By Ryan Maue.
Free publicity:
Bill McKibben’s Call to Action: “I want to tell you about an upcoming action — it looks set to turn into the biggest civil disobedience protest in the history of the North American climate movement. It will take place at the White House from August 20-Sept. 3, and we need your help spreading the word. But I want to explain the reasoning behind it in some detail, because for me it helps illustrate how some of the debate about Obama is unproductive.”
President Obama has recently been criticized by former VP Al Gore in his rambling Rolling Stone article. But apparently that’s been “unproductive” and some damage control is in order. McKibben has the perfect solution in order to lobby the President to kill the Keystone Pipeline: “We asked people who had Obama buttons in their closets to bring them and wear them — many of us still remember the shivers that ran down our spines when he said, on the eve of his nomination, that with his election “the rise of the oceans would begin to slow and the planet begin to heal.”
The opposition to the Keystone Pipeline is not terribly difficult to figure out. But McKibben deftly summarizes the ultimate stakes that liberal environmentalists face:
But there’s a bigger problem here too. Those Alberta tar sands are the biggest carbon bomb on the continent — indeed, on the whole planet, only Saudi Arabia’s oil deposits are bigger…if you could burn all that oil at once, you’d add 200 parts per million co2 to the atmosphere, and send the planet’s temperature skyrocketing upwards. Any serious exploitation of the tar sands, says Hansen, means it’s “essentially game over” for the climate. So, high stakes. And don’t think that the Canadians will automatically find some other route to send their oil out to, say, China. Native tribes are doing a great job of blocking a proposed pipe to the Pacific; Alberta’s energy minister said recently that he stays up nights worrying that without Keystone his province will be ‘landlocked in bitumen.’ Without the pipeline, said the business pages of Canada’s biggest paper, Alberta oil faces a ‘choke point.’
So, the Call to Action is summarized on a website, where you can go to sign up to join the effort: Tar Sands Action
Get your best business attire, your Obama buttons, and get ready to join Danny Glover, Naomi Klein, and NASA scientist James Hansen at the White House, and help Obama “get his environmental mojo back!”
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From a political point of view, with gas prices soaring and the President in complete reelection/campaign mode, blocking the pipeline would be a huge political gift to any GOP nominee.
Sheer stupidity … amazing
@Patrick Guinness: I found this bit most interesting: “U.S. tax returns and public records show that Tides U.S. and charities based in California and New York have granted US$15-million since 2003 specifically for campaigns against Alberta oil and against oil tanker traffic and pipelines through British Columbia.”
Now imagine offshore foundations backed by foreign money would spend $15 million in the US to campaign for the construction of the pipeline. That would get close to a casus belli.
Is this paid form by the EPA?
Coldfinger is exactly right–activism and protest is a necessity–a way of life–for these folks. If all fossil fuels were banned…if carbon was finally declared illegal…they would find a new agenda; a new idol to worship.
9.2% Unemployment. Check.
$1.5 Trillion deficit and getting bigger. Check.
No end in site to out of control Congressional spending. Check.
A nation and economy following Greece & Italy down the financial garden path. Check.
An opportunity to create jobs, wealth and secure a very secure energy source from a friendly allied nation. Nahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh . . . . we don’t wanna do that.
Time for Barry to urinate, flatulate or get off his throne.
Robert Hirsch shows the rapidly impending decline of LIGHT oil will directly cause very severe economic depression until alternatives can be brought on line. See videos: Oil decline vs Climate Change Robert L. Hirsch Pt 01 , The Canadian Oil Sands with Robert L. Hirsch Pt 21 etc.
GDP is tightly connected to Oil supply growth.
Hirsch warns of impending Oil & GDP decline
Stopping or slowing the Keystone XL pipeline will directly:
INCREASE US fuel costs
INCREASE US fuel shortages
INCREASE US Unemployment
INCREASE Debt & Interest
DAMAGE the US & World Economy
VERY SOON!
