Since President Obama took office, 81 major pipeline projects won federal OKs. Why did he veto this one? Could it be because it’s opposed by a hedge fund billionaire turned climate activist who donated $58 million in the last election cycle?
During the morse than six years that President Obama has been office, he has said and done nothing as 81 major pipeline projects won federal approval. Indeed, Mr. Obama has found only one pipeline so objectionable that he used his presidential power to block it — Keystone XL.
What is it about that particular pipeline that makes it so different from the 81 green-lighted by the feds?
It’s not that the Keystone XL project would traverse the border between Canada and the United States. Several existing pipelines already do that. It’s not that crude transported from Alberta, Canada to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast would be shipped abroad. The State Department refuted that suggestion.
And it’s not that the crude extracted from Alberta’s tar sands would have a measurable impact on climate change. UC San Diego climate-policy expert David Victor previously stated: “As a serious strategy for dealing with climate, blocking Keystone is a waste of time.”
Nope. The only difference we see in the case of Keystone XL and those of the 81 pipelines approved on President Obama’s watch is that the former was singled out by Tom Steyer, the hedge fund billionaire who reinvented himself as a climate change activist.
Back in April 2013, Mr. Steyer opened up his San Francisco home to President Obama for a Democratic Party fundraiser, during which the party’s biggest individual donor reiterated his staunch opposition to the proposed pipeline.
Mr. Steyer followed that up 10 months later by promising to spend $100 million — $50 million of his own personal fortune and $50 million from other likeminded donor-activists — to support candidates in key races who opposed Keystone XL.
As it turned out, Keystone was a losing issue for the Democrats in last year’s midterm election. That’s because 60 percent of Americans support the pipeline project and the economic growth and job creation it promises on this side of the Canada-U.S. border.
In vetoing the Keystone XL Pipeline Approval Act, Mr. Obama at once ignored the outcome of the November election and the will of the American people. Instead, he did the bidding of a plutocrat who made it his mission to kill the pipeline project.
— ORANGE COUNTY (CALIF.) REGISTER