Read this report from the Washington Post, suggesting Trans Canada Pipelines will likely reapply for a permit for its controversial Keystone XL Pipeline from the Alberta Tar Sands to the US Gulf Coast. (May 3, 2012)

The Canadian firm behind the controversial Keystone XL pipeline will reapply as early as Friday for a federal permit to ship carbon-intense crude oil from Alberta to the United States, according to people familiar with the company’s plans.

In January, the Obama administration denied a permit for TransCanada, the firm hoping to build the project, on the grounds that a congressionally mandated deadline of Feb. 21 did not give officials enough time to evaluate the pipeline’s impact. Since then TransCanada has said it would proceed with plans to construct the segment running from Cushing, Okla., to Port Arthur, Tex., and unveiled a new route for the pipeline in Nebraska.

President Obama, environmentalists and many Nebraskans — including the state’s Republican governor Dave Heineman — had raised concerns that the project’s original Nebraska route could imperil the ecologically sensitive Sandhills region, as well as the Ogallala aquifer, a major source of drinking water for the state’s residents.

The move will revive one of the year’s most contentious political issues — which has divided the Democratic base between environmentalists and some unions, and has unified Republicans in support of what they view as a critical source of energy supply for the U.S. — just months before the November elections.

The new route TransCanada proposed in mid-April would steer clear of northwestern Nebraska’s Sandhills region, though it still runs over parts of the Ogallala aquifer. The state’s environmentalists argue that Nebraska officials have defined the Sandhills region too narrowly and say that the revised route will traverse the Sandhills in Nebraska’s northern Holt County.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/transcanada-to-reapply-for-keystone-pipeline-permit-sources-say/2012/05/03/gIQAfbksyT_story.html

Read this story form the Washington Post, which reports that Obama is expected to reject the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline today. (Jan. 18, 2012)

Read this interesting story from The Globe and Mail regarding the key geological challenge facing TransCanada's controversial proposed Keystone XL.

Boiling sands are areas where sandy soil is so thin that groundwater can bubble up through it to the surface. In Nebraska, they are found in the Sand Hills, an ecologically sensitive region of grass-covered dunes underlain by a giant freshwater aquifer, called the Ogallala, that sustains agricultural production down the centre of America.

For TransCanada, Nebraska would come to form the heart of a fierce opposition to a $7-billion pipeline project that has now been put on hold, after a groundswell that started in Cornhusker country swept through activist environmental groups to Washington, D.C...

...TransCanada saw the Sand Hills as any pipeline builder would – as an engineering challenge, one that could be managed with special construction techniques and a tailor-made plan, drafted after speaking with local experts, to rehabilitate unearthed land.

But as TransCanada developed its Keystone XL plan, the world was changing. (Dec. 24, 2011)

Read more: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/the-politics-of-pipe-keystones-troubled-route/article2282805/

Harper's government officially announced in recent weeks a new Border Security deal with the US. However, little press space was given to the ugly twin of this deal - the Canada-United States Regulatory Cooperation Council (RCC) and their "Joint Action Plan". The RCC was set up to "streamline" regulations in four economic sectors engaged in cross-border trade. These sectors are Food & Agriculture, Transportation, Energy and Environment and Personal Care Products.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the press release for the RCC's Joint Action Plan. The word "Energy" was dropped from the Energy and Environment sector. That's right. Never mind that energy, including oil, natural gas and hydroelectricity, is arguably the most important sector of Canada-US trade in today's constrained energy supply world.
 
Mounting opposition to pipeline development on both sides of the border make the Energy word a bit loaded politically for Harper and especially Obama right now. (Visions of the protesters surrounding the White House and the BC First Nations announcement of opposition to the Northern Gateway pipeline float in my head as I write this). At any rate, it was conveniently dropped. The new Environment-only sector in the Action Plan concerns itself with fairly benign co-operation on air quality standards for emissions from light duty vehicles and trains and levels of particulate matter in air.
 
To understand what poison pills may await us in the not-talked-about-but-still-there Energy trade sector, a look at the RCC Consultation Report released in February of this year is required.

This document is important in that it contains the complete consultation list of regulatory harmonization items to be considered for implementation. That is the basis of Action Plan items, which is clear from the page 5 Action Plan statement: "Stakeholder input was key in developing this initial Joint Action Plan, which represents a first set of actions and initiatives that will begin the process of developing more closely aligned regulatory systems between the U.S. and Canada."