Oil sands is much better than “having nothing”!
The Impending World Energy Mess. ASPO 2011 Presentation pdf, Video
We are already more than 20 years too late to avoid serious economic depression – for lack of preparation – by focusing on the chimera of “climate change” aka “catastrophic anthropogenic global warming”. See the “Hirsch Report” DOE 2005.
Lloyds of London and the US DOD have warned that we will likely experience global fuel shortages in 2012-2015 time frame.
Sustainable Energy Security Lloyds 360, 2010
The JOE 2010, US Joint Operating Environment, DOD
See other videos on: Robert Hirsch Oil
But how are they going to get to the White House?
A Canuck here.
I actually hope they block the pipeline and ban the purchase of ‘dirty oil’ by the US.
That way, we’ll build a pipeline westward and sell all the oil we can make to the Chinese.
If this irresponsible and selfish action causes the US people to take a different look at environmentalists, and therefore makes it easier to amend the Clean Air Act, bring it on!
Correction: News of JOE 2010, The JOE 2010 pdf
Due to rising domestic consumption in exporting countries, Brown & Foucher & Silveus warn that available Global Net Oil Exports will decline much faster than oil depletion. The rapid change from rising consumption to declining available oil exports will hit oil importing countries the hardest, especially the USA and Europe. See Peak Oil Versus Peak Net Exports–Which Should We Be More Concerned About? ASPO 2010
IEA warns that crude oil peaked in 2006 and it projects NO increase in crude oil in the future.
Global Net Oil Exports Peaked in 2005!
Global Net Oil Exports Less Chindia’s Combined Net Oil Imports = ANE
That likely triggered/amplified the 2008 economic crisis.
Global net exports are already down 12% in 5 years!
In June, 2008, Mr. Obama proclaimed- “…this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal…”
Since taking office, the President can already claim that he has single-handedly made dramatic impacts on climate-relevant trends:
-Sea level rise has decelerated.
-Ocean heat content has not increased.
-Global surface temperatures have come back down after tamping back President Bush’s temperature increases in the pipeline.
-Arctic sea ice anomalies have stabilized.
-The last 2 winters in the US have been gloriously cool.
-There have been no hurricane landfalls in the US.
-Global ACE remains near its lowest level since the 1970’s.
-The winter northern hemisphere snow cover extent has increased dramatically.
-Lake Powell water levels have risen dramatically.
Yet McKibben insists on carbon pollution policies that have nothing to do with pollution and will have no impact on climate.
I am starting to suspect that McKibben and Hansen are reality deniers, paid by BIG GREEN to deliberately ignore the observational data of a healing climate that has been delivered by our Dear Leader…
“Shivers down spines”? Poor people (I feel sorry for them), but it looks like Keystone will be a needed USA jobs program at 13 Billion, and good for TX economy esp., as well as reducing fuel costs (or at least, slow the inflation of), which are very hard on rural poor. As for the import of tar-sands and CO2 endgame, did they notice the recent Russian announcement of troop deployment (2 brigades) in the (claimed) Arctic, with respect to oil/gas rights-that is a similar scale field that seems to have flown under the radar.
“it looks set to turn into the biggest civil disobedience protest in the history of the North American climate movement.”
August 20-Sept. 3, of course, is when they can count on plenty of
useful idiotscollege students. I guess he hopes that by hyping it as such, there will be a bandwagon effect. Oh yeah, “business attire”. That is rich. As if they have any.This will put Obama in an uncomfortable lose/lose position. Should be fun.
Start a counter protest saying these people want you to pay $10 a gallon in gas, and that this is to stop you from being available to buy cheap fuel in the future.
