After Gutenberg

4 Comments

1. jcwinnie
   Posted 2011-6-1 at 4:02 pm | Permalink

   Supporting the pipeline is a crime against humanity because of the damage to water and air caused by the extraction of oil from tar sands. Then, as Boulder Treehugger Rachel Cernansky reminds AG readers, there are leaks…

   The 591,000-barrel-a-day Keystone oil pipeline was shut down over the weekend, after a half-inch fitting broke and spilled approximately 10 barrels of oil. Not large as far as oil spills go, but it was the second spill in less than a month and at least the 12th spill in less than a year.

   The Calgary Herald explains: “Keystone, which started operations June 2010, has had 11 such breaks along its line at pumping stations on the United States side of the system.” No mention of how many spills may have occurred on Canada side.

   The Herald says that lobby groups were successful in demanding greater environmental scrutiny of the Keystone XL pipeline, TransCanada’s current and highly-contested project, but no environmental group I know has said that any environmental review of the pipeline so far is adequate.

   It’s an issue of government transparency, too—at least until the State Department releases communications between the department and a TransCanada lobbyist.

2. jcwinnie
   Posted 2011-6-3 at 7:15 pm | Permalink

   Gristz Karla Land rhetorically asks, “Will Hillary Clinton put the desires of a giant oil corporation ahead of the needs and health of low-income communities and communities of color? Will anyone else in the Obama administration stand up and stop her?”

   Well, Karla seeing as how stuff the Pollutocrats are pumping in those pipeline sacrifices the needs and health of peoples living on the entire Planet in the future, the obvious answer to your 3E’s question is “No.” Don’t let that stop you from opening up your pockets to make a personal contribution to his re-election campaign. Gottta keep up appearances. doncha’ kno’.

   With the State Department’s comment period on a proposed tar-sands oil
   pipeline set to end Monday, these questions are about to be answered.

   The State Department is considering whether to grant approval to oil giant TransCanada to construct a pipeline—the Keystone XL—to carry the world’s dirtiest oil from Canada’s tar sands through the Midwest to refineries in Texas, including refineries near Channelview, Texas, where I live.

   But before the State Department can approve TransCanada’s proposal, the law
   requires it to review the pipeline’s environmental impacts.

   Last year, after the State Department released its initial draft analysis of the pipeline’s impacts, the EPA rated the analysis [PDF] as “Category 3 inadequate”—a bureaucratic term equivalent to an “F” on a report card.

   One of the reasons that the EPA said the State Department’s analysis was inadequate was that it failed to sufficiently take into account the environmental justice implications for communities like mine.

   A reality about pollution is that it is often unequally distributed [PDF], with low-income communities and communities of color bearing disproportionate impacts. When a big corporation is deciding where to construct a coal-fired power plant, or an incinerator, or a refinery, it looks for the path of least resistance. And this means looking to communities that are perceived to have less political clout—communities that may not have the resources to fight back forcefully.

   After polluting facilities are built, those who have the resources to move away often do so. The people who remain are left to suffer impacts including asthma, cancer, and other diseases. Efforts to remedy these inequalities and protect low-income and indigenous communities and communities of color from pollution are known as environmental justice work. Many locally based groups around the country are engaged in environmental justice fights, and environmental justice has also become a priority for the Obama administration. But the Keystone XL pipeline threatens to put the administration’s track record at risk.

   There are environmental justice concerns at both ends of the proposed pipeline. Up north in Canada, where tar-sands oil is extracted, giant toxic waste pools are contaminating groundwater, and indigenous communities have seen spikes in cancer rates and other diseases.

   But I’m most familiar with the concerns people in my community have about this pipeline. Indeed, what has too often been left out of the debate—and what the State Department has yet to adequately consider—is that the pipeline poses health risks to communities along the Gulf Coast, where it would terminate. Because tar-sands oil is dirtier than other forms of oil, refining it can lead to more pollution, with higher-than-usual releases into the air of noxious and toxic sulfur and heavy metals.