And also from the page 9 Statement: "...there were a number of suggested initiatives that were considered but not included in the initial Joint Action Plan. The RCC will continue to examine these suggestions as it develops areas for future work."
 
Of the eight suggested initiatives which the government chose to list in the Consultation Report's Energy and Environment section (Appendix B, page 22) consider the following three:

1. Streamline permissions for and construction of new cross-border energy infrastructure, e.g.,a single Canada–U.S. regime for permitting oil and gas pipelines.
2. Ensure common approaches to nuclear liability in the event of litigation arising from nuclear incidents.
3. Avoid policies that discriminate against particular fuel sources, such as low-carbon fuel standards (for types of crude oil) or renewable electricity standards (for large-scale hydro).

As is always the case, the public is the last to find out the government's plans, but it takes only a modicum of common sense to see that Harper's moving of the Environmental Assessment Process to the National Energy Board from the Ministry of Environment, the subsequently announced streamlining of the Environmental Assessment Process, and the budget cuts to the Ministry Environment resulting in fewer and fewer monitoring facilities and scientists to staff them or to write reports on environmental implications of resource extraction are all related to establishing a "single Canada–U.S. regime" for pipelines and other cross-border infrastructure.

In the wake of both the Fukushima disaster in Japan and the privatization of the Canada's nuclear industry, the limiting of liability in the wake of nuclear accidents is particularly chilling. One expects that like the US (which, for example, limits liability on the costs of oil spills to a ridiculously low amount in dollar terms), we can expect to see similar regulations in Canada regarding nuclear accidents.
 
And finally, neither Tar Sands oil nor hydroelectricity will be "discriminated" against in the future by regulations in either country. The term "Large-scale" hydro projects remains undefined in the document. But surely Site C Dam would qualify for non-discrimination and perhaps some of the larger ruin-of-the-river projects.
 
The RCC documents are all written with the outdated and disproven arguments of increased "customer choice" and "decreased customer cost", hand-in-hand with public safety and environmental protection enhancement. The public knows none of this is true. But Harper marches on, head down and in step with his corporate buddies, to the beat of the trickle-down economics drum, while global markets implode, citizens arise en masse and peak everything envelopes the world. No wonder he and Obama need to continue to build a police security state to enforce their policies on us.
 
The other three trade sector action plans and consultation report items will be discussed in future postings. They are equally, if not more, disturbing.

Nelle Maxey is a grandmother who lives in the beautiful Slocan Valley in south-eastern BC. She believes it is her obligation as a citizen to concern herself with the policies and politics of government at the federal, provincial and local level.

Read this blog from the Natural Resources Defense Council, detailing how the forced inclusion by Republicans of a requirement for President Obama to make his decision on the controversial Keystone XL Pipeline in 60 days may very well amount to a Pyrrhic victory, forcing Obama to kill the pipeline altogether.

NRDC responded by calling out the inclusion as nothing but a political ploy.  My colleague Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, issued the following statement:

"Special interest riders do not belong in legislation designed to help the American people. Republicans took the payroll tax-cut extension bill hostage and delivered a year-end bonus to Big Oil. The president went along in order to save hard-working Americans from a tax increase on January 1, 2012. We get that.

“But with the Republicans forcing the president’s hand, he will have no choice but to reject the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline as not in the national interest.”

The President said last week that he would not accept the inclusion of the pipeline tacked on to the tax extension legislation.  

Yesterday evening, a senior Administration official made it clear the President intends to stand by his statement.  In a Reuters piece entitled, “Obama backs tax deal but pipeline now in doubt”, the senior official is quoted saying that Republican insistence means the pipeline ”almost certainly will not be built” because the President has made clear that he will not approve the pipeline without time for an adequate review of the health, safety and environmental risks.

This view was echoed by Senate Democrats.  Senator Schumer, commenting to Bloomberg News, said that the inclusion of the provision was a “Pyrric victory” for the Republicans because the President won’t be forced into a decision. (Dec. 17, 2011)

Read more: http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/lizbb/will_republican_high_stakes_ga_1.html

The protest against the 2,763 km Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta's tar sands to America's Gulf States' oil refineries are driven by a deeper concern than risk to Nebraska's Sand Hills region and its underlying Ogallala aquifer. The same applies to The worldwide Occupy movement, too, is motivated by a deeper concern than unregulated banking practices and the growing disparity between rich and poor.

