Warren stands up to a project that could enrich the Koch brothers by tens of billions while helping to destroy our climate.
December 21, 2013
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On Friday, December 20, Democratic U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren
finally separated herself clearly from former U.S. Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton, regarding the issue of climate change and global
warming.
TransCanada Corporation wants to build the Keystone XL
Pipeline to carry oil from Alberta Canada's tar sands to two refineries
owned by Koch Industries near the Texas Gulf Coast, for export to
Europe. Hillary Clinton has helped to make that happen, while Elizabeth
Warren has now taken the opposite side.
Secretary of State
Clinton, whose friend and former staffer Paul Elliot is a lobbyist for
TransCanada, had worked behind the scenes to ease the way for commercial
exploitation of this, the world's highest-carbon-emitting oil,
53% of which is owned by America's Koch brothers.
(Koch Industries owns 63% of the tar sands, and the Koch brothers own
86% of Koch Industries; Elaine Marshall, who is the widow of the son of
the deceased Koch partner J. Howard Marshall, owns the remaining 14% of
Koch Industries.)
David Goldwyn, who was former Secretary Clinton's
Special Envoy and Coordinator for International Energy Affairs, is yet another
lobbyist for TransCanada. So,
TransCanada has two of Hillary Clinton's friends working for it. Elliot
and Goldwyn worked with Clinton's people to guide them on selecting a
petroleum industry contractor (not an environmental firm or governmental
agency) to prepare the required environmental impact statement for the
proposed pipeline.
Secretary Clinton's State Department allowed
the environmental impact statement on the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline
to be performed by a petroleum industry contractor that was chosen by
the company that was proposing to build and own the pipeline,
TransCanada. That contractor had no climatologist, and the resulting
report failed even at its basic job of estimating the number of degrees
by which the Earth's climate would be additionally heated if the
pipeline is built and operated. Its report ignored that question and
instead evaluated the impact that
climate change would have on the pipeline, which was estimated to be none.
President Obama is now trying to force the European Union to relax its anti-global-warming regulations so
the EU will import the Kochs' dirty oil. His agent in this effort is
his new U.S. Trade Representative, Michael Froman, from Wall Street.
But on December 20,
Senator Warren signed onto a letter criticizing the
Obama administration's apparent effort to force the European Union to
agree to purchase this oil. As the Huffington Post's Kate Sheppard
reported, "Six senators and 16 House members, all Democrats, wrote a
letter to Froman on Friday asking him to elaborate on his position on
the matter. 'If these reports are accurate, USTR's [the U.S. Trade
Representative's] actions could undercut the EU's commendable goal of
reducing greenhouse gas emissions in its transportation sectors,' these
22 Democratic lawmakers wrote."
This is, essentially, a rebellion
by 22 progressive congressional Democrats against the Clinton-Obama
effort to provide a market for the Kochs' oil. The letter was actually
written by Representative Henry Waxman and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse,
and co-signed by senators Barbara Boxer, Ed Markey, Dick Durbin, Jeff
Merkley, and Elizabeth Warren; and Representatives John Conyers, Jr.,
Barbara Lee, Raúl M. Grijalva, Rush Holt, Louise M. Slaughter, Jerrold
Nadler, Judy Chu, Peter DeFazio, Anna G. Eshoo, Sam Farr, Peter Welch,
Alan Lowenthal, Mark Pocan, and Steve Cohen.
What is
at issue in the Keystone XL and Alberta tar sands matter is
governmental policies that will determine whether the tar-sands oil will
undercut the production-costs of normal oil. Right now, normal oil
costs far less to mine, process, and get to market (because tar sands
oil is so dirty and so landlocked). However, if the Kochs win, existing
governmental policies will change in ways that will eliminate this
cost-advantage of normal oil. The result would be increased sales and
burning of the tar-sands oil, and thus reduced sales and burning of
cleaner oil. That would throw into the atmosphere "more than $70 billion
in additional damages associated with climate change over 50 years."
That added $70 billion would be the added harms to the entire world, not
to the owners of the tar sands.
The benefits to Koch Industries, from this competitive re-allignment in favor of tar-sands oil, have been estimated to be
around $100 billion.
This would add about $45 billion to the net worth of David Koch, $45
billion to the net worth of Charles Koch, and $15 billion to the net
worth of Elaine Marshall. (David and Charles Koch would then become the
two wealthiest individuals in the world.)
On December 17, the Republican House budget chief, Paul Ryan,
threatened to drive the U.S. government into default unless President Obama approves the Keystone XL Pipeline.
President
Obama holds the sole authority to approve or disapprove this project,
because it crosses the international border. He has delayed this
decision for years because he doesn't want to enrage the environmental
community. Also, tipping his hand in that way would be a waste if he
cannot first get Europe to weaken its environmental standards and allow
this oil to compete in Europe with normal oil.
Senator Warren has
now joined with the progressives on two big issues that arouse intense
opposition from the aristocrats who finance most political campaigns.
Warren opposes the taxpayer handouts to Wall Street, and she now also
opposes the environmental handouts to the owners of the most harmfully
polluting corporations, such as Koch Industries. (The
other owners of tar-sands oil are Conoco-Phillips, Exxon-Mobil and Chevron-Texaco.)
This could be a turning point in Elizabeth Warren's political career. She's no longer at war against only the
corrupution in the financial industry, she is also at war against the environmental corruption so widespread in the Republican Party.
In
another example of that environmental corruption, on Oct. 2, 2013, Joe
Romm at Think Progress reported that "The Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC)
reports that methane... is far more potent a greenhouse gas" than previously known, so bad it "would gut the climate benefits of switching from coal."
Just five days after that, Jon Campbell in upstate New York reported that at Hamilton College,
Hillary Clinton praised fracking for methane by saying, "What that means for viable manufacturing and industrialization in this country is enormous."
If
Warren won't be able to get either Wall Street or the oil patch to
finance her political campaigns, how can she possibly rise within the
power structure?
