Greens cheer Obama’s Keystone veto threat

Environmental groups commended President Obama Tuesday for threatening to veto a bill approving the Keystone XL oil pipeline.

Greens said Obama’s threat means that he agrees with their argument that the pipeline is not in the national interest.

{mosads}“The president made the right call,” Danielle Droitsch, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s (NRDC) Canada project, said in a statement.

The project “would pipe some of the dirtiest oil on the planet through the breadbasket of America so most of it could be shipped overseas,” she said. “It’s not a plan to help our country. It’s about big profits for big oil — and big pollution for the rest of us.”

While Obama’s veto would stop Congress from going over his head to approve the pipeline, the NRDC asked him to reject outright the presidential permit that Keystone requires.

“It’s becoming more clear by the day that President Obama rightly recognizes this dirty and dangerous tar sands pipeline is a bad deal for our country,” Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, said in a statement.

“President Obama has also said he’d oppose the tar sands pipeline if it contributes to the climate crisis. He has all the evidence he needs to know that it does and reject Keystone XL,” Brune said.

“President Obama continues to show real climate leadership by pledging to veto attempts by Congress to circumvent the process and we’re more confident than ever that he will reject this dirty, dangerous pipeline once and for all,” said Tiernan Sittenfeld, a lobbyist for the League of Conservation Voters.

Before the White House announced the veto threat, NRDC officials told reporters that recent events make blocking Keystone even more important than it was before.

Specifically, the lower oil prices mean that Keystone would encourage more development of Canada’s oil sands than would happen without it, NRDC attorney Anthony Swift said.

Swift said State Department research shows that, when oil falls below $75 a barrel, infrastructure projects like Keystone make it more economically viable to develop oil sands.

“What this has done is, it’s made it impossible to credibly argue that the cheap, long-term transportation infrastructure provided by Keystone XL expand tar sands development and associated carbon emissions,” Swift said.

The NRDC said Democratic opponents should not try to attach amendments to the bill that would help environmental causes.

“No potential amendments would make it palatable,” Swift said.

His comments came days after Democratic leaders pushed for such amendments in a letter to their colleagues.

Additionally, the bill without amendments would make the vote a more clear referendum on Keystone, said David Goldston, NRDC’s top lobbyist.

“We don’t think there is any need to amend the bill,” he said. “We’re happy to have a straight up or down vote.”