This deeper concern could be interpreted as criticism of the industrial and financial institutions that comprise the economic engines of our modern age. But even this is not deep enough. Both protests, it seems, have their deepest common cause in a loss of confidence in the system itself, a foreboding created by repeated warnings of profound environmental transformations that could traumatize our present civilization.

Granted, not everyone articulates this foreboding. But decades of multiple environmental warnings have been eroding confidence in a system that seems more interested in its own success than the ecological havoc it is causing. The cumulative effect of these warnings is a growing sense of anxiety and pessimism. Some people respond by entrenching their faith in the system and doing what they have always done; others are challenging the system by demanding change.

One of the forces behind the Keystone XL pipeline protests, for example, is an organization called 350.org. It contends that the continual burning of oil - especially the "dirty" oil of the Alberta tar sands - is environmental folly. Developing the tar sands simply entrenches an indefinite commitment to oil and prevents the necessary shift toward clean, renewable energies. 350.org believes that our reliance on fossil fuels is untenable so it is "defusing the carbon bomb" - 44 percent of greenhouse gas emissions come from coal, 36 percent from oil and 20 percent from natural gas. Atmospheric carbon dioxide has now reached 393 parts per million from a historical level of 280 ppm, climate stability can only be assured at 350 ppm, and emissions are on a course for 450 ppm, a concentration that could reach the feared "tipping point" beyond which our planet's ecology would shift into uncontrollable warming.

Science supports this prediction. The International Energy Agency (IEA) reports that by 2015, given our present global emission rates, we will have lost 90 percent of our safety margin for avoiding this tipping point. By 2017, without radical reductions in greenhouse gases, we will have reached this point. So, for 350.org, stopping the Keystone XL pipeline is literally a life-or-death issue. The next struggle will be to stop the Northern Gateway pipeline, a project by transnational corporations that intends to export Alberta's tar sands oil from BC's West Coast to Asia.

The Occupy movement is responding differently to the same foreboding. It implicates transnational corporations in a wide range of social, financial and environmental wrongs. While these corporations have generated considerable global wealth, they have done so by exploiting the disadvantaged at the expense of everyone else - the earnings of the world's middle class have remained almost unchanged since the 1970s. Meanwhile, income of the wealthiest 1 percent has increased manyfold - the average 2009 income for each CEO of the 500 largest corporations was $8 million.

The Occupy movement also blames financial corporations for the Great Recession of 2008, the consequences of which are still echoing around the planet. The trillions of dollars borrowed by countries to shore up their banks and avert a financial collapse became an excessive burden on precarious economies already stressed by debt.

The other wrong that motivates the Occupy movement is the undue political and economic influence held by transnational corporations. Indeed, this influence is deemed so powerful that most nations equate economic health with corporate health. Meanwhile, these corporations show no allegiance to any particular nation - they invest where the constraints are lowest and the profits are highest. An analysis by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology of the interlocking relationships of the world's 43,000 transnational corporations revealed that a core of 1,318 controlled 80 percent of the world's operating revenue. Within this core, 147 controlled 40 percent of all wealth (New Scientist, www.bit.ly/onkFR2). So these corporations own at least this share of the record 30.6 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases emitted in 2010.

Meanwhile, transnational corporate investments continue in oil, gas and coal, helped by global government subsidies in 2010 of $470 billion. To the many billions already invested in the Alberta tar sands, an estimated $253 billion will be spent over the next 25 years. The $7 billion to build the Keystone XL pipeline is an extension of this investment. So, too, is the $5.5 billion for the 1,172 km Northern Gateway proposal. Then add the multiple LNG plants proposed for coastal BC. The Sacred Headwaters of the Skeena, Nass and Stikine Rivers in central BC, described by the renowned ethnobiologist Wade Davis as a world wilderness treasure, will be trashed by the planned gas, oil and mining industrial development there. Corporate salmon farms operate with the same intrusive aggression. Indeed, few places on Earth can escape corporate capital and its hunger to exploit resources and feed its market.

A growing number of critics now recognize this trend as pathological and dangerous - and others are beginning to recognize their complicity. This is the awareness that is motivating the Keystone XL protesters. The global Occupy movement is motivated by a similar awareness. Its action was inspired by a single question posed in Vancouver's Adbusters magazine: "What is our one demand?" Both protest groups would probably agree that a complicated answer is coalescing into a few simple words: "Give us back our countries, our democracies and our planet."

