In the Pipeline: 4/10/13

Now that would be a mandate we could all get behind. Denver Post (4/8/13) reports: “The officials from rural cooperatives and rural counties called the bill ‘a war on rural Colorado.’…’I own a bar. I’d like you to pass a law that everyone has to drink 25 percent more. Everyone is feathering their own nest,’ Moffat County Commissioner Tom Mathers said.” 

Well gosh, we didn’t realize anyone was willing to have a reasonable debate about Keystone. Bloomberg (4/9/13) reports: “The evidence is so overwhelming that railroads are far less safe than pipelines, that it would be a serious mistake to use these recent spills to say that Keystone is unsafe,” he said. Brookings is a Washington-based nonprofit that says it supports economic and social welfare and a strong American democracy.

Maybe we’ve been wrong about Keystone. Maybe the Canadians really do deserve what the Obama crew has been giving them. International Climate Science Coalition (4/9/13) reports: “But promoting climate alarm in Canada’s most important trading partner, as Alberta Premier Alison Redford did this afternoon at the Washington DC-based Brookings Institute, is a public relations blunder of the first order.”…“The ultimate aim of climate activists is no less than to entirely terminate our use of hydrocarbon fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas,” explained Harris. “So, it is a disastrous strategy for a province that derives most of its income from those resources to support a movement that is trying to kill the market for the same resources.”

It makes you realize those ads for California tourism on TV are really just a pathetic, last-ditch effort to have a single positive trend in their economy. Daily Caller (4/9/13) reports: “A federal judge sided with environmental groups on Monday and ruled that the Obama administration wrongfully issued oil leases in Monterey County, Calif., by not considering the environmental impacts of hydraulic fracturing.”

No good way to put this: the Navy has given a star to the wrong man. Real Science (4/10/13) reports: “The military officer charged with monitoring North Korea at a time when the rogue nation is threatening to unleash missile attacks worldwide has used a Senate hearing to double down on his claim that it is global warming that is the real danger… Navy Adm. Samuel Locklear III originally caused a stir just weeks ago when in a speech to scholars at Harvard and Tufts universities in Cambridge, Mass., he said the climate change factor should be the focus of American concern.”

You heard him, folks. Start to budget for energy prices that are triple what they are now. And you can’t print and borrow your way out of this; those privileges are reserved for Beltway Royalty. ThinkProgress(4/8/13) reports: “If we start really squeezing down on carbon dioxide over the next few decades, well, that could double; it could eventually triple…. I think inevitably if we squeeze down on carbon, we squeeze up on the cost, it brings along with it a push toward efficiency; it brings along with it a push towards clean technologies in a conventional pollution sense; it brings along with it a push towards security. Because after all, the security issues revolve around carbon-bearing fuels.”

We run this under the assumption that you’re already seated in a safe place. GAO (4/9/13) reports: “We found that federal support for renewable energy is fragmented, as 23 agencies and their 130 subagencies implemented hundreds of initiatives in fiscal year 2010.5 We could not comprehensively assess the potential for overlap or duplication among these nearly 700 renewable energy initiatives, because existing agency information was not sufficiently complete to allow for such an assessment.”

Sally’s a boss. She puts crude oil on her Cheerios in the morning. However, we’ve yet to see the press release from Sierra Club announcing a “Beyond Jewells” campaign.