Obama: Keystone XL Pipeline Would Undercut U.S. Leadership On Climate Change

U.S. President Barack Obama has declared his rejection of TransCanada’s request to build the Keystone XL pipeline, thus ending a seven year story in which environmentalists in both the US and Canada staged protests, while others had been in favor of the proposal. It would be best for the struggle against climate change if they found a cause of more than symbolic value. Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell was less sanguine about the decision, accusing Obama of being “more interested in appeasing deep-pocketed special interests and extremists than helping tens of thousands of Americans who could have benefited from Keystone’s good jobs”.

August 26, 2011 – The State Department issues its final environmental impact statement determining “there would be no significant impacts to most resources along the proposed project corridor”.

“We know that Canadians want a government that they can trust to protect the environment and grow the economy”, Trudeau said Friday in his statement.

The state’s congressional delegation is divided along party lines over President Obama’s decision to reject construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.

The $8 billion project’s tombstone may be temporary, with the company behind it, TransCanada Corp., now weighing its options.

But the fate of the pipeline could change after the 2016 elections if TransCanada reapplies.

“It was essentially a transit project and that it would, in fact, underwrite the economics of the tar sands and I just didn’t think that was in the national interest”, he says.

Republican presidential hopeful Marco Rubio made one offer: “When I’m president, Keystone will be approved, and President Obama’s backwards energy policies will come to an end”.

And Dakota Rural Action vice chair John Harter says he’s deeply grateful for the rejection of the Keystone XL Pipeline.

But the plans from the Canadian company backing the pipeline were controversial from the start as lawmakers and environmentalists spared over what it would mean for jobs, the economy and the environment.

November 6, 2011 – Obama announces he is rejecting the permit to build the Keystone pipeline. The project is not in the national interest, he says.

The announcement comes weeks before a historic climate conference in Paris, at which world leaders are meeting to (hopefully) strike a resolution that would substantially limit global carbon emissions in the years to come.

“KXL and Alberta Clipper are two very different projects”, Graham White, an Enbridge spokesman, said in an e-mail Friday.