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Hillary Clinton and the politics of very dirty oil
Opinion | Baltimore Examiner | by JoAnn Blake | June 24, 2009
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Now what does that have to do with Hillary Clinton? As U.S. Secretary of State, she can deny permits for a series of huge pipelines that would bring this heavy and dirty oil, which lies beneath the province of Alberta, to the United Sates. That’s what a network of environmental groups is asking Clinton to do.
“She’s reviewing the permits and will approve or deny them in the coming weeks,” said Lisa McCrummen, spokesperson for dirtyoilsands.org, a Web site set up to bring attention to this issue. You can view a slideshow of the strip mines and refineries in the Canadian wilderness by clicking: http://www.dirtyoilsands.org/visual
Environmentalists, farmers, steelworkers and rural residents are warning that construction of the massive pipelines in the West and Midwest would threaten the environment. Groups have sent out petitions across Canada and the U.S. to stop the projects planned under the previous administration from being rubber stamped, said McCrummen. “If the projects are allowed to go forward, it would lock us into a dirty infrastructure,” she said.
In regard to how Hillary Clinton will repond, “I don’t know what her position is on this,” said McCrummen. “It’s a very difficult situation on many levels – there’s so many things to fix.”
Not to mention that one of the pipelines called the Alberta Clipper is scheduled to move forward as early as July 4.
If you haven’t heard much about tar sands oil, it might be because this massive project has been moving by stealth, as suggested by Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope. “It has been sneaking into the U.S., pipeline by pipeline, refinery by refinery, permit by permit, but it’s actually one big project executed by Big Oil and the Canadian government.”
Greenhouse gas emissions from tar sands oil are three times more than from conventional oil that gushes up from the ground. Canadian government leaders are looking to technological improvements to make the dirty oil ecologically acceptable, but for other people, that’s a stretch. Noted climate scientist James Hansen has called the unconventional fossel fuel “an environmental wild card.”
Any wagers how Hillary will play her hand?
Tagged with: pipeline, alberta clipper, new energy economy, hillarys choice, clean energy economy
