Political Quotes

“Climate change is the biggest energy challenge we face, so before approving a multibillion-dollar energy infrastructure project that will last for decades, we need to evaluate its climate impacts. That is the standard the President rightly set last June, but this test is a significant obstacle for tar sands pipelines because they would carry the dirtiest fuel on the planet. Over the last few years, House Republicans have repeatedly tried to short-circuit the process and mandate the approval of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. The bill we are considering today goes even further. It creates a new process to rubberstamp every pending and future tar sands pipeline. The bill makes an end run around the National Environmental Policy Act. Under this bill, instead of conducting an environmental review of a whole pipeline that crosses the border with Canada or Mexico, the NEPA review, which is the environmental review, would be limited to just the small segment of pipeline crossing the border. That eliminates any meaningful Federal review of the environmental impacts of oil pipelines. For example, under this bill, the environmental review of the Keystone XL pipeline would only examine the environmental impacts of that small piece of pipeline that crosses the border with Canada. The review could not look at the impacts on climate change of all of the other tar sands oil moved through the pipeline.…”