Tag Archives: oil

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Boehner And The XL Pipeline – And The SEC Investigation

Republicans are up in arms about President Obama killing – for now – the XL Pipeline project that would bring tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. Decrying lost jobs and lost revenue, they have even threatened to stop the extension of payroll tax cuts unless the President changes his mind.

Of course, the Republicans created this situation in the first place. After some concerns about how the pipeline might affect sensitive aquifers along its path, a new study was order to find a different, less impactful path. The Republicans, wanting to shove the program through, enacted legislation within 60 days, thinking the President would cave and just approve the deal. Instead, citing that 60 days was insufficient to do a proper study (average is about a year), the President cancelled the program, leaving open the option that TransCanada, the company that wants to build the pipeline can reapply after a proper study is done.

Now, it’s no secret that Republicans love big oil. It’s more money for their benefactors. And have no illusions, this would have been big money for oil companies that are already being subsidized and playing a fraction of the taxes they should. As for the claim of more jobs, they have been claiming 25,000 jobs will be thrown away. But analysis of the numbers in a complaint sent to the SEC reports that the jobs number is exaggerated by 67x – and that the actual number is less than 400 actual jobs created. It also points out that while TransCanada estimates that the pipeline would only have the danger of spilling of about once in seven years, they have had 12 spills in the last year.

Wait – SEC investigation? Securities and Exchange Commission?

Yup. It seems that House Speaker John Boehner is looking out for more than just jobs by pushing this pipeline. It turns out Boehner holds stock in seven different tar sands companies. It is unethical for him to use political pressure that would benefit his private interests. You know, the kind of ethical problems that guys like Gingrich ran into.

The complaint filed with the SEC alleges “false or misleading statements about the proposed Keystone XL pipeline” and that they “consistently used public statements and information it knows are false in a concerted effort to secure permitting approval of Keystone XL from the U.S. government.”

And the prime individual pushing for XL to be carried through? John Boehner. Who receives campaign donations from the oil companies that would benefit? John Boehner. And who owns stock in seven tar sands companies that would benefit from the pipeline? John Boehner.

This really shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. It’s part of a larger pattern of inventing statistics and making up data wholesale to get things to go their way. This isn’t about American jobs, or revenue. The majority of the oil from the pipeline wasn’t going to go to the US – it was headed for Europe. And you can bet, because of tax laws, that since the sale was going to be in Europe, those sales would be exempt from US taxes, meaning the companies would extract value from Canada, expose a swath of the country from north to south to the potential of spills and increased cancer risk, without bringing those profits back into the US.

The SEC has only said they are actively considering an investigation. If they do go forward, things will getting a bit stick for Boehner and his bad of cronies.

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Bill Nye, Rick Perry and Fox News – Climate Change and Politics

In a recent interview on Fox News, Bill Nye “The Science Guy” tried to explain to Fox Host Charles Payne the realities of global climate change. Payne tried mightily to get Nye to say that climate change science was bogus, or at the least, not thoroughly accepted, but Nye held his ground. Yet, in the end, the money quote from Payne is that Nye was “confusing some of the viewers” with his talk of actual science.

Meanwhile, TX Gov. Rick Perry has stated that scientists who talk about climate change are simply doing it “for the money”, that somehow, espousing the view that humans are responsible for an acceleration in climate change is a golden ticket to riches. As if on cue, Hurricane Irene pounded the Mid-Atlantic and New England states, forcing a first-ever evacuation of Zone A (the low lying zone) of New York City.

While there is overwhelming evidence pointing to man’s effect on global climate, climate deniers dismiss the evidence with the claim that current conditions are all part of regular cycles and that nothing is wrong. Why ignore science? Follow the money.

Look at Perry, for example. He is the governor of a highly oil-rich state. Emissions from burning fossil fuels is a major component of the rise in global temperatures. Reductions in emissions relate directly to reduced usage of fossil fuels, and this would hurt Perry’s benefactors. In addition, these companies are among some of the world’s larger polluters themselves, and would be hurt financially by any attempts to reduce emissions.

Reduced revenue for these companies reduces their sway, and their control of politicians whom they have firmly in pocket. So they do their level best to get those same politicians to denounce climate change as a “hoax”, and attempt to discredit scientists who have the temerity to point to the mounting evidence.

And what is that evidence? Increasing sea surface temperatures, shrinking polar ice caps, rising sea levels, more frequent and fierce storms, and record setting extremes of temperature and precipitation blowing away records on a regular basis. But none of that matters to the deniers. And they’ll twist themselves into knots to justify their position.

For example, a favorite target of attack for deniers is the use of tree rings to find patterns of weather. They argue that tree rings are inconclusive and at best, only record a micro-climate’s conditions and do not reflect a global reality. But that runs right into their claims that climate change is cyclical. If indeed it were cyclical, such records from tree rings would be consistent globally. There would be local variations, but the cycle would be apparent. But they are not. So, goes the denier argument, the tree rings only measure a short span of maybe a few centuries and the cycle is certainly longer than that. Which then requires more mental gymnastics to justify that current accelerated changes are part of a cycle that purportedly takes thousands of years to measure.

You can find these arguments throughout the denier mindset. But is all comes down to one thing – justification of further consumption and accumulation of more profits, ramifications be damned.

Let’s look at a great analysis of the potential courses of action in this great video:

The key idea here is that given four potential outcomes from believing/not believing in climate change and taking action/inaction, The only path that makes sense is to act as if it were true, regardless. Any other outcome is less than optimal. Except, of course, that it affects corporations on the ledger.

Now here’s the part that should really scare the bejeezus out of you – Rick Perry is currently the front-runner in the Republican race. He is adamantly against the concept of global climate change, and would rescind as many environmental regulations as he could get his hands on. In other words, he wouldn’t take the prudent route. He would take the far sub-optimal route of acting as if climate change does not exist. At best, it keeps the status quote. At worst, it accelerates our problem.

But Charles Payne hit the nail on the head, likely inadvertently. Guys like Perry and the oil companies don’t want people to be confused by science. They want people to blindly hand over their money and the future of the planet so they can live the good life right now.