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Keystone
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« Reply #30 on: December 19, 2011, 02:47:48 PM » |
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Another update from Bill McKibben
Dear Friends,
About 48 hours ago, I told you we’d probably have a clearer picture of what was going on with the pipeline fight in 48 hours.
I was wrong, mistaken, and also incorrect. As it stands now, things in Washington couldn’t be muddier. The Senate, with the White House’s consent, passed a payroll tax cut plan with a rider attached that would have forced a speedy review of Keystone. That sounds bad -- except that administration spokesmen said quite bluntly that if they were forced to do a quick review they’d deny the permit.
That sounds good -- except that now the Tea Party caucus in the House has decided they don’t want the payroll tax cut, and they do want the Senate to come back to DC for more talks, and…you get the drift. At least for the moment, Keystone is flotsam on the unchartable tides of DC politics.
We’re monitoring it as closely as we can, and if anything definitive emerges from the money-filled rooms, or if there’s any obvious action that you can take beyond all the emailing and phone-calling to date, we’ll tell you immediately. Keep an eye on your email inbox, please -- and in the meantime we’ll be posting play-by-play updates to our Twitter feed and our Facebook page. You can also join our rapid-response SMS network by using your cell phone to text the word "PLUGIN" to the number 50555.
Here’s one thing that’s emerged more plainly with each passing day. Right now in Washington, money rules. Sooner or later Big Oil will ram Keystone, and fracking, and a thousand other bad ideas down our throats unless we manage to change the system. That’s what we’re going to have to work on next year if we have any hope of ever bringing climate change under control. I think part of the problem is: we’ve come to feel that money’s hammerlock on policy is sad but completely inevitable.
We’ve let ourselves be cynical, which is understandable (the Capitol should have an Exxon sign out front, and a couple of pumps, and a grubby bathroom) but also weak.
Instead, I think we need to stand up for a certain kind of naïveté. We need to say it’s not right that the 234 House members who voted for Keystone last week had taken $42 million in dirty energy money. It’s no different than if before next weekend’s Patriots-Miami game, the owner of the Dolphins trotted out to midfield and handed each referee ten grand. It stinks.
Next year, we’ll be delivering this message to Representatives and Senators everywhere: if the energy industry is giving you presents, you shouldn’t be giving them presents back. Not with our money, and not with our landscape.
Apologies again for misleading you about how quickly we’d know the score in DC. I underestimated, not for the first and not for the last time, how screwed up the place really is. But we can do something about that. And we will.
Onwards,
Bill McKibben for the whole team at 350.org
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cosbyboy1
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« Reply #31 on: December 19, 2011, 05:56:11 PM » |
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signed the letter. Tell me if you know how all the bouncing back and forth that is going on with the payroll tax bill affects the pipeline bill. is that bouncing back and forth, too? if they succeed in renegging on the deal, can the Rs force a vote on the pipeline or will it be put off a year also. i am getting vertigo.
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« Last Edit: December 19, 2011, 06:01:24 PM by cosbyboy1 »
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cosbyboy1
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« Reply #32 on: December 19, 2011, 05:59:59 PM » |
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the big difference in your football analogy is that i am not paying the football officials to do their job. that is a user-specific fee. i am however paying a portion of all of the congressional salaries and i am not a happy taxpayer.
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Keystone
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« Reply #33 on: December 20, 2011, 01:54:08 PM » |
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the big difference in your football analogy is that i am not paying the football officials to do their job. that is a user-specific fee. i am however paying a portion of all of the congressional salaries and i am not a happy taxpayer.
Hey cosbyboy, sorry I didn't respond sooner, didn't know you were here. I have been avoiding this thread because my head is about ready to explode with all the stupid shenanigans going on! I want sanity to come back into the room. They are still at. I am not a happy taxpayer either. “But we can perhaps remember, if only for a time, that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short moment of life; that they seek, as do we, nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and in happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can. Surely, this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely, we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men, and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our own hearts brothers and countrymen once again.” Robert F. Kennedy |
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Keystone
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« Reply #34 on: December 23, 2011, 08:28:32 AM » |
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The House has passed a 2 month extension for the unemployed and for the payroll taxes. As far as I know everything that was added into this is still there. They will take the next 2 months to sort it all out. The saga continues...
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AliceWitt
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« Reply #36 on: January 18, 2012, 12:31:34 PM » |
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Great, key, thanks for the update. Now what other prime parks, preserves, national lands, etc. are they going to invade?  |
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"Until one has loved an animal a part of one's soul remains unawakened." Anatole France
"The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched - they must be felt with the heart." Helen Keller
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Keystone
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« Reply #37 on: January 18, 2012, 02:56:29 PM » |
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Here is an email I just received from the NRDC on the Keystone XL pipeline.
Big Oil Bets It All...And Loses!
Today, President Obama changed the rules of the game: he stood up to Big Oil’s bullying and rejected the massively destructive Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.
