State Dept. tilts toward parochial profit, shrugs off global pain
Meanwhile the 105-day comment period on the State Department's fraudulent environmental report is running, and it's not clear whether the Texas court will act within that time. Wait, "fraudulent" report? Well, based on early reporting, the report is:
Intellectually fraudulent : by assessing just the pipeline element of the tar sands nexus, the report can't possibly be meaningful. It's like assessing an elephant based on only its left foot. When the report says, "the proposed Project [pipeline] is unlikely to significantly affect the rate of extraction in oil sands areas (based on expected oil prices, oil-sands supply costs, transport costs, and supply-demand scenarios)" -- that translates into meaning something like: "Canada's going to screw the world no matter what, so we might as well get our piece of the action." In other words it's an environmental report that takes no full account of the environment.
Procedurally fraudulent: according to Friends of the Earth, " the U.S. Department of State issued its long-awaited environmental review of the Keystone XL pipeline. The report was written by a dues-paying member of the American Petroleum Institute that lied on its conflict of interest disclosure form."
Politically fraudulent : first clue, they released it late on a Friday. The main talking point was "it's not a decision document," but it raises no significant barrier to approving the pipeline. And the official reaction of TransCanada :
"We're very pleased with the release and about being able to move to this next stage of the process. The case for the Keystone XL, in our view, is as strong as ever."
TransCanada is right, the case for the pipeline is as strong as ever -- which in the view of opponents was never very strong in the first place. And last spring, President Obama promised he would only approve Keystone if it "does not significantly exacerbate the climate problem."
Well, that's what the report says. And we've seen this shuck and jive before, less than a year ago. Mission accomplished?
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