Ryan Lizza covers it. For those unfamiliar with the controversial pipeline, the basics:
[T]he major controversy is over the Keystone XL, a proposed “bullet” pipeline connecting Alberta to Nebraska and a new southern leg that runs from Cushing to the Gulf. The southern project didn’t require Presidential approval and is nearing completion, despite some local efforts to stop it. Keystone XL would increase Canada’s oil exports to the U.S. by as much as eight hundred and thirty thousand barrels a day, and, environmentalists argue, it would increase the speed at which the oil sands are exploited.
“The pipeline would completely change the rate at which the oil comes out of the ground,”[Keystone foe Tom] Steyer said. “It would enable a much faster development, three times as fast. This is the size of Florida. . . . This is going to go on for decades. It’s not like we’re enabling a Shell station to be open after midnight.”
Anti-Keystone activists believe that, if they can prevent Canadian crude from reaching Texas, they can dramatically slow the development of the oil sands. The industry concedes the point. In February, a pro-oil Canadian think tank issued a report called “Pipe or Perish: Saving an Oil Industry at Risk.” It noted that without Keystone XL the amount of oil produced in northern Alberta, which is projected to double by 2030, will soon outpace the industry’s ability to export it: “If this happens, investment and expansion will grind to a halt.”
Molly Redden notes that Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper recently “promised to accept targets proposed by the United States to reduce its emissions, if the Obama administration agrees to greenlight the pipeline.” Redden hears from several environmentalists who dismiss that offer:
Danielle Droitsch, the director for the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Canada project, pointed out that under Harper, Canada’s record of actually keeping its climate change promises has been deplorable. “He had promised that all tar sands operations after 2012 would only be permitted if the industry used carbon capture and sequestration technology—that never happened,” she said. “In 2011, Canada formally withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol, the only country in the world to do so.” The year 2010 was supposed to bring new coal regulations, to no avail. In 2008, Canada committed to reduce its emissions by 580 million metric tons by the year 2020. In 2009, they upped that commitment to a reduction of 626 million metric tons. Today, Droitsch said, the country is on track to exceed their 2020 goals by a huge margin—”more emissions than Canada’s entire electricity sector produces today.”
The Dish 