Kevin Redding spent Thursday up a tree.
From his perch at the West End Nature Preserve outside Mt. Vernon, Tex., he was the latest symbolic face of a battle that has never ended in the United States — the fight over the construction of TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline.
But because the 22-year-old Austin, Tex., man is literally up a tree, he is also a good metaphor for the conundrum facing the environmental movement in the U.S. after Nov. 6.
They may have won a reprieve by forcing Barack Obama to punt final approval of the 3,460-kilometre, $7.6-billion pipeline from Alberta to Texas until after next month’s election, but they are also largely resigned to the fact that it will be completed after the election whether Obama or Republican Mitt Romney comes to office.
That will provide some brief respite for the government of Stephen Harper, immersed in a high-stakes round of pipeline politics first marked by the delay of Keystone, then the potentially stillborn $6-billion Northern Gateway pipeline to ship Alberta bitumen across British Columbia before loading for the Asian market.
The anti-Keystone movement in the U.S. has drawn thousands encircling the White House in protest, but in Texas it is a handful of landowners and environmentalists who are fighting TransCanada in the trenches as it expropriates land for the project.
“We don’t really have any confidence in Obama doing the right thing,” says Ron Seifert, of The Tar Sands Blockade where a second tree sit-in enters its third week on the 75-hectare land preserve.
Obama’s decision to table his approval of Keystone was a wakeup call for the Harper government and led to the Conservatives’ determination that resource markets had to be diversified, spurring the prime minister to deem the Northern Gateway a “national priority.”
But its future is grey at best, black at worst.
The Conservatives are facing opposition from environmentalists, first nations, the federal NDP and the apparent government-in-waiting in British Columbia.
It has also watched as Gateway has turned into a public fight between Alberta and British Columbia and the pipeline provider Enbridge has devolved into a vaudevillian show of public relations gaffes.
Romney is ready to suck the Alberta oil through a giant straw the day he is elected.
He once vowed to have Keystone built, even if he had to build it himself.
By partnering with Canada and Mexico, he says America can become energy independent by 2020.
Obama has largely stayed away from Keystone during the campaign, but has expedited construction of the southern leg and is widely expected to grant final approval to a pipeline that could send 830,000 barrels a day from Alberta to Texas.
He will do so even as U.S. domestic oil production is at an all-time high and American oil consumption is declining.
Romney’s views link nicely with Harper’s environmental world.
It falls just short of the “drill, baby, drill” mantra popularized by Sarah Palin in 2008, but Romney would “streamline’’ environmental approvals, the same code word his opponents say Harper uses to hide his plan to “gut” the approval process.
Romney would double land and offshore drilling permits, vows to keep world oil prices lower by exploiting North American reserves, would remove impediments to burning coal for electricity and attacked Obama at last week’s presidential debate for the president’s $90-billion plan to promote solar and wind power.
Like many of Romney’s policies, his environmental plan seems to have undergone a significant transformation.
While governor of Massachusetts he curbed toxic emissions, passed oil spill clean-up legislation and was instrumental in involving his state in a regional cap-and-trade program.
Obama has what he calls an “all of the above” energy policy, which has disappointed his green backers.
It would include offshore drilling, but not at the pace envisioned by Romney, and he has provided $26 billion in loan guarantees for clean energy products and is backing the renewal of a 20-year program that would provide tax credits for wind power.
The imminent approval of Keystone is not likely to change the Harper government’s determination to open other markets and never again be squeezed by politics in the U.S. when it comes to crucial energy resources.
But even having been stung, the government’s uphill slog on the Northern Gateway project will mean it will celebrate the taps being opened on Keystone, something Harper once characterized as a “no-brainer.”
Original Article
Source: the star
Author: Tim Harper
From his perch at the West End Nature Preserve outside Mt. Vernon, Tex., he was the latest symbolic face of a battle that has never ended in the United States — the fight over the construction of TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline.
But because the 22-year-old Austin, Tex., man is literally up a tree, he is also a good metaphor for the conundrum facing the environmental movement in the U.S. after Nov. 6.
They may have won a reprieve by forcing Barack Obama to punt final approval of the 3,460-kilometre, $7.6-billion pipeline from Alberta to Texas until after next month’s election, but they are also largely resigned to the fact that it will be completed after the election whether Obama or Republican Mitt Romney comes to office.
That will provide some brief respite for the government of Stephen Harper, immersed in a high-stakes round of pipeline politics first marked by the delay of Keystone, then the potentially stillborn $6-billion Northern Gateway pipeline to ship Alberta bitumen across British Columbia before loading for the Asian market.
The anti-Keystone movement in the U.S. has drawn thousands encircling the White House in protest, but in Texas it is a handful of landowners and environmentalists who are fighting TransCanada in the trenches as it expropriates land for the project.
“We don’t really have any confidence in Obama doing the right thing,” says Ron Seifert, of The Tar Sands Blockade where a second tree sit-in enters its third week on the 75-hectare land preserve.
Obama’s decision to table his approval of Keystone was a wakeup call for the Harper government and led to the Conservatives’ determination that resource markets had to be diversified, spurring the prime minister to deem the Northern Gateway a “national priority.”
But its future is grey at best, black at worst.
The Conservatives are facing opposition from environmentalists, first nations, the federal NDP and the apparent government-in-waiting in British Columbia.
It has also watched as Gateway has turned into a public fight between Alberta and British Columbia and the pipeline provider Enbridge has devolved into a vaudevillian show of public relations gaffes.
Romney is ready to suck the Alberta oil through a giant straw the day he is elected.
He once vowed to have Keystone built, even if he had to build it himself.
By partnering with Canada and Mexico, he says America can become energy independent by 2020.
Obama has largely stayed away from Keystone during the campaign, but has expedited construction of the southern leg and is widely expected to grant final approval to a pipeline that could send 830,000 barrels a day from Alberta to Texas.
He will do so even as U.S. domestic oil production is at an all-time high and American oil consumption is declining.
Romney’s views link nicely with Harper’s environmental world.
It falls just short of the “drill, baby, drill” mantra popularized by Sarah Palin in 2008, but Romney would “streamline’’ environmental approvals, the same code word his opponents say Harper uses to hide his plan to “gut” the approval process.
Romney would double land and offshore drilling permits, vows to keep world oil prices lower by exploiting North American reserves, would remove impediments to burning coal for electricity and attacked Obama at last week’s presidential debate for the president’s $90-billion plan to promote solar and wind power.
Like many of Romney’s policies, his environmental plan seems to have undergone a significant transformation.
While governor of Massachusetts he curbed toxic emissions, passed oil spill clean-up legislation and was instrumental in involving his state in a regional cap-and-trade program.
Obama has what he calls an “all of the above” energy policy, which has disappointed his green backers.
It would include offshore drilling, but not at the pace envisioned by Romney, and he has provided $26 billion in loan guarantees for clean energy products and is backing the renewal of a 20-year program that would provide tax credits for wind power.
The imminent approval of Keystone is not likely to change the Harper government’s determination to open other markets and never again be squeezed by politics in the U.S. when it comes to crucial energy resources.
But even having been stung, the government’s uphill slog on the Northern Gateway project will mean it will celebrate the taps being opened on Keystone, something Harper once characterized as a “no-brainer.”
Original Article
Source: the star
Author: Tim Harper
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