Editor's Note: We are pleased to welcome Ottawa-based environmental journalist and educator Mark Brooks to our team of Common Sense contributors. A former analyst for the Government of Canada and an author whose work has appeared in The Globe and Mail and Ottawa Citizen, Mark brings a national perspective to The Common Sense Canadian. 

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Strolling around Washington, D.C. last weekend, I came upon an impressive memorial to the famous wartime president Franklin Roosevelt. Upon the gray granite walls were inscribed many of FDR’s most memorable quotations. "Men and nature must work hand in hand,” he wrote in a 1935 message to Congress. “The throwing out of balance of the resources of nature throws out of balance also the lives of men."

Having traveled to the U.S. capital to cover the latest protest of the Keystone XL project, I wondered what FDR might say about TransCanada’s controversial pipeline proposal. A pipeline that would transport tar sands crude from northern Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico, Keystone has been described as a 2700 km “fuse to the biggest carbon bomb on the planet” in the words of author and activist Bill McKibben. Protest organizers had hoped to encircle the White House with at least 4000 people in what McKibben called both an “O-shaped hug” and “house arrest.” Instead, at least 10,000 protesters showed up, young and old, from all over North America, ringing President Obama’s residence three-deep.

This action was the latest in a growing campaign to try to choke off supply routes to the tar sands. The company behind the pipeline, TransCanada, responded in an entirely predictable manner, betraying an almost total lack of understanding of some very legitimate concerns. “What these millionaire actors and professional activists don't seem to understand is that saying no to Keystone means saying yes to more conflict oil from the Middle East and Venezuela filling American gas tanks," TransCanada spokesman James Millar said. "After the Washington protesters fly back home, they will forget about the millions of Americans who can't find work."

Only a few months ago, approval of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline was considered a fait accompli by many of the project’s supporters. Prime Minister Stephen Harper called the approval a “no brainer” and TransCanada was so sure it would get the go-ahead from U.S. regulators, they had already bought the pipe and was stockpiling it in North Dakota. The company claims to have already spent $1.9 billion to secure land and equipment for the project and it fully expected to begin construction early in 2012. This has all changed dramatically now that President Obama has ordered the U.S. State Department to conduct a thorough re-review of the project, effectively delaying approval of Keystone until after next year’s U.S. elections.

While another version of Keystone XL may yet be approved, the delay represents a substantial victory for those groups opposing the pipeline. It is also another significant setback for the beleaguered tar sands industry coming as it does on the heels of a European Commission move to classify oil from the tar sands as carbon intensive and highly polluting.

Truth be told, Keystone approval has been plagued by problems for some time now. The U.S. State Department came under heavy criticism this summer for releasing a hasty environmental assessment that found the project would pose no significant environmental risks. It was later revealed that the Department not only allowed TransCanada to select the contractor that conducted the review, the company chosen, Cardno Entrix, turned out to have business ties with TransCanada and would likely stand to benefit from the project’s approval. Environmental groups also released emails that showed a friendly relationship between officials at State and representatives of TransCanada.

The Nebraska legislature then began considering legislation that would have forced TransCanada to reroute the pipeline away from the Ogallala aquifer, a major source of drinking water for the region. Comments by President Barack Obama further fuelled speculation that the writing was on the wall when he took personal responsibility for approval of the pipeline and said that “folks in Nebraska, like all across the country, aren't going to say to themselves, 'we'll take a few thousand jobs' if it means that our kids are potentially drinking water that would damage their health or if ... rich land that is so important to agriculture in Nebraska ends up being adversely affected."

The decision to delay was nonetheless remarkable given the current dismal economic climate in the U.S. and the well-financed campaigns being waged by TransCanada and the governments of Canada and Alberta promising jobs and economic growth should Keystone be approved. In the end, a hodge-podge collection of environmental and labour groups, Nebraskan residents, a few politicians and a handful of U.S. celebrities have managed to, temporarily at least, derail the $7 billion project. As Naomi Klein tweeted after the decision was announced, when the campaign against Keystone XL began, “most Americans hadn’t heard of the tar sands, let alone Keystone. This is what 3 months of amazing campaigning can do.”