Let’s face it: Big Oil is used to getting its way. But not any more.
President Obama has just rejected a permit for the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline -- a project that promised riches for the oil giants and an environmental disaster for the rest of us.
His decision represents a victory of historic proportions for NRDC and hundreds of thousands of committed activists like you who have waged an uphill, years-long fight against one of the most nightmarish fossil fuel projects of our time.
Please thank the President right away for his game-changing decision.
But get ready to keep the pressure on the Obama Administration -- because Big Oil is going to fight back hard and fast.
Why? Because this was a prime-time fight. The oil giants made sure of that.
First, they had their Congressional boosters put the President to an election-year test by forcing him to decide the pipeline’s fate within 60 days. Then, the oil lobby itself rolled out its biggest PR guns to get the job done.
The head of the American Petroleum Institute sent the White House a very public and blatant warning: Approve the Keystone XL or face "huge political consequences."
Big Oil put all its political capital on the line -- and a ton of money, too -- AND LOST!
They lost because millions of Americans -- including you -- stood up and said, We’re done with fossil fuel schemes that destroy our land, poison our water and wreak havoc with our climate so that oil companies can make out like bandits.
And because Big Oil lost, this is not the end of the fight. This is the beginning of the real battle for America’s energy future.
That battle will be fought in Congress, where Representatives who’ve collected $12 million from the oil & gas industry over the past two years are sure to try to raise Keystone from the dead . . . it will be fought in British Columbia, where the oil giants want to ram a tar sands pipeline and supertanker traffic through the heart of the Spirit Bear’s coastal rainforest home . . . it will be fought in the Polar Bear Seas, where the Interior Department has given tentative approval for Shell to begin drilling this summer . . . and it will be fought state by state where NRDC is championing clean energy alternatives to a grim, pollution-filled future of coal-fired power plants, environmentally destructive fracking and offshore oil spills.
I know you’ll stand with us shoulder to shoulder in the critical weeks, months and years ahead. We need your kind of never-say-die commitment -- the kind that killed the Keystone XL and just made our collective future a little bit brighter. Thank you!
Sincerely,
Frances Beinecke
President
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Keystone
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« Reply #38 on: January 18, 2012, 07:20:15 PM » |
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Great, key, thanks for the update. Now what other prime parks, preserves, national lands, etc. are they going to invade? I agree Alice and thought the same thing. But the latest posting is that Transcanda is going to reapply which will take everything back to the beginning and start the whole process all over again. So it is not over and will be a continuance of the same. Either path they take will be damaging and be a continued fight either direction they go. |
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« Last Edit: January 19, 2012, 07:31:25 AM by Keystone »
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Keystone
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« Reply #39 on: February 07, 2012, 05:29:22 PM » |
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If the Keystone Xl Pipeline is approved. Everyone's name, that wants to ram this through, should have their names put on a memorial (somewhere out in the open for everybody to see) so when this sucker leaks everyone can refer to the memorial and make them accountable for the dollars to clean it up instead of the taxpayers. Every person who is for this including the oil companies who benefits should be included. I wonder if they would be for this if they knew they had to foot the bill for any damages forever? http://news.yahoo.com/key-house-panel-advances-keystone-pipeline-plan-202636662.html
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« Last Edit: February 07, 2012, 05:33:53 PM by Keystone »
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sfredric
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Posts: 45
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« Reply #40 on: February 22, 2012, 02:41:48 PM » |
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I found this article regarding the Keystone Tar Sands Pipeline in Fort Worth, Texas Star Telegram. I hope everyone interested in protecting our wildlife and their habitat will read. Thank you for your attention this matter! http://tinyurl.com/6q9fza8 |
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"A man is truly ethical only when he obeys the compulsion to help all life which he is able to assist, and shrinks from injuring anything that lives.”
~ Albert Schweitzer, (1875-1965) German/ French theologian, musician, philosopher, physician, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate 1952
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Keystone
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« Reply #41 on: February 23, 2012, 09:06:13 AM » |
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Wow sfredric, thanks for that post. I want to add this to yours, just received it. Subject: Tell TransCanada: Stop seizing land for the rejected Keystone XL pipeline! Dear Friend, The arrogance of TransCanada is shocking, even for an oil company. The company is threatening to seize the property of American landowners and start construction of its Keystone XL pipeline - even though President Obama last month rejected the permit to build. Tell TransCanada: Stop using eminent domain to confiscate private property for the rejected Keystone XL Pipeline. Learn more and the petition here : http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/tc_eminent_domain/?r_by=35506-4498966-AkFImDx&rc=confemail |
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sfredric
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« Reply #43 on: February 28, 2012, 05:04:04 AM » |
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"A man is truly ethical only when he obeys the compulsion to help all life which he is able to assist, and shrinks from injuring anything that lives.”
~ Albert Schweitzer, (1875-1965) German/ French theologian, musician, philosopher, physician, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate 1952
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