(MintPress) – The Sierra Club is calling out the State Department for conveniently releasing a report this week indicating the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline would have no impact on climate change.
“Approval or denial of the proposed project is unlikely to have a substantial impact on the rate of development in the oil sands, or on the amount of heavy crude oil refined in the Gulf Coast area,” the report states.
The Sierra Club, considered the nation’s leading conservation organization, referred to the State Department report as “deeply flawed,” calling out the president for talking the talk, but failing to walk the walk.
“Shockingly, the report still downplays the overall effect of the tar sands on our climate,” the Sierra Club said in a statement. “But while the report may be outrageous malpractice, science is on our side.”
This report comes just weeks after President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address where the President highlighted the nation’s commitment to combating climate change.
“If Congress won’t act soon to protect future generations, I will,” the president said in his State of the Union address. “I will direct my Cabinet to come up with executive actions we can take, now and in the future, to reduce pollution, prepare our communities for the consequences of climate change, and speed the transition to more sustainable sources of energy.”
The State Department’s study aligns itself with one released by TransCanada, the very company planning on building the $7 billion pipeline. While the State Department is known for publishing reports regarding issues of foreign policy, this report struck a chord with environmentalists who saw the similarities with the study published by TransCanada. Each study carries the same tragedy of the commons logic: Regardless of the pipeline construction, the process of oil extraction, linked to contributing to global warming, will continue.
TransCanada’s president for energy and oil pipelines, Alex Pourbaix, took the argument a step further, telling the Associated Press that oil production in Canada’s tar sands plays a small role in overall carbon emissions responsible for rapid climate change, as Canada represents only 2 percent of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions. Environmental organizations, including the National Wildlife Federation, point to the dangers that go beyond carbon emissions, with emphasis on past oil spills and the propensity for similar spills in the future.
“Simple math tells us, therefore, that the oil sands represent only one-tenth of 1 percent of global greenhouse emissions,” he said. “Even if production from the oil sands were to double, the (greenhouse gas) contribution from the oil sands would be immaterial to global (greenhouse gas production).”
Both studies fail to address other environmental concerns posed by the pipeline, which would carry 830,000 barrels of oil each day from Alberta, Canada, through six states on to refineries along the Gulf Coast.
The National Wildlife Foundation (NWF) is urging Obama to reject the pipeline, citing concern over climate change and the possibility of oil spills in the United States that could destroy natural resources and habitats.
“Transporting this dirty fuel to U.S. markets has proven to be extremely dangerous, unpredictable and uncontrollable, as evidenced by the hundreds of devastating spills over the past decade,” the NWF’s letter to the president states. “The Keystone XL pipeline’s route would put our natural resources and communities at risk for a similar catastrophe.”
The organization highlights in a recent report the extent to which creation of the pipeline will threaten “the world’s most important forest ecosystems” and “import a thick, tar-like fuel that will release vast quantities of toxic chemicals into our air when it is refined in the U.S., and emit significantly more global warming pollutants into the atmosphere than fuels made from conventional oil.”
That sentiment is echoed by the Sierra Club, which also points to the nature of oil derived from the tar sands of Alberta — the amount of natural gas it takes to produce one barrel from oil sands would be sufficient to heat an average Canadian home for up to six days. The Keystone XL Pipeline would transport 830,000 barrels of oil each day from that region.
“It’s impossible to fight climate change while simultaneously investing in one of the dirtiest, most carbon-intensive fossil fuels on the planet,” the Sierra Club said in a statement.
Obama has twice delayed the approval of Keystone XL, calling for more studies regarding environmental impact to be conducted. Yet other pipelines built with the intent of transporting Alberta tar sand oil to the United States have been approved and built, including one owned by Enbridge that runs from the U.S.-Canadian border in North Dakota and crosses Minnesota to Wisconsin. The State Department in 2009 approved a portion of the pipeline, which runs from Alberta to Illinois and Oklahoma.
Obama is expected to have a final say on the project — a decision likely to be made before April 2013.