The governments of Canada and Alberta both expressed disappointment with the decision but remain optimistic that the project will eventually be given the green light. But rather than addressing the very legitimate concerns of the many disparate groups who have come together to oppose Keystone XL, Federal Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver said recently that “if they don’t want our oil...it is obvious we are going to export it elsewhere.” TransCanada immediately warned that the delay could kill the pipeline but vowed to work with the State Department to find a new route. The company’s Chief Executive Russ Girling has suggested a legal battle could ensue if the pipeline is delayed.

What backers of the pipeline have not yet been able to fully grasp is that, for the growing movement opposing the project, this campaign goes far beyond Keystone. At its core, this is a struggle over the kind of energy future we want to build for ourselves. When I spoke with Naomi Klein in Washington, she put it this way. “This is not just about Keystone, it’s about all the pipelines. Whether it’s in Nebraska or British Columbia, whether we’re talking about Northern Gateway or Kinder Morgan, people have made it clear they’re willing to take actions in line with the urgency of this crisis. Even if they approve this pipeline or any other, they have to know there will be people in front of every bulldozer.” Sure enough, in the hours following the State Department decision, the Twitter-verse was buzzing with individuals committing to take non-violent action should the Keystone project ever be approved.

Also speaking in D.C., NASA scientist James Hansen, one of the world’s leading climatologists, captured what many in the crowd and a growing number around the world are coming to realize, that we are at a critical juncture. “There is a limit to how much carbon we can pour into the atmosphere. Tar sands are the turning point in our fossil fuel addiction. Either we begin on the road to breaking our addiction or we turn to even dirtier fossil fuels.” If Keystone XL or the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline to the west coast of B.C. is built, it will ensure increased tar sands production and a commensurate rise in greenhouse gas emissions.

For climate justice activists, labour groups and citizens assembled in Washington, this scenario is no longer acceptable. The decision to delay Keystone XL is no doubt reason for optimism, but it likely represents only the beginning for a movement that now appears to be at last finding its stride. What these folks are demanding is not simply that the tar sands pipelines be re-routed to safer terrain or that adequate measures are put in place to prevent oil spills, they want a long-term plan to gradually wean ourselves off fossil fuels and towards a clean energy future that could create millions of green jobs, something the governments of Canada and the U.S. have thus far refused to consider. Until they do, it will mean that “the arteries that are carrying this dirty oil all over the world” must be blocked, Maude Barlow of the Council of Canadians told me. “If we can stop Keystone, we can stop Enbridge going west. It’s the beginning of a real movement with Americans and people around the world to say this is the wrong model.”

Mark Brooks' Video of Naomi Klein speaking in Washington, D.C. on November 5

Read this editorial from Rafe Mair in The Tyee on the increased pressure to build oil pipelines from the Tar Sands through BC in the wake of Obama's decision to send the proposed Keystone XL pipeline to Texas back to the drawing board.

"Now that the Obama administration has delayed its decision on whether to approve the Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta's oil sands to refineries in Texas, we had better gear up for quite a fight here in British Columbia. The pressure just rose to push through two dangerous oil sands pipeline projects running through our own province." (Nov. 14, 2011)

Read article: http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2011/11/14/Oil-Spill-Threats/

Read this story form the Globe and Mail on the Obama Administration's surprising decision to send Trans-Canada's proposed Keystone XL pipeline back to the drawing board for a new route. The move is expected to set the project back at least a year and a half and is being hailed as a victory by the project's opponents.

"The U.S. State Department’s move to withhold a permit on TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline until after the 2012 election is officially meant to give the Obama administration more time to find an alternative route for the conduit through Nebraska. But the additional review announced Thursday has all the markings of a delaying tactic aimed at sparing the President the dicey task of making a politically tough call that could alienate a critical constituency and/or hand ammunition to his opponents." (Nov. 10, 2011)

Read full article

Read this op-ed from famed American actor and filmmaker Robert Redford in ReaderSupportedNews.com, calling out President Obama for not living up to his election promises.

"One reason I supported President Obama is because he said we must protect clean air, water and lands. But what good is it to say the right thing unless you act on it? Since early August, three administration decisions - on Arctic drilling, the Keystone XL pipeline and the ozone that causes smog - have all favored dirty industry over public health and a clean environment. Like so many others, I'm beginning to wonder just where the man stands."

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/271-38/7303-obamas-priority-corporate-profits-or-public-health