CITING CLIMATE CHANGE, OBAMA REJECTS CONSTRUCTION OF KEYSTONE XL OIL PIPELINE

Original Story: nytimes.com

WASHINGTON — President Obama announced on Friday that he had rejected the request from a Canadian company to build the Keystone XL oil pipeline, ending a seven-year review that had become a symbol of the debate over his climate policies.

Mr. Obama’s denial of the proposed 1,179-mile pipeline, which would have carried 800,000 barrels a day of carbon-heavy petroleum from the Canadian oil sands to the Gulf Coast, comes as he seeks to build an ambitious legacy on climate change. A San Antonio environmental lawyer is following this story closely.

“America is now a global leader when it comes to taking serious action to fight climate change,” Mr. Obama said in remarks from the White House. “And, frankly, approving this project would have undercut that global leadership.”

The move was made ahead of a major United Nations summit meeting on climate change to be held in Paris in December, when Mr. Obama hopes to help broker a historic agreement committing the world’s nations to enacting new policies to counter global warming. While the rejection of the pipeline is largely symbolic, Mr. Obama has sought to telegraph to other world leaders that the United States is serious about acting on climate change. A Utah environmental attorney is reviewing the details of this story.

The once-obscure Keystone project became a political symbol amid broader clashes over energy, climate change and the economy. The rejection of a single oil infrastructure project will have little impact on efforts to reduce greenhouse gas pollution, but the pipeline plan gained an outsize profile after environmental activists spent four years marching and rallying against it in front of the White House and across the country.

Mr. Obama said that the pipeline has occupied what he called “an overinflated role in our political discourse.”

“It has become a symbol too often used as a campaign cudgel by both parties rather than a serious policy matter,” he said. “And all of this obscured the fact that this pipeline would neither be a silver bullet for the economy, as was promised by some, nor the express lane to climate disaster proclaimed by others.”

Republicans and the oil industry had demanded that the president approve the pipeline, which they said would create jobs and stimulate economic growth. Many Democrats, particularly those in oil-producing states such as North Dakota, also supported the project. In February, congressional Democrats joined with Republicans in sending Mr. Obama a bill to speed approval of the project, but the president vetoed the measure.

The rejection of the pipeline is one of several actions Mr. Obama has taken as he intensifies his push on climate change in his last year in office. In August, he announced his most significant climate policy, a set of aggressive new regulations to cut emissions of planet-warming carbon pollution from the nation’s power plants. A Texas environmental lawyer represents clients in many aspects of environmental law.

Both sides of the debate saw the Keystone rejection as a major symbolic step, a sign that the president was willing to risk angering a bipartisan majority of lawmakers in the pursuit of his environmental agenda. And both supporters and critics of Mr. Obama saw the surprisingly powerful influence of environmental activists in the decision.

“Once the grass-roots movement on the Keystone pipeline mobilized, it changed what it meant to the president,” said Douglas G. Brinkley, a historian at Rice University who writes about presidential environmental legacies. “It went from a routine infrastructure project to the symbol of an era.”

Environmental activists cheered the decision as a vindication of their influence.

“President Obama is the first world leader to reject a project because of its effect on the climate,” said Bill McKibben, founder of the activist group 350.org, which led the campaign against the pipeline. “That gives him new stature as an environmental leader, and it eloquently confirms the five years and millions of hours of work that people of every kind put into this fight.”

Environmentalists had sought to block construction of the pipeline because it would have provided a conduit for petroleum extracted from the Canadian oil sands. The process of extracting that oil produces about 17 percent more planet-warming greenhouse gases than the process of extracting conventional oil.

But numerous State Department reviews concluded that construction of the pipeline would have little impact on whether that type of oil was burned, because it was already being extracted and moving to market via rail and existing pipelines. In citing his reason for the decision, Mr. Obama noted the State Department findings that construction of the pipeline would not have created a significant number of new jobs, lowered oil or gasoline prices or significantly reduced American dependence on foreign oil.

“From a market perspective, the industry can find a different way to move that oil,” said Christine Tezak, an energy market analyst at ClearView Energy Partners, a Washington firm. “How long it takes is just a result of oil prices. If prices go up, companies will get the oil out.”

However, a State Department review also found that demand for the oil sands fuel would drop if oil prices fell below $65 a barrel, since moving oil by rail is more expensive than using a pipeline. An Environmental Protection Agency review of the project this year noted that under such circumstances, construction of the pipeline could be seen as contributing to emissions, since companies might be less likely to move the oil via expensive rail when oil prices are low — but would be more likely to move it cheaply via the pipeline. The price of oil has plummeted this year, hovering at less than $50 a barrel. A Malta environmental lawyer has managed a variety of environmental cases for a wide range of clients.

The recent election of a new Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, may also have influenced Mr. Obama’s decision. Mr. Trudeau’s predecessor, Stephen Harper, had pushed the issue as a top priority in the relationship between the United States and Canada, personally urging Mr. Obama to approve the project. Blocking the project during the Harper administration would have bruised ties with a crucial ally.

While Mr. Trudeau also supports construction of the Keystone pipeline, he has not made the issue central to Canada’s relationship with the United States, and has criticized Mr. Harper for presenting Canada’s position as an ultimatum, while not taking substantial action on climate change related to the oil sands.

Mr. Trudeau did not raise the issue during his first post-election conversation with Mr. Obama.

The construction would have had little impact on the nation’s economy. A State Department analysis concluded that building the pipeline would have created jobs, but the total number represented less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the nation’s total employment. The analysis estimated that Keystone would support 42,000 temporary jobs over its two-year construction period — about 3,900 of them in construction and the rest in indirect support jobs, such as food service. The department estimated that the project would create about 35 permanent jobs.

