Interior Secretary Under Fire Over Obama Energy Policy

By Adrianna McGinley

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar faced tough scrutiny by members of the House Natural Resources Committee regarding the Obama administration’s energy policy.

Republican members of the committee cited the lengthy process oil companies go through to lease and develop land in order be able to produce oil, saying the record high levels of domestic oil production could not possibly be the result of Obama administration policy.

Rep. Raul Labrador (R-Idaho) criticized Salazar and the entire Obama administration for “taking credit” for current oil production success.

“That just doesn’t make any sense to me,” Labrador said. “If it takes more than two or three years to get from lease to production and we have the highest production right now, isn’t it true…that this is based on actions from the previous administration?”

Members of the committee also blasted the administration for proposing more federal regulation of the hydrofracking method of energy production and for delaying a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline.

“What we’re now watching is the administration systematically shutting off our future oil development,” said Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.).

Rep. John Fleming (R-La.) defended hydrofracking saying it is a method that has worked safely for decades and concerns are unfounded. The Congressman blasted Salazar for not being able to answer “basic” technical questions regarding hydrofracking concerns.

“These are very simple questions…If the very top level doesn’t know the very basics of the technology, why is it that you somehow feel you can insinuate yourself into the process.”

Committee Ranking Member Edward Markey (D-Mass.) defended the administration, saying rather it is Republicans who are holding back domestic energy production.

“It is the Republican Majority that is protecting the billions of dollars we could retrieve from making oil and gas companies pay their fair share for drilling on our public lands. It is the Republican Majority that has opposed Democratic efforts to close free drilling loopholes, and end unnecessary tax breaks…Congressional Republicans are making our debt negotiations look worse than the NBA lockout.”

After several heated confrontations with members of the committee, the Interior Secretary told reporters that he stands by his testimony and the administration.

“From day one the president and I have worked on developing a comprehensive energy program for the nation. It’s a broad portfolio and we’re making significant progress on all fronts,” Salazar said. “With respect to the heated exchange…it’s the political season and I understand it and a member of Congress wants to score a point back home and so it’s to be expected.”

Pipeline Protesters Plan To Surround The White House

By Mike Hothi

Environmentalists are planning to encircle the White House  Sunday in an attempt to convince President Barack Obama to come out against the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.

“Young people still believe in Barack Obama but we know that he’s going to need a little bit of a push from us to make the right decision,” Maura Cowley, co-director of the Energy Action Coalition, said during a press conference Friday.

Organizers believe that surrounding the White House will provide that push.

“There will be no attack on the President on Sunday. Every banner that will be there will simply be a quote from President Obama in 2008,” stated Bill Mckibben of 350.org, referring to statements the President made on the campaign trail, such as “Time the end the tyranny of oil. On my watch the rise of the oceans will begin to slow and the planet will begin to heal.”

The Keystone XL pipeline, which will transport oil form Alberta, Canada through Texas, will need a presidential permit from the State Department since it crosses a national border. The State Department expects to make a decision on the pipeline by the end of the year.

Top NASA Climatologist Protests Transnational Oil Pipeline

As President Obama’s deadline to approve or disapprove licensing of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline draws closer, NASA’s lead climatologist, Dr. James Hansen, addressed reporters at the National Press Club to explain the grave consequences of approving such a project. 

“We have a planetary emergency,” Hansen, an adjunct professor at the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University and at Columbia’s Earth Institute, told reporters Monday. 

The Keystone XL Pipeline is a proposed 1,700 mile pipeline system that would be utilized to transport crude oil from Canada to oil refineries in the midwestern region of the US. Environmentalists, including some in Congress, oppose it on the grounds that it could disrupt and taint domestic clean water supplies, and could jeopardize efforts to shift to clean energy sources.

Hansen argued that if humans continue to burn fossil fuels at the current rate, 20-40 percent of species on the planet will become extinct by the end of the century. The hydraulic cycle, he said, has become more extreme, resulting in extreme floods and drought intensification. Coral reefs are being destroyed, sea levels are lowering and glaciers are receding, causing rivers to run dry, he added.

Hansen warned that if the next phase of the Keystone pipeline is approved, America will continue to feed its “oil addiction” and will continue to burn fossil fuels, further destroying the environment. 

“Fossil fuels are finite,” Hansen stated. “We’ll have to move to clean energy at some point so we may as well do it before we burn all the fossil fuels and ruin the future of our children.”

Hansen was among the first group of scientists to spread such warnings of global warming 30 years ago. Frustrated that his cries over the threat of climate change was going unheard, Hansen turned to civil disobedience in 2009. He has been arrested twice for protesting mountaintop removal coal mining, once in West Virginia and once outside the White House.

Following his remarks at the NPC, Hansen joined more than 60 religious leaders outside the White House to spread awareness of the environmental dangers of the Keystone XL pipeline as part of a civil disobedience act that has been going on for weeks.