Tag: Keystone XL

Offer Ends Soon, Act Now: Keystone Pipeline Public Comment Period Closes On Monday

By Ryan Koronowski, Think Progress from Climate Progress

Apr 21, 2013 at 3:00 pm

The last day that the State Department will accept public comments on what should be done about the Keystone pipeline proposal is Monday, April 22nd. This will end a 45 day period that started with the placement of the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) in the Federal Register. That draft statement becomes final on June 21st, and then in a matter of months, the State Department will issue a National Interest Determination. At that point, it would be difficult to reverse a decision, so the time for the public to tell the Administration how burning tar sands oil will impact the climate is now.The last day that the State Department will accept public comments on what should be done about the Keystone pipeline proposal is Monday, April 22nd. This will end a 45 day period that started with the placement of the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) in the Federal Register. That draft statement becomes final on June 21st, and then in a matter of months, the State Department will issue a National Interest Determination. At that point, it would be difficult to reverse a decision, so the time for the public to tell the Administration how burning tar sands oil will impact the climate is now.

The Think Progess article has some links to sources and suggested subjects, there has also been a #NOKXL Blogathon at Daily Kos.  To me there are 5 primary reasons to oppose Keystone XL-

• Mayflower, Arkansas
• The refined oil is destined for export profit, not “energy independence”.
• Only 35 permanent jobs will be created.
• There is no demand for more oil.

And the number one reason to oppose Keystone XL-

• In order to limit global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius (mass extinction level), scientists say we can emit only 565 more gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, but the fossil fuel industry has roughly 2,795 gigatons of carbon dioxide just in their reserves, over five times too much.

I trust most of our readership has already taken action, but if not today is your last chance.

As the next Congressional fight over payroll tax extensions and unemployment benefits and pipelines gets set up in the next few weeks for either its final chapter or to be kicked down the road a bit farther, one or the other, you’re going to hear a lot from our Republican friends about how much they value work and workers; most especially, they’ll tell you, they value American jobs for American workers.

After all, they’ll say, creating American jobs is the most important thing of all.

But if we were to look back over just the last few months, some would tell us, we could quickly find examples of how Republicans promote ideas that don’t seem to value work or workers at all, much less American jobs.

Well as it turns out, “some” seem to be right; to illustrate one of those examples we’ll look back a month or two or three to a time some Republicans might wish was long, long, ago, in a galaxy far, far away.