The following blog written by Jamie Henn, 350.org’s Communications Director, has been cross-posted from It’s Getting Hot in Here:
In news that will surprise just about no one, US Chamber of Commerce president Tom Donahue hosted a press conference today where he offered full-throated support for the Keystone XL pipeline, that 1,700 mile Big Oil scam that would take tar sands oil from Canada down to the Gulf Coast of Mexico. Over the last few weeks, Keystone XL has become a major political fight as Congress and Big Oil (now there are two popular institutions) have tried to slam the project down the American people’s throats, despite the fact that President Obama already delayed the project for at least a year over environmental and safety concerns.
In his speech this morning, Donahue said:
“There is no legitimate reason, none at all, to subject it to further delay,” Donohue said in his annual address on the state of business and the economy. “Real leaders understand that Americans can have big differences in philosophy but still find common ground. They wouldn’t tell us that solutions have to wait until after the election.”
No, Tom, real leaders stand up to Big Oil and protect the American people from scams like Keystone XL, a fuse to the “largest carbon bomb in North America,” the Canadian tar sands. But it’s no surprise, I guess, that the US Chamber of Commerce isn’t concerned about the climate or the interests of everyday Americans. As Bill McKibben wrote this morning,
“The US Chamber of Commerce, two years ago, filed a legal brief arguing that if the planet warmed humans could alter their physiology’ to cope with the heat. So I guess there’s no reason for them to worry about the climate impacts of opening up the second-biggest pool of carbon on the planet. For those of us who plan to keep our current anatomy, however, their assault on basic environmental review is one more sign they’re nothing but a front for the fossil fuel lobby.”
It’s no real surprise that the Chamber of Commerce is pushing Keystone XL, but it does help clarify what we’ve been saying all along: this pipeline is a scam and the only reason politicians are pushing it is because they’re on the payroll of Big Oil and front groups like the US Chamber.
