Running scared . . .

FROM THOSE CONCERNED FOLKS at 350.ORG. 

Oily secrets . . .

KEYSTONE XL May Actually Raise American Gas Prices — that's the title of an article by TRUTHOUT. Stevie ain't gonna like it:

“Keystone XL is not an economic benefit to Americans who will see higher gas prices and bear all the risks of the pipeline,” said report author Judy Dugan in a press release. “The pipeline is being built through America, but not for Americans.”

The report reinforces what us “crazy environmentalists” have been trying to point out for years: The chief purpose of the pipeline is to help Canada increase it’s own revenue by opening up new, overseas markets for tar sands oil. Not to decrease American gas price.

DUKE University's GreenGrok site has observations from two years ago this month, that are entirely cogent. The article, "The Keystone XL Pipeline: A Tar Sands Folly?" by Bill Chameides, the Dean of the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University, is worthy of attention, do check out all its details.

An analysis prepared for the Energy Department last December found that Keystone XL’s capacity would not be needed until sometime after 2020 at the earliest and maybe not until after 2030.

So I have to ask: Why this pipeline? Why now?

Stevie's gonna freak . . .

THE WASHINGTON POST SAYS: "The president can start by rejecting the Keystone pipeline." (Actually, those words are not, as written, in the editorial, "What Obama should do now: Tackle climate change", they exist in the html file header that describes the page. Just so's ya know.) Check it out.

It will be painfully easy to tell if President Obama is going to take a serious stab at doing something about climate change in his second term: The purest, starkest test he faces will be the proposed Keystone XL pipeline from the tar sands of Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.

TransCanada in Texas . . .

TRUTHOUT is a fine site for concerned citizens, and Candice Bernd has an account you should check out, "SLAPPed, Arrested, Deemed Eco-Terrorists: TransCanada Blockaders Persevere". It seems that there are concerned Americans, that don't want Stevie's Tar.  Sure seems to have fallen in a black hole as far as the news media are concerned, but I could be mistaken.

The Midwestern leg of TransCanada's pipeline is up and running after a five-day shut-down to repair areas where required integrity tests identified possible safety issues, according to the federal agency that oversees the existing 2,100-mile link.

Meanwhile, in East Texas, a contingent of Tar Sands Blockaders maintains their vigil - now in its fifth week - to stop construction on the Gulf Coast extension of the controversial project.

The nonviolent blockaders have been met with pain compliance tactics, felony charges, a SLAPP suit which uses the language of "eco-terrorism" and what amounts to a police state surrounding their tree village in Winnsboro, Texas.

DIRTY OIL SANDS has an account of an August encounter with the Man. Interesting site, check it out.

Better and better . . .

THE OGALLALA AQUIFER might be the show-stopper for Keystone XL, according to the Washington Post's article "Keystone XL pipeline may threaten aquifer that irrigates much of the central U.S.", part of their series, "Keystone:Down the Line". There seems to be a clear and present danger, according to Jane Kleeb, who is an activist in Nebraska:

If the pipeline should spring a leak where it touches the aquifer or even above it, Kleeb and other opponents say, oil could quickly seep into and through the porous, sandy soil. The Ogallala, Kleeb said last year in a television interview, is “a very fragile ecosystem, literally made of sand. . . . To have a pipeline crossing that region is just mind-boggling.”

Stevie ain't gonna like this . . .