Greg Palast explains why the Koch brothers want that pipeline built!

One would think if this was not a foregone conclusion and President Obama was serious about weighing the environmental impact of the pipeline, he would have assigned this report to the Environmental Protection Agency and not the State Department. But I suppose we'll finally see how "serious" he is about climate change when he makes his decision. I'm sure he'll keep in mind the evidence collected by activists of bad pipeline welds that make environmental disaster that much more likely (ha ha, just kidding!):

WASHINGTON — The State Department issued a revised environmental impact statement for the 1,700-mile Keystone XL pipeline on Friday that makes no recommendation about whether the project should be built but presents no conclusive environmental reason it should not be.

I suppose those environmental scientists and climate change experts who are freaked out enough by the impact of this pipeline that they chained themselves to the White House fence were consulted about this?

The 2,000-page document also makes no statement on whether the pipeline is in the United States’ economic and energy interests, a determination to be made later this year by President Obama.

But it will certainly add a new element to the already robust climate change and energy debate around the $7 billion proposed project. The new report does not make any policy recommendations, but its conclusion that the environmental and climate change impacts are manageable could provide Mr. Obama political cover if he decides to approve the pipeline.

I suppose this is all part of his new "bipartisan, market-based solution" to climate change. Oh, and his adviser tells us this "can't be a Washington-centric solution", so if you have a Republican governor, sorry about that. And the options that allow the president to make meaningful change without Congress? Might affect the economy, so those things aren't being considered. (Of course, Hurricane Sandy didn't affect the economy at all. Uh huh.) Bold!

Although the study will help guide the president’s decision, it does not make the politics any easier. Environmental advocates and landowners along the route have mounted spirited protests against the project, including a large demonstration in Washington last month. They say they view Keystone as a test of Mr. Obama’s seriousness about addressing global warming.

The president faces equally strong pressure from industry, the Canadian government, most Republicans and some Democrats in Congress, local officials and union leaders, who say the project will create thousands of jobs and provide a secure source of oil that will replace crude from Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and other potentially hostile suppliers.

Even though that oil will be exported on the world market, not for the U.S., and incidentally will make the Koch brothers even richer by an estimated $2 billion a year.

The draft report, which updates a 2011 study that essentially gave the project a green light, weighs the impacts of the pipeline, which would carry about 800,000 barrels a day of heavy crude oil from tar sands formations in Alberta across the Great Plains to Gulf Coast refineries.

Peeling the onion that is environmental legislation always seems to track back to Koch Industries. As a Californian, it frustrates me that the already deeply flawed initiative process is now fair game for out of state corporate interests.

WONKROOM: Moreover, here is a rare clip of Americans for Prosperity operative Meredith Turney bragging to Koch Industries executive David Koch that her front group will help take over the Golden State. Koch Industries fears that laws like California’s revolutionary AB32 will hurt their bottom line, that’s why, like the tobacco industry, they are funding front groups. Here, in a Koch Industries corporate document, they say clean energy laws like AB32 will quote “be very bad news for our industry.”

The ads mentioned at the beginning of the video? I'll bet this $3,000,000 contribution from Valero Services, Inc. on August 6th paid for the media buy. With that contribution, the Prop 23 campaign has spent over $6 million, with over 75% coming from out of state interests like Koch Industries and Valero Energy.

Just like they did with Prop 8, the authors of Prop 23 are relying on out of state money, astroturf groups, and an uninformed electorate to stop a measure to preserve the planet, our health, and leave something to the next generation.

More facts here.

Four years ago, California passed AB32, a fairly ambitious climate change bill, lauded at the time as being on the forefront of environmental legislation.

That was then, this is now. In November, Californians will be registering their vote on Proposition 23, a bill that will effectively destroy the greenhouse gas emission and clean energy standards set by AB32. A proposition that was written by, funded and advertised by out-of-state interests, namely Texan Big Oil interests.

The primary funders of Prop. 23 are Valero Energy Corporation and Tesoro. These two Texas oil companies are among the nation’s biggest polluters, and their California oil refineries are among the top ten polluters in our state. The Valero Political Action Committee is a leading political contributor to dirty energy interests nationally.

