From: Elizabeth May
by Elizabeth May
Last spring when the U.S. State Department Final Environmental Impact
Statement (EIS) on Keystone XL was released, it was heralded by project
boosters as the green light to approval. It was actually more of a
flashing yellow.
The EIS was dense and lengthy. It was a policy
wonkish document. When the NEB report on Enbridge came out I couldn’t
help but to contrast the approach taken by two different nations and
their regulators. The NEB produced a PR document — complete with pretty
pictures, but with a dearth of evidence — to boost a foregone
conclusion: the NEB would approve the Enbridge pipeline. As I plowed
through the EPA advice to State Department on Keystone, it was equally
clear that there was no foregone conclusion. Secretary of State John
Kerry could go either way in his advice to the U.S. President.
Last
year, Joe Oliver and Gary Doer should have read the EPA report before
praising it. Had they done so, they might have noticed the finding that
Keystone would not boost GHG only if the price of a barrel of oil
remained above $100. If prices dropped to $80/barrel the report found
that building Keystone would boost oil sands expansion and thus be a
significant contributor to global warming. Gary Doer’s recent attack on
the EPA was shockingly undiplomatic. Suddenly the same report he once
praised, he attacked as dishonest. I wonder if being Canada’s Ambassador
to the United States is really worth Gary Doer’s loss of personal
integrity. It must be humiliating to berate the U.S. Secretary of State
claiming the EPA “ignores a decade of Canadian achievement in cutting
greenhouse gas emissions,” when the EPA report had not ignored the
evidence. It cited Environment Canada statistics that confirmed Canada
would entirely miss our Copenhagen target. MORE
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