Keystone XL project

How Not to Write About Keystone XL

I’ve always liked the work of New York Times columnist Joe Nocera, ever since his days as an investigative reporter for the Texas Monthly.  He doesn’t come to a topic with an axe to grind, and tries to see through the cant.  But I think he just got snookered. In Nocera’s recent column on the …

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Can We Make a Deal on Keystone XL?

Well, no, we probably can’t.  But President Obama might be well advised to try. Republicans are currently trying to force the White House into approving the pipeline.  Nebraska’s Governor recently flip-flopped and supported Keystone, saying now that he trusts TransCanada to do the necessary environmental work to protect the state’s econoloigcally sensitive Sandhill region.  In …

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Should Environmentalists Oppose Susan Rice for Secretary of State?

My RBC colleague James Wimberley thinks so — and not because of the fake, nothingburger scandal over Benghazi that the Right has cooked up.  Instead, James’ argument centers on climate change. As we all know, NRDC’s OnEarth broke the story a couple of weeks ago that Rice and her husband hold fairly massive investments in fossil fuels in …

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A Side-by-Side Comparison of Romney and Obama on Energy and Environment

I’ve put together a table of language from the issues sections of the official campaign websites dealing with energy and environment. I decided to use the candidate’s own language to avoid interposing my own views on the issues. Please keep in mind that the table uses their language, not mine. Not surprisingly, the candidates frame …

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Obama Administration Rejects Keystone XL

Here: Obama laid the responsibility for the rejection of the pipeline on political gamesmanship by Republicans. “As the State Department made clear last month, the rushed and arbitrary deadline insisted on by Congressional Republicans prevented a full assessment of the pipeline’s impact, especially the health and safety of the American people, as well as our …

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Hey Conservatives! Let’s Make a Deal on Keystone XL!

The always-thoughtful Jared Bernstein has a, well, thoughtful take on Keystone XL.  It might be called the view of a Realist Progressive Economist.  Bernstein’s point is that given the global demand for oil, and the Canadian government’s commitment to getting it out of the ground and selling it (much stronger now that the Tories have …

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Who Killed the Ozone Rule?

It seems that Bill Daley did: Obama’s surprise move to block an ozone regulation from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) followed immense pressure from industry trade associations, which made numerous personal appeals to White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley.  Daley met with the heads of several business groups more than two weeks before Obama …

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The Problematic Pipeline Approval Process

The State Department has announced that its Inspector General will be looking into the process for approval of the controversial pipeline.  There are certainly reasons to worry about the integrity of the process.  The State Department held public hearings, but turns out to have no plan for actually considering the comments; in the meantime, it …

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