President Barack Obama rejected the Keystone XL pipeline today over concern that the transnational pipeline would contribute to global warming.
Obama made the announcement from the Roosevelt Room of the White House with Secretary of State John Kerry after a private meeting at which Kerry told him State was turning down the proposal.
‘I agree with that decision,’ Obama said today,
The State Department had the oil transportation system expansion under review for seven years, and earlier this week, the company commissioning it, TransCanada, asked the Obama administration to halt the process.
But State ruled on it this morning anyway and denied the permit request in the face of an environmental impact study that cleared the way for its construction.
The January 2014 assessment found the pipeline would not significantly add to green house gas emissions.
Still, State refused to give it the green light, saying the report was but one factor in the decision.
And today, Obama came out against it, even though he said in June of 2013 he would give it his blessing so long as it ‘does not significantly exacerbate the climate problem.’
‘America is now a global leader when it comes to taking serious action to fight climate change. Frankly, approving this project would have undercut that global leadership and that is the biggest risk that we face. Not acting,’ he said today.
Congress gave it’s approval to the pipeline twice this year, but President Obama smacked lawmakers down with a veto, saying they shouldn’t insert themselves into an executive branch process that doesn’t concern them.
They couldn’t muster the votes to overcome it, and the subject became a moot point again – that is until, Hillary Clinton entered the presidential race.
The former secretary of state refused for nearly two years after departing the president’s service to take a position on the pipeline, claiming she didn’t want to interfere with the process.
She finally sided against it earlier this summer.
In quashing the Keystone project, Obama opined that the pipeline had taken on an ‘overinflated role in our political discourse.’
‘It became a symbol too often used as a campaign cudgel by both parties rather than a serious policy matter,’ he declared.
Obama said the political debate ‘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.’
He dismissed claims from proponents of the pipeline that it would be a boon for the economy.
‘If Congress is serious about wanting to create jobs, this was not the way to do it,’ he said.
What they should do instead, he said, is pass a bipartisan infrastructure plan that would create more than 30 times the jobs per than the pipeline would in the long term.
This was curled from Daily Mail online. Credits to the best online news media I depend on.