It looks more and more that all us suckers who voted for Barak Obama because we thought, among other things, that he was truly dedicated to an environmental policy that would help reverse the disastrous climate policies of previous administrations.
It isn’t exactly a secret that beginning in March 2012 with a memo on the Keystone XL Pipeline, Barak Baby began to sell out the planet to the fossil fuel interests with this quote. “We need an energy infrastructure system that can keep pace with advances in production.” Translation: No matter how much it hurts the environment we need to get the oil to market.
Question: Why can’t we just leave it in the ground and spend our energies and our development funds on expanding new technologies that won’t poison the planet?
But Obama went on to make himself perfectly clear. “To promote American energy sources, we must not only extract oil- we must also be able to transport it to our world-class refineries and ultimately to consumers.” Could he have been, more clear? Could those of us who expected him to keep his environmental promises be more pie in the sky, more betrayed?
So why are we surprised now when he has pushed out a presidential order #13604 to expedite the reviewing process on all pipeline infrastructure except the Keystone but including the southern half of the Keystone XL stretching from Cushing, Ok, to Port Arthuer, Texas, home of all the big refineries.
It’s called an end run folks and the American people are the suckers that are standing n the middle of the field waving their environmental banners as the oil interests zip around them and bring their poisonous sludge to market.
Yes you say, so we lose a small battle but that doesn’t stop us from developing clean energy, even as the oil guys make trillions off their poisonous slop. Really? Boy, do I have a bridge to sell you. More about that later.
Without question, the State Department, at the behest of the President, is caving to the oil industry in this business. Of course it all was evident when Environmental Resources Management ERM was chosen to do the fast track study that would be used by State to decide where to go in both the Keystone matter and all the fast track permits. ERM is a dues paying member of the American petroleum Institute, which has spent over $22 million lobbying for the Keystone to be built. Kind of like hiring the wolf to guard the sheep, isn’t it.
TransCanada the mother company of Keystone claims never to have had anything to do with ERM but the facts point to them as lying. Additionally, over the past two years ERM has approved projects in Peru, Delaware, Alaska and the Caspian Sea that have already resulted in spills and severe environmental damage. This is obviously exactly the kind of unbiased inspectors that we want deciding about a project planned by a company with a damning history of spills that will run through the watershed for the entire mid-west.
Obama can say all he wants about the environment in his State of the Union addresses but if he backs down on this one the whole world will know that he is nothing but a flunky to the fossil fuel interests.
ERM has already stated that the failure to approve the Keystone Pipeline will not substantially slow the extracting of the deadly sludge that has already turned a significant part of Canada into a rotting moonscape. That may be true, at this instant, but one or two more oil train crashes, an inevitable tragedy waiting to happen, will surely change that situation. The reality is that if we stop TransCanada’s ability to get its product to the refineries and thereafter to market, they will have to stop mining it, We won’t be able to stop them forever but if we can seriously slow the process it will give other forms of energy a chance to catch up and eventually supplant tar sands oil.
Maybe if the fossil fuel industry spent a little less on PR and lobbying and a little more on making the transport of their product a lot safer, they wouldn’t face the opposition they do now. You’d think that guys who wete smart enough to become billionaires would be able to understand that simple idea. But no, they are so hubristic that they would rather fight to do it their destructive way than try to back off and do something that might benefit the rest of the country without hurting their bottom line.
So now it’s time to go back to the ultimate results of a fait accompli by the oil companies in getting all their permits passed. As I stated above there is a large chorus that continues to sing the praises of advancing the concept of clean energy even as the fossil fuel interests are pulling in barrels of money.
The problem, as explained by Michael Mann of the Guardian UK is that of established systems; how once we have set a system in stone it is almost impossible to blast out. He uses the example of the piano keyboard and how it has never changed because it was originally made that way and no one has wanted to be bothered relearning a new key arrangement. Even if a better layout was developed, no one who has already learned to play on it the way it is, wants to relearn the process. That would entail far too much work.
Once we have an established source and established transportation facilities, showing an established profit there is little incentive to change. Unfortunately, this, for the most part already exists and the attempts to enlarge it with Keystone and the Alberta tar sands will only entrench it. So we can’t let this pas because it just makes it harder to get rid of and to establish a new system that doesn’t kill your kids.
The people in this world who have gotten rich by making the planet less safe aren’t going to worry about how much more damage they are creating in order to make additional billions. They don’t care about your kids. Why should they, they don’t even care about their own. You can’t depend on them to do the right thing because they don’t care and probably don’t understand what that is. If you want a safe planet you have to grab it. And the grab has to start here. This country is still the world leader and what we do, the rest of the planet will follow but so far we have shown little inclination to do anything but make money.
If there is one thing besides our economic inequality that can ruin this country it is environmental instability. I‘m not talking about climate control, I’m talking about the undeniable poisoning of the planet. I’m talking about air that isn’t breathable and water that isn’t drinkable. I’m talking about the biggest sell-out in American history, I’m talking about Barak Obama betraying every voter who backed him in two elections.