The psychology underlying people's behaviour is as fascinating as the things they do. “Change blindness” is a case in point. Psychologists describe it as the inability of people to notice anomalies, differences and the unusual in their surroundings. The obvious, it seems, is not always obvious...For example, we seem to have an inherent inclination to overlook or rationalize as normal the weather abnormalities that arise from global warming. If this strategy doesn't serve to diminish the significance of an extreme weather event in our minds, we excuse it by extending the range of normality — a once-in-a-century event occurring once every ten years is deemed normal.
Read this report from theWashington 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.
Written by Administrator
- Wednesday, 18 January 2012
Read this story form the Washington Post, which reports that Obama is expected to reject the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline today. (Jan. 18, 2012)
The Obama administration will announce this afternoon it is rejecting a Canadian firm’s application for a permit to build and operate a massive oil pipeline across the U.S.-Canada border, according to sources who have been briefed on the matter.
However the administration will allow TransCanada to reapply after it develops an alternate route through the sensitive habitat of Nebraska’s Sandhills. Deputy Secretary of State William J. Burns will make the announcement, which comes in response to a congressionally-mandated deadline of Feb. 21 for action on the proposed Keystone pipeline.
Written by Damien Gillis
- Saturday, 24 December 2011
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)
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.
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)
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. 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.
Written by Mark Brooks
- Tuesday, 15 November 2011
Introducing our new Common Sense contributor, Ottawa-based environmental journalist Mark Brooks..."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."
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)
Written by Damien Gillis
- Thursday, 10 November 2011
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)
Written by Administrator
- Tuesday, 06 September 2011
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."
30 year-old William Housty's powerhouse presentation to the National Energy Board's Enbridge hearings in his community of Bella Bella. William describes the history, language and culture of his people in fascinating detail - and how the proposed Northern Gateway Pipeline and Tar Sands supertankers transiting the waters of his people's territory would destroy their traditional way of life.
Highlights from this week's National Energy Board hearings in Bella Bella on the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline and supertankers on BC's coast. Powerful testimony from three members of the Heiltsuk First Nation, sharing their experiences with the sea.rn
The Heiltsuk First Nation learned late Monday that scheduled National Energy Board hearings on the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline will resume Tuesday in Bella Bella, following their cancellation Monday in the wake of a peaceful demonstration to which the Joint Review Panel overreacted.
Close to 2,000 people turned out on a rainy Monday afternoon in Vancouver last week to speak out against Tar Sands oil tankers on BC's coast. The occasion marked the 23rd anniversary of the disastrous Exxon Valdez Oil Spill. The crowd gathered at the Art Gallery to hear from guest speakers like 350.org's Bill McKibben and members of the Heiltsuk First Nation of Bella Bella, who coorganized the rally, along with ForestEthics and Greenpeace.
Rueben George of the Tsleil-Waututh (Burrard) First Nation and Ben West of the Wilderness Committee discuss Kinder Morgan's quiet plan to twin its existing Trans Mountain Pipeline from the Alberta Tar Sands to Vancouver - which would result in up to 300 supertankers a year plying the waters of the Burrard Inlet and South Coast.
Eleven year-old Ta'Kaiya Blaney of the Sliammon First Nation sings her hit song "Shallow Waters" to some 2,000 people outside the Vancouver Art Gallery. She tells the audience one year ago on this day she was chased from Enbridge's Vancouver office when she tried to present her song to company officials.
World renowned climate activist Bill McKibben of 350.org lent his voice to the "Our Coast, Our Decision" rally in Vancouver Monday. McKibben told the crowd of close to 2,000 outside the Vancouver Art Gallery, "This is one of these great moments in human history and you guys are absolutely at the white, hot centre of it."
Rafe Mair pulls no punches in this, the second of a two-part interview with BC NDP Leader Adrian Dix - grilling the potential future premier of BC on Liquid Natural Gas, fracking, the proposed Enbridge pipeline and salmon farms.
Marven Robinson, a spirit bear guide from the Gitga'at Nation of Hartley Bay, speaks to Damien Gillis in Prince Rupert the day after the big rally he helped organize against Enbridge on Feb. 4, 2012.
In the first of a two-part interview, Rafe Mair grills BC NDP Leader Adrian Dix on private power, Site C Dam and BC's flawed environmental assessment process. What will the NDP do with existing and future private river power projects (a.k.a. IPPs) if they form the next government - and where do they stand on Site C Dam?
The beating of drums echoed throughout the seaside community of Prince Rupert, BC, on February 4 as thousands of First Nations and BC citizens banded together to express their opposition to the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway twin pipelines from the Alberta Tar Sands to nearby Kitimat on BC's central coast.
The various spokespeople for supposed "grassroots" pro-Tar Sands and pipeline organization EthicalOil.org have steadfastly maintained their campaign has no connection to the oil and gas industry or the Harper Government. But as the links between these groups continue to pile up, that contention becomes harder and harder to swallow.
In the wake of the bogus deal Enbridge attempted to foist on the Gitxsan people of Northwest BC last month to help pave the way for its controversial proposed Northern Gateway pipeline, the community has banded together in inspiring fashion - with camcorders and the Web as their weapons of choice.
Watch this series of clips by independent filmmaker Craig Delahunt from the Cohen Commission, including a key hour of testimony from the final day of ISAv hearings and interviews with experts outside the Commission.
See how the Gitxsan are banding together in a moment of crisis, following the unauthorized deal with Enbridge signed by rogue treaty negotiator Elmer Derrick.
