The reach of the oil juggernauts

Left: Hiding behind the National Environmental Policy Act, the State Department is outsourcing it's responsibility for a fair environmental review of the Keystone XL Pipeline proposal. The image is a screenshot of a comment I left for the State Department, to read it legibly scroll to the bottom of this post.

I know as a blogger you’re supposed to write about things you’ve done related to your blog’s theme. But for those of you like me who are eco-peripherals, sometimes my little victories are completely nugatory compared to the setbacks we face from the oil juggernauts. 

Right now it appears that the State Department is complicit in a scandal involving these oil juggoes.  The State Department has contracted the private company, Cardno Entrix to run the environmental review process for the Keystone XL pipeline, a proposed 1,700 mile pipeline bringing oil sands from northern Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico. The thing is, Cardno Entrix was recommended to the State Department by TransCanada, the company that is building the pipeline, according to an article in the New York Times.

Because of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which took effect in 1970, agencies are allowed hire outside contractors to perform required environmental impact studies. Yet, choosing Cardno Entrix to perform the impact study and run the environmental review process is a conflict of interest. 

Professor Oliver A. Houck, a law professor at Tulane University and an expert on NEPA, said to the N.Y. Times that Cardno Entrix should never have been selected to perform the environmental study on Keystone XL because of its relationship with TransCanada and the potential to garner more work involving the pipeline. 

To make matters more interesting, TransCanada’s chief Washington lobbyist, Paul Elliot, was a top official in Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign…

I highly recommend reading the New York Times article.

I wish I knew about all of this sooner. I found out Sunday night, that public comments on the Keystone XL Pipeline proposal were accepted until Sunday at midnight. I posted a comment as appears below, but I wish I could have gotten this info out to you loyal blog readers to comment as well. Though the comments don’t have a lot of bearing considering that they are directed to a Cardno Entrix email address. But here was my two-cents anyways: 

“Now that I know the State Department is complicit in contracting a client of TransCanada, I know how meaningless this comment is, however, I type it nonetheless.

Oil sands are not in the best interest of the citizens of the United States. Job creation is a meaningless endeavor if the jobs created damage our national social construct. 

This has gone too far, and it’s time that the President and Secretary of State that I voted for, shut the Keystone XL Pipeline down. Please don’t use the bad economy as an excuse to undermine our natural rights, especially the pursuit of happiness.”