President Barack Obama today announced he has rejected construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, a project of TransCanada that would bring crude oil from Alberta to American refineries. The Canadian government and the company have been urging approval of the pipeline for seven years.
The following statements from energy and environment experts at The Heartland Institute – a free-market think tank – may be used for attribution. For more comments, refer to the contact information below. To book a Heartland guest on your program, please contact Director of Communications Jim Lakely at [email protected] and 312/377-4000.
“President Obama has proven once again that he will sell out the well-being of the American people to appease the environmental extremism industry. The only asserted reason for this face-slap to our Canadian neighbors is the Keystone XL pipeline will carry oil. There are no environmental, economic, or diplomatic reasons to block construction of the pipeline.
“President Obama would rather sacrifice American jobs, American energy security, American military security, and American foreign relations at the altar of international environmental extremism groups than stand up for the best interests of the American people. Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State John Kerry, and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton should be ashamed of their complicity in this anti-American decision.”
James Taylor
Vice President, External Relations
Senior Fellow for Environmental Policy
The Heartland Institute
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312/377-4000
“What can be said about the Keystone XL pipeline that hasn’t already been said? We can argue about the jobs numbers and the economic impact of the pipeline all we want, but these arguments will fall on deaf ears because it appears President Obama is perfectly content to make his decision on the fate of this pipeline a political decision and not a scientific one.
“The pipeline would have minimal environmental impact and the State Department found it would have no significant effect on the president’s cause célèbre, climate change. The job of the president is to build our country into a stronger nation, something Keystone XL would have accomplished. Unfortunately, it appears President Obama is more concerned with building his legacy.”
Isaac Orr
Research Fellow, Energy and Environment Policy
The Heartland Institute
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312/377-4000
“Though not a surprising announcement, it is sad news. President Obama, in pursuit of his alarmist climate agenda, is throwing away good jobs, damaging a valuable trade partnership, and diminishing our energy security. Obama’s own state department, under both John Kerry and Hillary Clinton, has twice reported that Keystone XL would add thousands of good-paying jobs to the economy while doing little or no harm to the environment, nor contributing to global warming. Yet Obama chose to support the interests of environmental radicals over good-paying union jobs.
“Keystone XL should have been approved years ago, yet the president, for political purposes, chose to deny it just days after the company requesting to build the pipeline asked to withdraw its application for the pipeline – presumably, so it could wait for a new administration in Washington. It will take a new president, one more concerned about the prices Americans pay for energy and ensuring good-paying jobs for the economy than about leaving an environmental legacy, to reverse this decision.”
H. Sterling Burnett
Research Fellow, Environment & Energy Policy
The Heartland Institute
Managing Editor, Environment & Climate News
[email protected]
312/377-4000
“This is great news for Obama-supporter Warren Buffett and his BNSF railroad, which has been buying tank cars like they’re going out of style. Canadian crude will still get to American refiners, just more expensively and less safely than delivering it via pipeline, and to the immense profit of Mr. Buffett.”
Richard J. Trzupek
Policy Advisor, Environment
The Heartland Institute
[email protected]
312/377-4000
“Is this a surprise? No. Does this decision have current practical significance, given low oil prices and the new anti-pipeline government in Canada? No. Will this be a fine decision to share with delegates at COP 21 in Paris next month? You bet. And what about the scientific reasoning behind this decision? Hopeless.”
Christopher Essex
Professor, Department of Applied Mathematics
University of Western Ontario, Canada
[email protected]
312/377-4000
“Having already taken significant steps to cripple the US coal industry in the name of ‘stopping global warming,’ President Obama is now turning his attention to attacking other hydrocarbon fuels. So, it is no surprise that the Keystone XL pipeline project was next on the chopping block.
“It was a serious strategic mistake for Canadian industry and the Canadian and Albertan governments to think that they could support the myth that we can control the world’s climate by reducing our carbon dioxide emissions yet still have the pipeline approved.
