Random Politics & Religion #00

Having successfully buried my Keystone post I suppose you two are happily dancing together and laughing.

The Keystone pipeline is officially dead.

What's irrational? Caring about the environment?

Irrational fear wins again. Let's all unite against our real enemy now, the Sun.

Putting it on ice will forestall any move by the outgoing President to kill the pipeline project.

Faced with dimming prospects for approval, the Canadian company behind the proposed Keystone XL pipeline chose to plead with the U.S. government for a delay on its fate, signalling that prolonged uncertainty is preferable to rejection of the $8 billion project.

Monday’s appeal by Calgary-based TransCanada Corp has been widely interpreted as an attempt to avert an impending “no” from President Barack Obama to the nearly 1,200-mile (2,000-km) cross-border pipeline. Keystone XL would carry heavy crude oil from Alberta to Nebraska and on to Gulf Coast refineries, and has become the symbolic heart of a struggle between environmentalists opposed to oil sands development and defenders of fossil fuels.

The U.S. State Department said it had received a letter from TransCanada asking for the delay but a spokesperson said the review would continue for now.

TransCanada spokesman Mark Cooper said the company would not speculate on what the decision may be or when it may come.

But the Obama administration has become more vocal and active on climate change issues as it closes in on its final year in office, and the president has repeatedly expressed doubts about the merits of the pipeline.

TransCanada’s request for a delay came amid a darkening political outlook for the project on both sides of the border.

In Nebraska, the company remains embroiled in time-consuming disputes with landowners over the proposed pipeline route. And in Canada, it lost a powerful advocate in October when Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who had openly allied with Republican leaders in his aggressive lobbying for Keystone, was defeated by Liberal leader Justin Trudeau.

Although Trudeau has offered cautious backing for Keystone, he has also warned that both the pipeline and wider oil sands development must demonstrate improved environmental sensitivity.

Nor does Trudeau face any political damage from U.S. rejection of a pipeline so closely identified with Harper. The incoming prime minister has already made clear he will not follow his predecessor in allowing the politics of Keystone to define relations between the two countries disproportionately.

In Washington, U.S. lobbyists close to the case said TransCanada was finally facing political reality, recognizing that a delay would better protect shareholder value than allowing Obama to reject the project.

The request for a delay came on the eve of TransCanada issuing an earnings report, and shortly after the White House said it still expected Obama to make a decision on whether to grant the permit before he leaves office in January 2017.

Should Obama agree to suspend the review, Keystone’s fate would almost certainly fall to the next president. Republicans have been universally supportive of building Keystone, though Donald Trump did qualify that in October, saying he would seek a “better deal” from TransCanada.Democratic Party front-runner Hillary Clinton is opposed to the pipeline.

On one level, the request to suspend the review offers Obama an escape from having to make a final call on a decision he has avoided for years. TransCanada began the licensing process in 2008 but the decision was continually pushed back by various court cases, technical delays and the president’s apparent reluctance to choose.

Yet TransCanada’s gambit may not have completely removed the pressure on the president. Environmental groups responded to TransCanada’s announcement with a blizzard of demands on Obama to ignore TransCanada’s move and kill the pipeline anyway.

“TransCanada acknowledged the writing on the wall by requesting to suspend the review of its permit application,” said a statement issued by Tom Steyer, the billionaire green activist who heads NextGen Climate. “Today, tomorrow or next year, the answer will be the same: Keystone XL is a bad deal for America, our climate, and our economy.”

It’s uncertain what effect killing Keystone XL would have on oil sands extraction. Last week, the Washington, D.C.-based environmental advocacy group Oil Change International released a report claiming that oil sands development would peak in 2017 without additional pipeline capacity.

And when Shell announced it would not proceed with the 80,000 barrels a day Carmon Creek project in the oil sands, the company cited among other things: “current uncertainties, including the lack of infrastructure to move Canadian crude oil to global commodity markets.”

But much of the attention in Canada has switched to the proposed Energy East pipeline that would move Alberta crude across Canada to Atlantic refineries. And while there is opposition to that pipeline as well, its politics remain contained within Canada’s borders.

Apparently not ruining farmland in the US so a Canadian company can profit is irrational.

Apparently not ruining farmland in the US so a Canadian company can profit is irrational.

You sound like the crazy anti-nuclear power people now. Irrational fear.

You sound like the crazy anti-nuclear power people now. Irrational fear.

After the new Canadian Prime Rib (or whatever they call him) said they won't be participating in air strikes in Syria anymore, you'd think the far right would be on board with scrapping the pipeline idea.

I don't support airstrikes in Syria with the goal of overthrowing the government. If we had some comprehensive strategy and an alliance with Russia and Syria to eliminate ISIS then I'd be all for them. The people in this region prove time and time again that they are not ready for freedom and self-rule. They will not be ready for a century. At this point if Assad goes you can just forget about Europe in 20 years.

In the 80's I was watching He-Man and riding my Schwinn Predator all day.

...
One lawmaker even invoked higher powers in urging Yellen not to raise the Fed’s target interest rate, its chief instrument for steering the American economy. The central bank’s next policy meeting is in December.

“God’s plan is not for things to rise in the autumn. That’s why we call it fall,” said Rep. Brad Sherman, a Democrat from California. “God’s plan is that things rise in the spring. So if you want to be good with the Almighty, you might want to delay until May.”
...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/04/lawmakers-grill-fed-chair-on-oversight-of-financial-system-during-contentious-hearing/

File this under:

Progressive efforts to keep the (house of cards) economy propped up until Obama leaves office.