Clinton opposes construction of Keystone XL pipeline

“I’m glad that Hillary Clinton finally has made a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline and I welcome her opposition”, Sanders posted on Twitter.

The Democratic presidential candidate said at a forum in Iowa on Tuesday that she wants to protect consumers while promoting innovation and putting an end to profiteering in the pharmaceutical industry.

During a campaign event in Iowa on Tuesday afternoon, Clinton called Keystone “a distraction from the important work we have to do to combat climate change”. Clinton chided drug companies who she said keep profits for themselves while “shifting the cost to families”.

She justified her earlier silence on the issue by saying, “I was in a unique position as secretary of state at the start of this process, and not wanting to interfere with ongoing decision-making that the president and Secretary Kerry have to do in order to make whatever final decisions they need”.

And he said Keystone XL would allow the U.S.to get oil from Canada rather than Iran and Venezuela, “where American values of freedom and democracy are not shared”.

Last week at a New Hampshire town hall, Hillary Clinton was asked her position on the long-delayed Keystone XL pipeline. At no point did she take a position, however. The Council on Foreign Relations’ Michael Levi explained the real stakes earlier this year: “A Keystone XL decision will have much larger consequences for U.S. politics, U.S.-Canada relations, and perhaps the broader rules-based global trading system than it will for climate change or the economy – and that’s where serious decision-makers ought to mostly focus”.

Greens cheered Clinton’s statement Tuesday, while Republicans pounced on it as an opportunity to show that she’s siding with left-wing extremists.

Clinton’s declaration would seem to make it hard for Obama to approve the pipeline, which would him in opposition to the leading declared candidates in his party. Bernie Sanders, who has long opposed the project. “We are still not providing the resources and insurance companies are not doing what they should to pay for people to get mental health”, Clinton says.

It’s a stunning shift for a politician who’d previously said she was favourably inclined to it, and the latest example of the ever-strengthening political headwinds it’s encountered. The Keystone XL fight has been a massive misallocation of time and passion that Clinton has now indulged. “We hope this is the next step toward an energy plan that halts fracking, keeps fossil fuels in the ground on our public lands and transitions us to a cleaner, safer, more livable planet”.

As a candidate, Clinton has often been asked about her position on the controversial pipeline, and to date she has deflected those questions. It would begin in Hardisty, Alberta and run south to Steele City, Nebraska, where it would link to existing pipelines that move oil to refineries on the Gulf Coast. The fact this flies in the face of logic, physics, and science matters not a whit to enviros or to a cynical Hillary Clinton desperate for progressive votes.

“Building this pipeline is essential to our national security by reducing our dependence on oil from countries that hate us”.