4:18 PM
WASHINGTON — U.S. President Barack Obama was just minutes into an upbeat speech at the University of Colorado when the pep rally atmosphere turned momentarily sour.
A group of hecklers in the crowd of 4,000 students interrupted Obama, shouted concerns about the health of Mother Earth, and unfurled a large banner with a blunt message: "Stop the Keystone Pipeline Project."
The president was not amused.
"All right. Thank you, guys. We're looking at it right now, all right?" he said. "No decision has been made. And I know your deep concern about it. So we will address it."
Almost everywhere he goes these days, Obama is confronted by environmental activists pressuring him to deny Calgary-based TransCanada Corp.'s application for a presidential permit to build the $7-billion oilsands pipeline.
The incident Wednesday in Denver followed a large anti-Keystone XL demonstration a day earlier outside an Obama campaign fundraiser at the swanky W Hotel in San Francisco.
Earlier this month at Washington University in St. Louis, two students paid $250 apiece to gain access to another Obama fundraiser, where they urged him to say no to the pipeline. And in Ohio, on Oct. 15, protesters took their concerns about Keystone XL to Obama campaign offices in Cleveland, Cincinnati and Columbus.
The actions provide mounting evidence the long-delayed Keystone XL pipeline, which would carry up to 830,000 barrels of oilsands crude a day from Alberta to Texas, has become the defining environmental issue of Obama's presidency.
"Here is what is going on," says environmental author Bill McKibben, who organized a two-week anti-pipeline sit-in at the White House in late August.
"The president is going to make this call himself. For once Congress isn't in the way. Everyone is doing their best to let them know we expect him to live up to his promises."
That protesters show up to challenge a U.S. president when he leaves the bubble of Washington is hardly new in American politics.
But what's different about the Keystone XL activists hounding Obama on his cross-country travels is that, by and large, they have been once-ardent supporters.
Many are progressive students who were inspired to join Obama's campaign in 2008 because of his pledge to pass climate legislation and tighten environmental protection regulations. Increasingly the demonstrators also include well-heeled liberal donors whom the president is counting on to fill his re-election coffers in 2012.
Academy Award-winning director Robert Redford, a longtime financial supporter of Democratic candidates, last week appeared in a video opposing Keystone XL.
The anti-pipeline protest outside Obama's San Francisco fundraising event was organized by cellular company entrepreneur Michael Kieschnick. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Kieschnick has "donated $60 million to progressive causes."
Kieschnick couldn't be reached for comment Wednesday, but the Chronicle quoted him as saying he wouldn't give to Obama this election cycle "if he says yes" to Keystone XL.
The backlash from green groups has been building over the past two years. Environmentalists were frustrated that Obama failed to pass climate change legislation before the 2010 midterm elections. They were outraged in August when Obama decided against imposing new anti-smog regulations.
Approval of the Keystone XL pipeline would amount to a final betrayal, some say.
"The president is the one guy who hasn't been heard from in all this," McKibben said.
Technically, the decision whether to approve or reject Keystone XL isn't Obama's call. The responsibility for deciding on pipelines that cross an international border was assigned to the U.S. State Department by an executive order made by president George W. Bush in 2004.
But the decision-making process on Keystone XL has become deeply mixed up with Washington politics.
One of TransCanada's chief lobbyists, Paul Elliott, was a senior staffer on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign in 2008. Another lobbyist who has been registered to work on TransCanada's behalf, Broderick Johnson, this week joined Obama's re-election campaign as a senior adviser.
The protests against Keystone XL will culminate on Nov. 6, when McKibben and other opponents, including actor Mark Ruffalo, plan to encircle the White House in a human chain.
"I'd say the odds are still against us, but they're getting better," McKibben said of the pending Keystone XL decision.
The State Department has promised a decision on Keystone XL by year's end. But an unnamed department official told the Reuters news agency on Wednesday a ruling may be pushed back further.
The political pressure to postpone a Keystone XL decision increased further Wednesday with a letter to Obama from 14 anti-pipeline Democrats, led by Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who are seeking an investigation into the State Department's handling of the environmental impact study on Keystone XL.
The group contends the State Department may have violated federal regulations by hiring Cardno Entrix, an environmental consulting firm, to conduct the eco-study. Cardno Entrix had previously been hired by TransCanada to perform other consulting work.
The study found the pipeline's construction would have no significant impact on U.S. natural resources.
"Many serious concerns have been raised regarding conflicts of interest in the State Department's process for conducting its federally mandated review of this project," Sanders and the members of Congress wrote to Obama.
"On a decision of such consequences . . . we believe it is critical that the American people have confidence that all the facts have been presented in an objective and unbiased manner."
Not all Democrats oppose Keystone XL. Last week, nearly two dozen Democrats in the House of Representatives wrote to Obama in favour of Keystone XL because of its promise to create thousands of jobs.
© Copyright (c) Postmedia News, Photograph by: Kristopher Skinner, Contra Costa Times/MCT
Posted in: World
0 comments:
Post a Comment