Political Quotes

“This amendment selects some statements from the State Department's draft supplemental Environmental Impact Statement to try to suggest that the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline poses no threat to the environment. I only wish that were the case. This is a matter of basic chemistry. Tar sands don't contain oil. It takes a lot of energy to melt and process the tar sands into something that we can use like oil. That extra energy means more carbon pollution. The State Department estimated that a gallon of gasoline from tar sands is responsible for about 17 percent more carbon pollution than the average U.S. gallon of gasoline. And it estimated that shifting to tar sands crude could add as much U.S. carbon pollution as 4.5 million more vehicles. Not surprisingly, these findings are not in this amendment. {time} 1610 But the real problem with this amendment isn't what it leaves out. The real problem is that it tries to argue that the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline does not pose real and serious environmental harm, and that's dangerously wrong. The fact is we may be able to avoid the worst consequences of climate change or we may be able to fully develop the tar sands without capturing the carbon, but we can't have both. And building Keystone XL is critical to oil companies' plans to triple production of the tar sands. The State Department's review rests on a key assumption. They assumed that if Keystone XL isn't built, the additional tar sands production would be moved by rail.…”