Republicans and the oil industry criticized Mr. Obama for what they have long said was his acquiescence to the pressure of activists and environmentally minded political donors.

“A decision this poorly made is not symbolic, but deeply cynical,” said Senator Lisa Murkowski, the Alaska Republican who leads the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. “It does not rest on the facts — it continues to distort them.”

Jack Gerard, the head of the American Petroleum Institute, which lobbies for oil companies, said in a statement, “Unfortunately for the majority of Americans who have said they want the jobs and economic benefits Keystone XL represents, the White House has placed political calculations above sound science.”

Russ Girling, the president and chief executive of TransCanada, said in a statement that the president’s decision was not consistent with the State Department’s review. “Today, misplaced symbolism was chosen over merit and science,” said Mr. Girling, whose company is based in Calgary, Alberta. “Rhetoric won out over reason.”

The statement said that the company was reviewing the decision but offered no indication if it planned to submit a new application. If a Republican wins the 2016 presidential election, a new submission of the pipeline permit application could yield a different outcome.

“President Obama’s rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline is a huge mistake, and is the latest reminder that this administration continues to prioritize the demands of radical environmentalists over America’s energy security,” said Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who is seeking the Republican nomination for president. “When I’m president, Keystone will be approved, and President Obama’s backward energy policies will come to an end.”

As Mr. Obama seeks to carve out a substantial environmental legacy, his decision on the pipeline pales in import compared with his use of Environmental Protection Agency regulations. The power plant rules he announced in August have met with legal challenges, but if they are put in place, they could lead to a transformation of the nation’s energy economy, shuttering fossil fuel plants and rapidly increasing production of wind and solar.

Those rules are at the heart of Mr. Obama’s push for a global agreement.

But advocates of the agreement said that the Keystone decision, even though it is largely symbolic, could show other countries that Mr. Obama is willing to make tough choices about climate change.

“The rejection of the Keystone permit was key for the president to keep his climate chops at home and with the rest of the world,” said Durwood Zaelke, the president of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development, a Washington research organization.

Protesters rally in D.C. against climate change

Story first appeared on Philly.com -

More than 500 people from the region joined thousands of protesters Sunday in Washington, calling for strong action on climate change and a stop to the Keystone XL pipeline.

The pipeline would transport oil from Canada to the Gulf Coast. Opponents say it would worsen climate change by encouraging further development of the tar-sands oil resource.

They spent several hours in the bitter cold and a strong wind cheering, waving signs, listening to speakers, and marching around the White House, although President Obama was in Florida for a golf game.

Many - from experienced hands who have been at this for years, to middle-school students excited to be at their first big rally - consider climate change the defining issue of their time.

"Twenty-five years from now, nobody is going to look back at our era and say, 'Boy, I wonder how that fiscal cliff thing came out,' " said Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org, an environmental group fighting climate change and one of the sponsors of the rally.

"Everyone is going to look back and say, 'Well, the Arctic melted, and then what did you do?' "

The rally came after a week of climate-change developments.

In his State of the Union address Tuesday, Obama said: "For the sake of our children and our future, we must do more to combat climate change." He added, "If Congress won't act soon to protect future generations, I will."

On Wednesday, as a precursor to Sunday's rally, nearly 50 activists, including Philadelphian Eileen Flanagan, were arrested in an act of civil disobedience outside the White House.

The next day, the Government Accountability Office added the financial liability of climate change to its list of "high-risk" areas for the U.S. government, and two senators introduced climate-change legislation that would impose a fee on carbon emissions.

The Sierra Club, Clean Air Council, Earth Quaker Action Team, Citizens for Pennsylvania's Future, and other groups organized bus transportation from this region.

After adding yet another bus Saturday - Sierra Club organizer William Kramer said he was getting phone calls and e-mails up to the end - 11 buses with more than 500 people on board headed out from King of Prussia, Quakertown, Devon, West Chester, and Philadelphia. Several more left from central New Jersey.

For Jean Mollack, 58, a laid-off worker from Doylestown, it was one more in a series of Washington rallies that began with a Vietnam War protest in 1971. "I think we're ruining the world with our dependence on fossil fuels," she said.

If Mollack was an old hand, Grace DiGiovanni, 12, who goes to Green Street Friends School in Philadelphia, was one of the newbies. She said that attending the rally was all about her future. "This is for my generation of kids."

Groups from schools and houses of worship joined the buses. Organizers estimated the crowd at 35,000.

Joy Bergey, 57, a policy director for the environmental group Citizens United for Pennsylvania's Future, brought eight youths from Chestnut Hill United Church, where she's a longtime member.

They included Sarah Noonan-Ngwane, 16, who said environmental issues "should be at the core of what happens over the next four years."

And Monica Guess, 17, who said that if the Keystone pipeline got built, "it changes our whole future."

For Bergey herself, the rally was the continuation of a battle she began in 1979, when she had her first argument with someone who said climate change wasn't happening.

"I will not stop fighting," she said. "I want there to be a livable planet for all God's creatures."

Nancy Grossman, 53, a pharmacist who lives in Jackson, N.J., was worried about climate change even before she saw the destruction that Hurricane Sandy left along the coast.

"It's one disaster after another," she said. "I don't know what other proof people are looking for."

Albert Accoe, 62, a security consultant from West Philadelphia, said he was attending "for my children and grandchildren."

Liz Robinson, 63, who heads the Energy Coordinating Agency in Philadelphia and attended with her entire family, said, "Everybody should be here. . . . It's very profitable to burn oil. Unless all of us stand against climate change, it'll be too late."