The Coming Tar Sands Greenwash

[Donnachaidh]

http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/09/16/pipeline-to-the-white-house/

Whenever the usual centrist/corporatist Democratic Party presidential candidate needs to burnish the old Green credentials, they can always count a on a cabal of funders, professional “greens,” incurious media and gullible public to buy into whatever do-nothing/sounds good eco-charade they cook up.

2000’s Keystone Pipeline

Back in 2000, Al Gore was attempting to greenwash off the stain of the Clinton Administration’s many eco-travesties; starting immediately after Inauguration with backsliding over toxic waste incinerators. After seeing Ancient Forest logging on Public Lands in the Pacific Northwest stopped for the last half of the Pappy Bush Administration, environmentalists and species saw it resumed quickly in Clinton’s first months in the White House under his Option 9 Northwest Forest Plan – in reality, an Extinction Plan for northern Spotted Owls and other old growth-dependent species. The pro-Democrat Big greens called it “our greatest victory.”

Not content with resuming the liquidation of remnant public Ancient Forests, Clinton soon signed into law the “Salvage Rider;” Section 2001 in the emergency Appropriation Act of 1995 (P.L. 104-19, July 27, 1995. This Act pushed a massive, expedited (read: relevant laws suspended) logging of forests based on “Forest Health” – the latest rationale; the forests are dying and burning, so we need to “salvage” what we can – fast. That, however, still wasn’t enough. The Rider also “released” a number of Ancient Forest sales that had been halted, after considerable conservationist pressure, due to habitat concerns.

Add in the dire ecological consequences of Clinton’s Foreign Trade policies – Nafta and GATT ; his opening of the National Petroleum Reserve – Alaska to drilling; the failure to control carbon despite heralded international conclaves to address to the Clinton/Gore Administration’s bad forest policies…and Democratic presidential hopeful Al Gore was getting desperate.

More at the link --

[immoderate]

1. The article predicts...

That Obama will rescind permission to build the pipeline, so as to gain favor with the environmentalish.

At the same time, he will actually do nothing to stop the burning of that tar oil, which already enters through multiple pipelines.

A propaganda victory, with no actual progress! :applause:

--imm

[leveymg]

2. Here's the real crime - relatively clean LPG is used to cook the tar out of the ground.

I have no problem with building the TCP LPG pipeline from Alaska to the US, so long as it bypasses Alberta's tar pits which are largely owned by the Chinese.

This is all an elaborate scam to get the US to pay for a project that will export Canadian tar slurry to China and to keep homes in the US Northeast burning dirty fuel oil. No thanks.