Valero and Tesoro claim Prop. 23 would only "suspend" AB 32's air pollution and health regulations until California's economy gets better. In fact, Prop. 23 - The Dirty Energy Proposition would kill new jobs and investment.

The fine print in Prop. 23 reveals their plan is to kill the clean air standards by prohibiting them from being enforced unless the state's unemployment rate drops to a fixed level that has rarely ever been achieved.

It's more than clean energy and greenhouse gasses too. If Prop. 23 passes, we're looking at lost green jobs, poorer air quality and hurt our already failing economy. The NRDC and Californians for Clean Energy Jobs have produced the above ad featuring actor Edward James Olmos.

In the one-and-a-half minute video, Olmos speaks out against Proposition 23, the ballot measure financed by Texas oil companies to roll back California’s clean air and energy standards, saying “Don’t let polluters from Texas tell us how to live. Vote no on Proposition 23.”

Set against a backdrop of images from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, Olmos reminds viewers of the economic and environmental costs of fossil fuels and encourages Californians to send the polluters a message.

According to statistics from the Secretary of State’s report, more than 80 percent of the contributions to Prop 23 are from out-of-state companies; approximately 79 percent are from oil companies with Valero and Tesoro as the leading contributors. Valero and Tesoro were recently named the #12 and #32 polluters in the nation in the “Toxic 100 Air Polluters” report (http://www.peri.umass.edu/toxic100 ) recently issued by the University of Massachusetts Amherst Political Economy Research Institute (PERI).

If you would like to donate time or money to the No on 23 campaign, please contact them here.

Chalk another one up for the good ole boys of the South Carolina GOP. Every time I read something about this group it feels like a slow, deep slide back to 1865.

The Lexington County Republicans censured State Senator Jake Knotts Friday night for his nasty racist remarks about "ragheads." Here's the quote:

"We've got a raghead in Washington, we don't need a raghead in the Statehouse,"

His apology was even worse than the original quote. He justified his idiotic racism by claiming to be in a casual setting and conversation. I see. If one is relaxed and just chatting, being a racist is ok? Well, it's ok if you're the GOP in South Carolina. Bless their hearts.

A censure is fine and well if it actually means something. But in the case of Lexington County, it means next to nothing. Remember, these were the same yahoos that censured Senator Lindsey Graham because he said climate change is real. That censure led him to his twisty gyrations last week while arguing against the Murkowski amendment to reverse the EPA finding on greenhouse gasses while not actually coming out and saying climate change is real.

So a censure means very little, and Knotts' response affirms it.

"No, I'm not going to resign from office and they can say what they want to," said Knotts. "I made a mistake. I immediately recognized it and apologized."

And of course, Knotts had his defenders:

During the meeting, people spoke up for and against Knotts.

"I actually thought the apology was just as bad, the attempt at the apology was just as bad as the original remark," said Joshua Gross.

"I do not feel like we should be divisive and sew more discord by doing something so ugly as to censure him," said Tommy Blonk.

But don't despair, because there are worse threats to the Lexington Party GOP than racists. There are...(cue scary music, please) LIBERTARIANS.

Knotts says libertarians have infiltrated the party and are the same group of people who called out US Sen. Lindsey Graham for working with Democrats on an energy bill, but didn't vote to censure Gov. Mark Sanford for his affair.

Poor Knotts. He just can't bring himself to say "teabaggers", can he? In South Carolina, that just might be a hangin' offense.

Good ole lyin' Joe the Hon Wilson (I swear, that's how his campaign disclosure reads) won't quite withdraw his endorsement, choosing instead to walk that thin line between losing donors and losing his soul, assuming he had one:

Congressman Wilson released a statement Thursday evening saying he "strongly supported" the actions by the county party.

"Senator Knotts did not reflect the values of our citizens in his language or in the tone of his remarks and certainly did not reflect mine," said Wilson.

That stops just a bit short of an endorsement withdrawal. I'm sure Lyin' Joe knows it'll all blow over soon enough and be a thing of the past.

If it doesn't, they've always got the voting machine strategy to fall back on.

Finally, something I want to hear coming out of the White House:

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama says it's time to roll back "billions of dollars in tax breaks" for oil companies and use the money for clean energy research and development.