   Channelview is one of the two locations where the tar-sands oil from this pipeline will end up. Channelview’s poverty rate is higher than the national average, and our community is much more racially diverse. Fourteen percent of Channelview’s residents are African American, and more than 50 percent are Latino or Hispanic.

   Unfortunately, my community has already borne the brunt of far too many harmful impacts from oil. In 1989, there was an explosion at a Shell facility. In the early 1990s, there was an explosion at Arco Chemical. In 1994, after a flood, numerous pipelines exploded and our river was on fire for a week, sending toxic arsenic into the air. Many of the police officers who evacuated the neighborhood came down with bone cancer.

   When we learned they wanted to build a waste incinerator in our community, which would release even more toxins into the air, I and others formed Concerned Citizens Against Pollution, and we filed a lawsuit against the company. After nine years, we stopped the incinerator. But here in Channelview, it’s just one thing after another, and now we’re facing TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline.

   The other community where this pipeline would terminate, Port Arthur, Texas, has suffered so much from pollution that it was identified by the EPA as one of the top “showcase” environmental justice cities in the country, and the EPA is working to reduce pollution and improve health access there. All of these efforts could be for naught if the Keystone XL is built.

   Of course people who live in our communities don’t want to have to suffer the consequences of refining this dirty oil. As Matthew Tejada of the group Air Alliance Houston told the Houston Chronicle, “This isn’t a hard thing for people to understand. … We’re picking up Canada’s trash and dumping it in Texas.”

   When the State Department conducted its first environmental analysis, it ignored the impacts that tar-sands-oil refining can have on our community. It also ignored one of the basic principles of environmental justice—that impacted communities ought to have a real voice in the process.

   The EPA asked the State Department to do a much more thorough review that considered the pipeline’s true impacts on our communities. Unfortunately, the new, updated environmental analysis that the State Department released in April left many of the EPA’s concerns unaddressed. The EPA asked the State Department to “analyze whether minority, low income and Tribal populations may be exposed to greater risks from air emissions from the project, with a specific focus on emissions from refineries.” However, in its updated analysis, the State Department contradicts what experts have found and asserts without providing evidence that the pipeline would not result in more toxic air pollution. Not only is this unsubstantiated assertion contradicted by experts’ studies, it also runs counter to common sense.

   The State Department is also largely excluding Channelview and other impacted communities from the process. Instead of holding hearings about the updated analysis in Texas or anywhere else, the State Department is accepting only written comments that must be submitted to far away Washington, D.C.

   We are making these failings known in the written comments we are submitting to the State Department, but the public comment period ends Monday, and so far, the State Department has provided little indication that it intends to listen to these concerns.

   Fortunately, the buck does not stop with Hillary Clinton. Others in the Obama administration, including EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, will have a chance to weigh in. And ultimate responsibility for the decision rests with the president.

   The administration has an opportunity to decide to be a strong advocate for environmental justice. At a minimum, the impacts that refining the oil from this pipeline will have on the health of people in my community and others here in Texas must be considered via a formal environmental impacts analysis. This has not yet happened. It is my firm belief that if these harmful impacts are taken into account, the administration will have no choice but to reject the pipeline.

   Is President Obama truly a champion for environmental justice? It won’t take long to find out.

3. jcwinnie
   Posted 2011-6-6 at 12:14 pm | Permalink

   Jim Hansen observes that the U.S. Department of State “seems likely to approve a huge pipeline, known as Keystone XL to carry tar sands oil (about 830,000 barrels per day) to Texas refineries unless…”

   “Unless what?”

   Well, Sancho Panza, Dr. Hansen believes that raising sufficient objections will matter.
   

   The environmental impacts of tar sands development include: irreversible effects on biodiversity and the natural environment, reduced water quality, destruction of fragile pristine Boreal Forest and associated wetlands, aquatic and watershed mismanagement, habitat fragmentation, habitat loss, disruption to life cycles of endemic wildlife particularly bird and Caribou migration, fish deformities and negative impacts on the human health in downstream communities. Although there are multiple objections to tar sands development and the pipeline, including destruction of the environment in Canada, and the likelihood of spills along the pipeline’s pathway, such objections, by themselves, are very unlikely to stop the project.

