[Webpage editor's note: A good summary of the history of this project.]
After seven years of acrimonious court battles, profligate spending and hardball political lobbying, the Keystone XL pipeline is dead. U.S. President Barack Obama rejected the proposal, as most suspected he would.
"Several years ago, the State Department began a review process for the proposed construction of a pipeline that would carry Canadian crude oil through our heartland to ports in the Gulf of Mexico and out into the world market," said Obama in a press conference on Friday November 6.
The Obama administration has rejected TransCanada's application to build the Keystone XL pipeline, capping a seven-year saga that became an environmental flashpoint in both Canada and the U.S.
Speaking from the White House on Friday, Obama said Keystone "will not serve the national interests of the United States."
Obama said the State Department rejected the proposed pipeline, saying it would not make a meaningful long-term contribution to the U.S. economy.
The U.S. president said he has informed Justin Trudeau of the decision.
I’ve often wondered how the media would respond when eco-apocalypsestruck. I pictured the news programmes producing brief, sensational reports, while failing to explain why it was happening or how it might be stopped. Then they would ask their financial correspondents how the disaster affected share prices, before turning to the sport. As you can probably tell, I don’t have an ocean of faith in the industry for which I work. What I did not expect was that they would ignore it.
Reducing the human carbon footprint is a "moral imperative," University of California President Janet Napolitano said Tuesday as she vowed to turn the system's 10 campuses into a living laboratory for solutions that can be scaled up to state, national and global levels.
Napolitano made the comments at a two-day climate change summit at UC San Diego, where researchers discussed their blueprint for actions that they say the state and the world should undertake to tackle the problem — including reducing the carbon footprint of the wealthiest 1 billion people.
If you believe press reports, governments are preparing for “serious” climate negotiations at the upcoming December UN climate conference in Paris. I put quotes around serious because there is good reason to believe that most governments, at least the most powerful, care little about the outcome. One indicator is their commitment to protecting the environment in two so-called free trade agreements.
If you believe press reports, governments are preparing for “serious” climate negotiations at the upcoming December UN climate conference in Paris. I put quotes around serious because there is good reason to believe that most governments, at least the most powerful, care little about the outcome. One indicator is their commitment to protecting the environment in two so-called free trade agreements.
[Website editor's note: Amazing photos and video with this powerful essay]
On the Greenland Ice Sheet — The midnight sun still gleamed at 1 a.m. across the brilliant expanse of the Greenland ice sheet. Brandon Overstreet, a doctoral candidate in hydrology at the University of Wyoming, picked his way across the frozen landscape, clipped his climbing harness to an anchor in the ice and crept toward the edge of a river that rushed downstream toward an enormous sinkhole.
