The Tangled Story Behind the XL Pipeline

The Koch-Stone XL Pipeline

By Bill McKibben, Reader Supported News

13 May 12



Two pieces of crucial evidence emerged in the tar sands fight yesterday.

One, happily, got all kinds of notice - Jim Hansen's op-ed in the New York Times was the "most emailed" item of the day, which is appropriate since he explained new calculations showing that those Canadian deposits contain "twice the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by global oil use in our entire history."

If we burn them on top of all the coal and oil and gas we're already using, "concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere eventually would reach levels higher than in the Pliocene era," the government's leading climate scientist explained, which you think would be enough to end the debate - even in our weird political culture, there aren't many leaders clamoring to return us to the Pliocene.

But the debate continues - in fact, House leaders are busily trying to fasten automatic approval of the Keystone Pipeline, the biggest straw into the pipelines yet, onto a must-pass transportation bill.

So the other crucial analysis that emerged yesterday is probably just as important. It demonstrates the real power behind the drive for tar sands oil: the Koch Brothers. They'd long insisted that they didn't have a stake in the Keystone Pipeline, and in the most narrow lawyerly sense that may be true. But the expose from from journalist David Sassoon pierced the secrecy of the Koch brother's private holdings to show that "at the top of the list are the Koch family's long and deep investments in Canada's heavy oil industry, which have been central to the company's initial growth and subsequent diversification since 1959."

Their companies are among the largest importers of tar sands crude to the U.S., and the largest holders of mineral leases across Alberta - they're up to their necks in the tarry stuff.

And to protect that investment, they've done what they always do: buy influence. According to an article last year in the Los Angeles Times, Koch Industries and its employees were the largest oil and gas industry donors to the new members of the House subcommittee on energy and power, including new chair Fred Upton of Michigan, contributing $279,500 to 22 of 31 Republicans, and $32,000 to five Democrats. Little wonder, then, that Upton - long considered an environmental moderate in the GOP - soon became the leader of the fight to build the Keystone Pipeline, even now pushing to shut down environmental reviews and provide a permit.

The irony of the Koch Brothers involvement should be lost on no one. The only argument for building the pipeline (which will export its oil off the continent and do nothing at all about gas prices) is that it will provide several thousand good-paying construction jobs. That's nothing to sneeze at. But in so doing it will prop up the people doing most to undermine the union movement in this country. Construction workers that depend on, say, the Davis-Bacon Act and its support for prevailing wages on public projects have their most powerful enemy in the Kochs, who have helped create the anti-union campaigns in Wisconsin, Indiana, and so many other places.

Despite the power of the Kochs, this battle is still very much alive. First Nations people rallied in Toronto yesterday - environmentalists and trade unionists have joined with indigenous people across Canada in an inspired fight against other proposed pipelines that would carry tar sands crude to China. So far they're winning - the projects have drawn more public comment and opposition than any infrastructure plans in Canadian history. It's entirely possible that we'll be able to keep most of the tar sands oil in the ground.

It's also entirely possible that oil money will carry this fight as it has so many others - at the moment in Washington, only a handful of senators, led by Barbara Boxer, stand in the path of congressional approval. But at least, as of yesterday, we know exactly the stakes and exactly the players.

Bill McKibben is scholar in residence at Middlebury College, and the author of "The End of Nature, Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities" and the "Durable Future and Earth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet." He is also the founder of 350.org, the global climate campaign that has been actively involved in the fight against natural gas fracking.

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.

Link to this Reader Supported News story:

http://readersupportednews.org/opini...ne-xl-pipeline

In case anyone is interested, sea levels deepened by 25 meters during part of the Pliocene epoch and large forests rapidly died off to give way go grasslands -- buh bye rain forests! Mammals made it through this period but most agree that the current world population of 7 BILLION would be doomed from not having enough forest and undersea plant life to oxygenate as much atmosphere as would be needed to support anywhere near that population.

Except for those stupid NRA/Militia/Ron Paul types. Those morons would probably think they could take their guns and go get air by force and bring it home.

LMAO!

Hmmm . . . That's from a fair and balanced source. It MUST be true.

Well we have been getting a tad over populated and since it is so fucked up that we in no way could reverse the inevitable, I think I will enjoy myself while it lasts.
The rest of you can do what you want an flail against windmills. Me I am going to live life to its fullest and enjoy it while it lasts.

Note to self: Use lilstevies information to negotiate a better deal on that bay front property.
Note to self: Only exhale every other breath so to cut my CO2 emission in half.

The author, Bill McKibben's web page is a hoot !!!!!!!!!!!

The guy is an environmental wacko............here is a quote from his front page ..

"Arctic ice is rapidly disappearing, and the region may have its first completely ice-free summer by 2040 or earlier. Polar bears and indigenous cultures are already suffering from the sea-ice loss...."

The facts and honest science say just the opposite.............

The author, Bill McKibben's web page is a hoot !!!!!!!!!!!

The guy is an environmental wacko............here is a quote from his front page ..

"Arctic ice is rapidly disappearing, and the region may have its first completely ice-free summer by 2040 or earlier. Polar bears and indigenous cultures are already suffering from the sea-ice loss...."

The facts and honest science say just the opposite............. Originally Posted by Whirlaway

Little Blind Boy, et al, were using McKibben, et al, to champion this same cause in a thread in January. The Green Weenies denied McKibben's obvious bias throughout.
http://www.eccie.net/showthread.php?...light=McKibben

Little Blind Boy, et al, were using McKibben, et al, to champion this same cause in a thread in January. The Green Weenies denied McKibben's obvious bias throughout.
http://www.eccie.net/showthread.php?...light=McKibben Originally Posted by I B Hankering

It looks to me like everything that needs to be said about this issue was well-covered in the very long thread to which I. B. just posted a link.

Thanks IB and CaptainM..........

How much Co2 did Mount St Helens spew out along with other toxic gases and what happened to all of that.

How may air samples have been taken in how many locations and how do they compare to the samples showing the CO2 content in relationship to the rest of the gases that make up our atmosphere?
Is the 5 percent more or 10 percent more.
How much exactly and what is the high and the low.
What is the mean average overall and could you graph that based on your statistical analysis showing with footnotes your sources.

Oh shit wait, the sky is falling the sky is falling.

Pardon me is that Grey Poupon?

Spoken like the evasive dumb shits you are. Ice coring in the Antarctic has documented the condition of the atmosphere as precisely as a single month in time going back millions of years.

Go look it up.

You brainless Teapublicans replied EXACTLY as flippantly as I thought you would!

When all else fails, morons like you deflect and make fun!

We don't do that when all else fails, Stevie. We do that first, because it's fun to watch you get so upset when you are called on posting a stupid article from some weirdo. McKibben? You can't do any better than that? C'mon, man, that's funny!

I find it interesting that no one is posting anything to refute what Stevie has posted. Nothing.

99.9% of scientists would be laughing at YOU rather than McKibben and the second verse of that song is that they would be 100% RIGHT in their assessment of your stupidity.

McKibben is a whacko. He refuted himself when he signed his name to that irrelevant and erroneous claptrap. The refutation was pre-done. Included at no extra cost, as it were.

I find it interesting that no one is posting anything to refute what Stevie has posted. Nothing. Originally Posted by BigLouie

BigLouse, you obviously cannot read. It is the article's author who was been thoroughly refuted: McKibben is an exceedingly biased and rabid environmentalist.

It is so unlike Louie to respond in any manner other than hard data with thoughtful reflection.