Any doubt that Keystone XL has become a cause célèbre was officially ended March 26 when it entered the upper echelon of the National Hockey League.
The Los Angeles Kings made the traditional White House visit to be hailed and lauded by President Barack Obama for winning the Stanley Cup last season.
And notoriously gruff Kings’ coach Darryl Sutter, who owns a 3,000-acre ranch in central Alberta, seized the chance to deliver a sharp body check to Obama. Some might have said he was guilty of high-sticking.
For the record, Sutter is “absolutely” in favor of the pipeline and made his case to the president.
“How can we not want to keep North American (self-sufficient in energy)? Why does the border have to separate that?” he said before the encounter. “It doesn’t make sense.”
In the political arena, where Alberta Premier Alison Redford made her fourth Keystone XL selling mission to Washington, D.C., this year, there was also a heavy dose of symbolism when U.S. senators voted 62 to 37 on March 22 to endorse the pipeline.
The 17 Democratic Senators backing the Keystone XL included Alaska’s Mark Begich.
Vote as ‘chest thumping’
The vote was brushed off by Jamie Henn, a spokesman for 350.org, which heads a coalition challenging Obama’s credibility on climate change. He described the vote as “chest thumping that tells us a lot about who has been bought off by dirty energy money.”
California Democrat Barbara Boxer lost her amendment to examine the ramifications of Keystone XL further by a 66 to 33 vote.
She said there is “real climate destruction” associated with shipping crude bitumen from the Alberta oil sands, which represents the bulk of Keystone’s planned volumes.
Boxer said many questions remain unanswered, including how much of Keystone’s crude would be exported from the United States, how much steel for the pipe would be manufactured in the U.S. and whether U.S. national security interests would be undermined by opting for carbon-heavy oil imports.
Opposition funding
The anti-Keystone forces have been promised tens of millions of dollars to wage their campaign by California billionaire Tom Steyer, who ended his active role at hedge fund Farallon Capital last October to become a full-time political activist, rating climate change as the gravest threat facing humanity.
Steyer has launched his crusade by targeting Steve Lynch, a Democratic congressman who is seeking his party’s nomination for the Massachusetts U.S. Senate seat vacated by John Kerry.
“Billionaires won’t shove me around,” Lynch wrote in the Boston Globe, spurning Steyer’s “high noon” deadline on March 22 to withdraw his backing for Keystone.
