Green America Applauds President Obama’s Rejection of Keystone XL Pipeline

Washington, DC (November 2015) – After years of deliberation, President Obama demonstrated his support for an economy that supports human and environmental health, and that helps position the U.S. for clean energy leadership, by rejecting the Keystone XL Pipeline today.

The proposed pipeline would carry nearly 800,000 barrels of tar sands oil per day across 1,200 miles from western Canada through the U.S. to an export facility in Texas.

This decision comes after President Obama vetoed a congressional bill earlier this year that aimed to bypass executive branch decision-making on the pipeline’s future and fast-track approval to construct the pipeline. The President has maintained that his final decision would be based on the State Department’s assessment of the Keystone XL Pipeline and the impacts such a project would have on the environment, the economy, climate change, and American lives.

“Rejecting the Keystone XL Pipeline and moving toward a clean energy economy, including key steps identified in the President’s new Clean Power Plan, represent a win for our economy, farms, businesses, the environment, public health, and our long-term energy security,” said Fran Teplitz, Green America’s Executive Co-Director for Business, Investing & Policy. “This decision is an important step in transitioning our nation away from fossil fuels and towards the clean energy economy our nation needs.”

“In addition to rejecting the Keystone XL Pipeline, we urge President Obama to reject the increasing number of natural gas pipelines proposed and being built across the country. Those pipelines are also dangerous, serve to maintain our reliance on fossil fuels, and leak methane – the most potent climate change gas,” added Todd Larsen, Green America’s Executive Co-Director for Consumer and Corporate Engagement. "As the United States heads into the Paris Conference on the Parties, we need to show the world that we are shifting away from fossil fuels."

Green America, with 200,000 individual members and 3,000 business members, has been a vocal opponent of the Keystone XL Pipeline project. TransCanada, the company seeking to build the pipeline, first applied for a permit in 2008. The reasons Green America as well as Nobel laureates, environmentalists, sustainable businesses, ranchers, farmers, physicians, indigenous communities, and many others opposed the pipeline include:

* The pipeline will exacerbate the climate crisis. The dirty tar sands oil production process alone generates three times as much global warming pollution as conventional crude oil generates.

* Tar sands extraction and transport will result in leaks and spills that harm human health, especially in indigenous communities and those along the pipeline route.

* Tar sands extraction and transport will pollute and harm the environment including water, land, forests, air, and wildlife.

* According to the State Department, only 35 permanent jobs will result from the project.

* The pipeline will not increase US energy security -- the oil is intended for export.

* The Keystone XL pipeline takes our nation in the wrong direction in terms of energy and economic policy.

* We need to move immediately toward mass investment in clean energy and energy efficiency to secure our energy needs, decrease greenhouse gas emissions, and create millions of good domestic jobs.

Green America commends President Obama’s decision to halt the Keystone XL pipeline, urges a cessation of new natural gas pipelines, and calls on the President to continue to exert the leadership required to move our nation towards a clean energy future.

N.B. This is an unedited press release for your information only. The publication of this does not constitute an endorsement by the GREEN (LIVING) REVIEW or its Editor(s) of the organization(s) that have released this statement.

Greenpeace response to the Obama climate plan

Commenting on President Obama’s new climate plan, which was announced the other day in a speech in Washington, Greenpeace UK executive director John Sauven said: “The President is embracing policies that will excite people around the world, and if the full potential of this plan is realised then we could look back at this speech as a landmark moment. At the very least it sends a huge signal. For years, since the failure of the Copenhagen summit and the onset of the financial crisis, politicians have ignored this issue. Now the world’s most powerful man is saying, “We’re going to talk about climate change again.”

“This speech could be the dawn of a new era in which the White House finally stands up to the fossil fuel giants. We’ll know soon enough, when negotiators next meet at the UN climate talks in Warsaw. If this speech is to mean anything, if Obama is serious about challenging the dominance of the oil, gas and coal lobby, then the US diplomats who go to Poland will be the first to push for real action instead of holding the world back.”

Obama plan can be read here: http://thehill.com/images/stories/news/2013/06_june/25/obama-climate-plan.pdf

Source: Greenpeace UK

Obama to sign U.N. Firearms Treaty the Senate rejected

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

President Barack Obama will soon sign an international arms trade treaty that has been previously rejected by the United States Senate.

The United Nations Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) establishes regulations for international arms sales. Categories of firearms listed in the treaty includes tanks, artillery, and small arms such as handguns. The U.N. General Assembly passed the treaty on April 2nd with a vote of 153-4, with the United States voting in favor. Obama intends to sign the treaty on June 3rd.

On March 23rd, Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.) introduced an amendment to prevent the U.S. from entering into the treaty. It passed by a vote of 53 to 46.

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) introduced another amendment to ensure “that the United States will not negotiate or support treaties that violate Americans’ Second Amendment rights under the Constitution of the United States.” This amendment passed in the Senate by a voice vote.

Signatories of the treaty are encouraged to keep records on the recipients of imported arms and to introduce domestic legislation to support the treaty’s requirements, according to the National Rifle Association Institute for Legislative Action.

Due to the Senate’s response to the treaty, Obama’s signature will be symbolic at best. According to Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution, the President “shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur.”

There was a time when I was prepared to give Obama the benefit of the doubt and saw a lot of anti-Obama rhetoric as an attack on his color and background but, I have to say, actions speak louder than words and it is now more than obvious what he is.

In fact, if President Obama signs this UN treaty, which the Senate has refused to endorse he is in total violation of the US Constitution and thus, in theory and practice, becomes “an enemy of the Constitution” and traitor.

© 2013