The New York Times editorial today calls on the State Department and President Obama to reject the disastrous Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, which it correctly labels the “wrong pipeline for the wrong oil.”
The NYT editors point to the environmental impacts of the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline from Alberta to the Texas Gulf Coast, noting the destruction it would cause to Canada’s boreal forests, the threats to Midwest drinking water supplies from inevitable spills and accidents, and the climate impacts of supporting the extraction of the dirtiest oil on the planet.
Hillary Clinton’s State Department is correctly called to account for its abysmal attempts at drafting an adequate Environmental Impact Statement, which the EPA has labeled “insufficient” both times it has reviewed the document.
In a clear nod to the intense lobbying efforts of the pipeline’s proponents, the Times urges Clinton’s State Department to judge “the pipeline on the merits, not because of politics or pressure from the Canadian government, big oil and the industry’s friends in Congress.”
Read the rest of the Times’ concise and necessary criticism of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline: “Wrong Pipeline, Wrong Assessment” at the Times’ website.