   “Why is that?”

   The Pollutocracy also has taken over the Canadian government. Anyway Dr. Hansen believes that the Obama Administration will take a look at the Big Picture and do the right thing.

   An overwhelming objection is that exploitation of tar sands would make it implausible to stabilize climate and avoid disastrous global climate impacts. The tar sands are estimated (e.g., see IPCC Fourth Assessment Report) to contain at least 400 GtC (equivalent to about 200 ppm CO₂). Easily available reserves of conventional oil and gas are enough to take atmospheric CO₂ well above 400 ppm, which is unsafe for life on earth. However, if emissions from coal are phased out over the next few decades and if unconventional fossil fuels including tar sands are left in the ground, it is conceivable to stabilize earth’s climate.

   Phase out of emissions from coal is itself an enormous challenge. However, if the tar sands are thrown into the mix, it is essentially game over. There is no practical way to capture the CO₂ emitted while burning oil, which is used principally in vehicles.

   

   While expressing hope, Dr. Hansen does show that he still is in touch with reality. His statement characterizes well the behavior of the Pollutocracy’s government servants. “Governments are acting as if they are oblivious to the fact that there is a limit on how much fossil fuel carbon we can put into the air.”

   Instead of massive campaign contributions and numerous lobbying incentives, Dr. Hansen then uses scientific thinking and a grassroots approach. “It is my impression and understanding,” he writes, “that a large number of objections could have an effect and help achieve a more careful evaluation, possibly averting a huge mistake.”

   First, the scientific thinking:

   Fossil fuel carbon injected into the atmosphere will stay in surface reservoirs for millennia. We can extract a fraction of the excess CO₂ via improved agricultural and forestry practices, but we cannot get back to a safe CO₂ level if all coal is used without carbon capture or if unconventional fossil fuels, like tar sands are exploited.

   Then, Hansen’s personal commitment and appeal to others:

   I am submitting a comment that the analysis is flawed and insufficient, failing to account for important information regarding human–made climate change that is now available. I note that prior government targets for limiting human–made global warming are now known to be inadequate. Specifically, the target to limit global warming to 2^oC, rather than being a safe “guardrail,” is actually a recipe for global climate disasters. I will include drafts of the following papers that I recently co–authored:

   • Paleoclimate Implications for Human–Made Climate Change that can be found here,
   • Earth’s Energy Imbalance and Implications that can be found here, and
   • The Case for Young People and Nature: A Path to a Healthy, Natural, Prosperous Future that can be found here.

   I will also comment that the tar sands pipeline project does not serve the national interest, because it will result in large adverse impacts, on the public and wildlife, by contributing substantially to climate change. These impacts must be evaluated before the project is considered further.

   One of the Koch Brothers could lift a finger and you would see the government officials kowtowing before racing off the avert this grievous error. That Hansen knows this and chooses a rational argument against corruption shows his character even as we wince at the ludicrous action, eh, Cervantes?

4. jcwinnie
   Posted 2011-6-6 at 2:23 pm | Permalink

   Professor Joe says: “For more on the pipeline controversy, see ‘WikiLeaks reveals State Department discord over U.S. support for Canadian tar sands oil pipeline‘.”

   Romm also comments: “It’s times like these that I remember how much I miss my friend and colleague Alex Farrell, the passionate analyst.”

   He [Farrell] did the best analysis of the climate risks of unconventional oil I know of, “Risks of the oil transition” and is the source of the outstanding figure at the top. He would no doubt be standing side to side with Hansen on this.

   Related Romm Posts:

   • Podesta: Canada’s “green tar sands” like our “error-free deepwater drilling” and “clean coal”
   • BP proves Beyond Petroleum was greenwashing, joins “biggest global warming crime ever seen”
   • Memo to all: They ain’t “oil sands.”
   • EPA slams State Department tar sands pipeline study
   • Tar sands: Still dirty after all these years