Err kind of closing the door after the horse (electric car???) has bolted. Canada already has a pipe-line to the Pacific terminating in Vancouver. The option to build another one to Prince Rupert is mainly for convenience. Its (marginaly) closer to the tar sands and is a deep water port so is much safer to bring tankers in. Oh well guess the enviros don’t care about issues like safety and efficiency. If China doesn’t get it from us it will get it from – yep – any dodgy autocratic, kleptocratic government it can. I wonder how much of the junk in Mr. McKibbens’ garage was made in China? I wonder if he sees the irony in the fact that the West, and the US consumer in particular, payed for the construction of the manufacturing power-house that is now China. If he thinks that stopping one pipe-line will do anything but increase the cost of fuel to his own people he is in denial (oops I said the d-word). So far France, Korea, Norway, the UK, the USA and China have all bought a piece of the black, sticky Alberta pie. Who is the biggest foreign investor in the tar sands?, its not the US.
I’ve thought of a little civil disobedience myself: how about a few hundred people sneak CFLs into Congress and break them on the floor? The subsequent EPA panic and mercury cleanup would bring to light the absolute stupidity of forcing those things into American households. Heck, just breaking them on the sidewalk outside of the White House would be close enough to make the point.
Like CodeTech stated above, I too am an Alberta resident and worked at the Oil Sands quite a few years ago(in the pay of big oil!!), and the oil will get to the West Coast…If the natives block it going to Prince Rupert, they will head the pipeline down to Vancouver, so if the natives are smart (and they are!) they will broker a deal.
Another spin off of this too, will be if we have China then buying up the oil, we will not be tied to the price (West Texas Int. Crude price)…
I recently read this comment in a local blog:
“The 2009 (published in 2010) study that showed 97+% agreement on human-caused climate change being a serious problem was a survey of thousands of papers written by the hundreds of scientists who had published 20 or more peer-reviewed papers on climate science. They included every scientist who had published 20+ papers on climate science. Those are the real experts. Every one of those papers included real science — the testing of hypotheses with real, hard evidence and original research. The consensus is scientific; the controversy is political.”
Can anyone point me to a credible study refuting this “concensus”?
Alberta has oil sand, not tar sand. If this is not understood, the situation is not understood.
The Canadian/Albertan tar sands paradigm presently doesn’t make logical sense, when using natural gas for the heat/steam generation. This must be upgraded to nuclear power, which is the configuration that makes
moreANY sense. Using vast quantities of natural gas is akin to a snake eating its own tail. When will we ever learn? GKOf all the loons in the loony bin this guy is by far the looniest.
From the article “know that above 350 parts per million co2 in the atmosphere you can’t have, in the words of NASA climatologist James Hansen, “a planet similar to the one on which civilization evolved and to which life on earth is adapted.”
The US and other countries continue to invest in the same “green power” technologies that have been tried and tried again and failed. Wind and solar are inherently uncompetitive because they are intermittent and thus not suited to any economy that needs reliable power. It is pie in the sky thinking that that this will magically change. The available storage solutions are extremely inefficient and further increases the already uncompetitive costs.
The single most obvious choice for green power is nuclear. However, the current designs are heavily influenced by military requirements, including weapons production. As such, they cannot be considered optimum for civilian use. They are many alternative designs that do not suffer from these problems.
The problem for any company wishing to install a nuclear reactor is the regulatory hurdles. Standardized, certified design are required. The US has in the past used Manhattan / moon landing style projects to develop solutions to similar problems.
The problem is that some very large and influential players in the US nuclear industry have a vested interest in their current designs and are not likely to support any move to introduce and certify safer designs.
If the US doesn’t want the Keystone oil pipeline they can always get their oil from the Middle East instead of Canada. How has that strategy been working for you so far?
http://www.brightandearlyblog.com/wp-images/ProtestSign.jpg
http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSm4bh7A8QrHESkyqU9nWVI9ZZ5zXih0hCGvugWShZmnU4v4CIJ
As a Canadian I feel two things about this pipeline.
1) After our soldiers have fought together in so many wars, you prefer oil from Saudi Arabia? Its not like you can just stop importing oil … so why not buy ours?
2) This century belongs to China and India. Americans are screwed. We will sell the oil to Asia if you don’t want it.