“The only way to ensure future projects of this nature are also not canceled is for industry and government to start telling the truth about climate: The impact of human emissions is small in comparison with that of nature.”
Tom Harris
Executive Director
International Climate Science Coalition (Canada)
Policy Advisor, Environment
The Heartland Institute
[email protected]
312/377-4000
“President Obama, under heavy pressure from the environmental left, opted to go with his ‘legacy’ on climate change and reject the Keystone XL pipeline. The US should embrace energy from democracies and friendly neighbors and try to limit energy from our enemies.
“So-called ethical oil as opposed to conflict oil — getting it from Nigeria, Venezuela, the Middle East — is a very simple choice.
“Attempting to limit North American drilling, mining, pipelines, and energy extraction can only mean more reliance on conflict energy from places like the Middle East, Venezuela and China, where human rights & environmental protection may be less than desirable.”
Marc Morano
Executive editor and chief correspondent
ClimateDepot.com
[email protected]
312/377-4000
“President Obama demonstrates his loyalty to dogma and ignores the safety of American citizens. All actions of the Obama administration, since his inauguration, promote the notion that Americans should abandon use of our abundant and inexpensive fossil fuels because carbon dioxide from combustion causes catastrophic global warming. This is proven false by numerous observations of the relations between temperature and carbon dioxide for hundreds of thousands of years.
“Without transportation of oil by pipeline, oil is shipped in tankers on rail lines. This is clearly far more dangerous because of accidents from rail transportation at traffic intersections and derailments. Loss of the Keystone XL pipeline means 1,100 more tanker cars shipped per day for a system already burdened carrying 220,000 rail shipment of ethanol per year.”
James H. Rust
Professor of nuclear engineering (Ret.), Georgia Tech
Policy Advisor
The Heartland Institute
[email protected]
312/377-4000
“Today, in finally denying the Keystone XL pipeline, President Obama showed his true colors. We now know, as we’ve long believed, that those colors are the green of the anti-fossil fuel crowd, rather than the color of jobs resulting in economic growth in the hard-hit heartland of the United States. For seven years, he has tried to appease both his union supporters who want the good jobs Keystone XL would have provided and his environmental allies who declared it a ‘dirty’ project that would add to global CO2 emissions.
“Now, before the United Nations climate conference in Paris next month, he can wave his green credentials and claim to be a world leader in the fight against global warming – which was the whole purpose of the announcement.”
Marita Noon
Executive Director
Citizens Alliance for Responsible Energy
[email protected]
312/377-4000
“It’s the end of an era, an era in which everyone thought that even a community organizer like Obama would, sooner or later, see the merit in building this pipeline. JFK and LBJ are rolling over in their graves. Putin, on the other hand, is rubbing his hands together, as are the Mullahs in Iran.”
Mischa Popoff
Policy Advisor
The Heartland Institute
[email protected]
312/377-4000
The Heartland Institute is a 31-year-old national nonprofit organization headquartered in Arlington Heights, Illinois. Its mission is to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems. For more information, visit our Web site or call 312/377-4000.
H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D., is the Director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy and the managing editor of Environment & Climate News.
Richard J. Trzupek is a chemist who has been employed as an environmental consultant to industry for more than 25 years.
Professor of Nuclear Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology (ret.), Climate Change and Energy
Marita Noon is the executive director for Energy Makes America Great Inc. and the companion educational organization, the Citizens’ Alliance for Responsible Energy(CARE).
Mischa Popoff is the author of the critically-acclaimed book, Is it Organic? He earned a B.A. from the University of Saskatchewan where he specialized in the history of nitrogen for fertilizer and warfare.
Tom Harris is executive director of the International Climate Science Coalition
Marc Morano is the publisher of the award-winning ClimateDepot.com, a global warming and eco-news center founded in 2009. Morano was named one of only five “criminals against humanity, against planet Earth itself” in 2009 by the eco-magazine Grist.
