Further to my last post below on the Alberta tar sands, here is a hopeful bit of news from Stacy Feldman at the excellent SolveClimate on a hard-hitting letter from Congress to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. 50 members of the House, no doubt all with very high LCV ratings, warned the Secretary of the environmental implications of a proposed pipeline from Alberta to Texas. (See this from me about another pipeline in the mix, the Alberta Clipper.)
Their letter says:
We believe that a full lifecycle assessment of the greenhouse gas emissions for tar sands would provide the Department of State with necessary information to determine whether issuing a presidential permit for the pipeline is consistent with the Administration’s clean energy and climate change priorities. Numerous scientific studies have found tar sands oil to produce much higher lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions than convention oil.
Inconsistent in the extreme, I would judge.
The SolveClimate piece also notes that John Podesta, President of the Center for American Progress, “skunked” a forum on “greening” the tar sands. This item from CAP’s “Climate Progress” blog tells the whole, happy story of Podesta saying:
Oil extraction from tar sands is polluting, destructive, expensive and energy-intensive. These things are facts. I think suggesting this process can come close to approximating being ‘greened’ is largely misleading, or far too optimistic, or perhaps both. It stands alongside clean coal and error-free deepwater drilling as more PR than reality.
Sweet! This sounds better than Steven Colbert’s legendary bearding of the lions in their den at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in 2006. I wish I could have seen my Canadian brothers and sisters’ faces. (I’m a quarter Nova Scotian.)
John Podesta is a key advisor to President Obama on energy and climate. He’s one reason why I continue to have considerable faith in this administration on climate and energy.