Obama made the comments Wednesday in prepared remarks for a speech at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

He said the catastrophic Gulf oil spill shows the country must move toward clean energy by embracing energy efficiency, tapping natural gas and nuclear power and eliminating tax breaks for big oil.

Obama said that the Gulf spill "may prove to be a result of human error - or corporations taking dangerous shortcuts that compromised safety" - but that deepwater drilling is inherently risky and America cannot rely solely on fossil fuels.

Starting today, for the next three days, dozens of groups--including Repower America, Environment America, NWF, Sierra Club, EDF, WWF-- across a wide range of constituencies are calling the Senate to demand they pass comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation as part of the 72 Hours for Clean American Power national call-in campaign. From their site:

America's dependence on foreign oil hurts our economy, our nation's security and the health of our planet. By investing in a clean energy future now, we can create millions of jobs, reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and tackle climate change -- all at the same time.

We can do it by passing comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation – now.

Americans from all walks of life are joining together to call their senators and demand passage of comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation.

The time is now. We cannot wait any longer. Make the call.

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ConservaDems in the Senate like Blanche Lincoln have been almost as big a problem for enacting the agenda voters elected President Obama to advance, particularly, as we've seen, on health care.

Now, with Tea Parties on everyone's mind, they're making sounds like they are getting ready to cave to the Republicans on clean energy legislation like cap-and-trade.

Lincoln, for instance, has issued press releases claiming that such legislation "places a disproportionate share of the economic burden on families and businesses in rural America" -- without any evidence to support this claim.

This is simply buying into right-wing rhetoric about clean-energy legislation. Similarly, Sen. Claire McCaskill has tweeted about cap and trade thus:

Anticipating their weakness in the coming debate over cap and trade, Al Gore's Repower America organization has prepared a series of ads featuring constituents in states like Arkansas and Missouri reminding their senators that they strongly support clean energy efforts.

The ads are taken from the Repower Wall, which enables ordinary citizens to upload messages declaring their support for creating clean-energy jobs, as well as safeguarding our nation's economic and energy future and doing our part to combat the global climate crisis.

So far, some 57,000 people have made their voices heard. Go make yours heard too.

It's been a long time since nuclear power was in the public eye, and now that we're running out of oil, it seems like a good alternative to people who weren't alive during Three Mile Island or Chernobyl. With President Barack "Clean Coal" Obama endorsing it in the SOTU address, new power plants are inevitable.

Hey, I'd love cheap, clean energy as much as the next person. But states that are dealing with the aging facilities know nuclear energy is not as easy as they'd like us to think. There's the problem of waste disposal, of course, and while the risks of a major event are allegedly small, the potential for human catastrophe is enormous:

But the leaks have the potential to slow, if not stop, the bandwagon. Crucial voices are calling for caution. “I am appalled by the safety procedures not only at Vermont Yankee, but at other nuclear facilities across the country who have failed to inspect thousands of miles of buried pipes at their facilities," US Representative Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, the chairman of the House Energy and Environment Subcommittee, said last week. Earlier this month, Markey asked the US Government Accountability Office to investigate the integrity, safety, inspections, and maintenance of buried pipes at nuclear plants.

Critics say the problems with buried pipes are evidence the plants are too old and poorly maintained to continue to safely operate as many - including plants in Seabrook, N.H., and Plymouth - seek extensions of their original 40-year operating licenses. Nuclear advocates, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, say that while the leaks of a radioactive form of water containing tritium are serious, those that have contaminated groundwater have not exceeded regulatory limits or harmed the structural integrity, operation, or safety of the plants.

“No leak of tritium has ever had a negative impact on the health and safety of the public," said Tom Kauffman, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute, a prominent industry group. In 2006, the industry took it upon itself to search more aggressively for problems with buried piping and tritium leaks.

“These are the most highly regulated, highly monitored industrialized [power plants] in the nation," Kauffman said. He said the nation’s 104 nuclear plants are some of the greenest sources of energy in the country. “It is very important to keep these plants working."

In other words, safe nuclear energy boils down to the same thing it always did: "Trust us." Well, do you? Do you trust them?

When I first wrote about this many years ago, I said that I would trust power company officials when they built their luxury houses on the grounds adjoining their plants, and moved in with their children and grandchildren to stay. I still say that.

If nuclear energy is as safe as they say, it shouldn't be a problem.