquifer is being undermined 24x7x365x... and yet people do not see it as an extreme crisis in the making?

I don't have an answer for how to break this barrier. But it must be broken, and the talk must move beyond NIMBY concerns. Perhaps it is time to start framing the entire planet Earth as our backyard. And that would not be an exaggeration, given the condition of the Arctic ice and the methane threat.

I find cause for optimism in the fact that so many commenters here have shown due diligence toward Obama's statement purporting to reject KXL while encouraging TransCanada to reapply for approval of a revised route. Meanwhile, it is disheartening that a man widely recognized as the face of global warming activism is relatively clueless.

The evidence of this thread indicates that the anarchic spirit of OWS - a disciplined disavowal of leadership - is an appropriate strategy for addressing the ecological crisis. Perhaps it's inherent in hierarchies for people at the top to become corrupted by proximity to the levers of power. Many thoughtful people would be lending their energies to 350.org if they weren't discouraged by leadership prioritizing lesser-evil partisanship over moving as quickly as possible to a zero-carbon way of life.

"It’s not enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what’s required."
-- Winston Churchill

"Beating Keystone doesn’t stop climate change—but it does stop Big Oil’s winning streak, and that’s a hopeful sign"

Why isn't McKibben outraged? Instead, he's hopeful. No doubt it's healthier to be hopeful. No doubt it's his choice, not ours. No doubt, it's better "public relations" to be hopeful. And no doubt, it's a positive event that should elicit hope, not outrage.

But the elephant is still in our living rooms. The monster is still in the lobby, crashed up against the sofa, drunk on champaign, not deterred, but ecstatic that it should be allowed within city limits, STILL, after its rampage, after all the destruction, decade after decade.

The effort to stop Keystone amounts to the following message to big oil: "We want to continue depending on you in the largest way, but to manage our guilt, we have to draw a little line here at the tip of the iceberg of your massive treachery against humanity".

Meanwhile, over here on the far left we have a sledgehammer to wield against big oil. And we're recruiting more and more people to help wield it. All the energy we consume can be produced through solar thermal plants covering 1% of our land area. Much less if we reigned in our energy consumption, currently four times the world average, per capita. Meant/dairy production currently consumes over 40% of our land area.

If you knew that there is a more levelheaded point of view than yours would you prefer it? All across the planet, people share a point of view about energy consumption and global politics, that makes Merka look not too pretty. I'm not saying Merkans should care what others think. But I am saying that you should ask yourself why your point of view differs from others'. Is it because they are only seeing part of the picture? The wrong part of the picture? I don't think so. I think Merkans are seeing the wrong part of the picture. Thus, I do think Merkans should be concerned about the difference in points of view. In short, I'd say Merkans should halt their dependence on big oil and all elite enterprises, right now, apologize to the world for leading much of it into a massive glutton-fest, and finally join the world community in good standing.

Is the problem the oil industry or the undemocratic concentration of wealth and power it produces?

"We can have wealth concentrated in a few hands or we can have democracy, but we can't have both". Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis

If you think the pipeline has leaked heretofore, get ready for the geysers due to pent-up pressure from the temporary plug inserted by the president in denying the Keystone permit. There’s a lot of black gold in them there tar sands, with value rising along with real gold whose value is enhanced due to the Federal Reserve’s devaluing of paper money.

In the case of the tar sands, the value is enhanced due to the conventional coal, oil, and gas subsidies given out by Congress directly to the companies and trickling down indirectly to all users; is also enhanced in value due to the inability to grow more fossil fuels to replace those that are escaping into the air and water; and finally, due to an inability to recover the rental revenue of resources that we hold in common because this concept is not talked about on either side of the public trough where pigs gather to be fed at someone else’s expense.

As others have already noted, this piece misses the larger point and is irrationally optimistic.

Obama and Co. are very astute political operators. They will postpone any final decision, until after the election (as well as the upcoming attack on Iran). As the "election" draws nearer, Obama Inc. is appealing to their "liberal" base, placating them on a couple of high-profile, relatively trivial yet well publicized events and issues.

After Obama is "re-elected" the real agenda will accelerate. Just like it always does.

I really have no way to know whether Bill McKibben is delusional or a democrat's tool or just simple-minded.

I do know that his celebration is unwarranted and he is trying to get us to think that the greed-driven republicans are different than the greed-driven democrats.

McKibben has made himself pathetic.

Mr. McKibben states this decision is a " win against big oil ". As someone I respect, Bill how can you make such a sophomoric statement ?

To quote one who knows Obama very well, the Rev. Wright: " I will never forget one of the most powerful things he ( Obama ) said to me on April 2, 2008". You know what your problem is I said what's that-----he said you have to tell the truth".

I rest my case.

See:

"The Great Pipeline Scam" by MICHAEL LEONARDI*

"In another ridiculous moment of political trickery, Obama managed to dupe a major chunk of the American environmental movement yesterday by refusing to authorize the construction of the Keystone Pipeline now. The keyword in that sentence which seems like it is being largely ignored by the enviros is now, because what Obama did do is leave open the possibility of authorizing the construction of a pipeline any time in the future, say just after the election? And not that it matters much, as pipeline or not Tar Sands are already being refined all across the United States in increasing amounts. This great victory being celebrated by 350.org, Bill Mckibben and the no carbon crusaders out there is a complete farce to manipulate voters as we head into the latest corporate sponsored election [...] "
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* http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/01/19/the-great-pipeline-scam/