[imgcontainer] [img:pipelinehearing3.jpg] [source]Alexandra Matzke[/source] Randy Thompson, a Merrick County, Nebraska, landowner testified in late September against the Keystone XL pipeline, which will bisect the Ogallala Aquifer, the primary water supply for the stateâs farms and ranches. After he talked at the U.S. State Department hearing in Atkinson, Thompson hugged Jane Kleeb of Bold Nebraska, an anti-pipeline group. [/imgcontainer]
To hard-core environmentalists, the Obama administrationâs upcoming decision on the fiercely debated Keystone XL oil sands pipeline is black and white. Say no to the Canada-to-Gulf Coast pipeline, they insist, or they wonât support Obamaâs re-election bid.
But judging the presidentâs performance through such a narrow prism could backfire and make these pipeline hardliners politically irrelevant, analysts say, especially when the economy is tanking.
âAll you hear about now is jobs, jobs, jobs,â Saint Louis University political science professor Ken Warren told InsideClimate News. âAnd this pipeline is going to be painted as a jobs creation issue. It doesnât matter how many jobs will actually be created. In politics, itâs about perception. And youâre going to get blasted for not allowing it to be built.â
Obama came into office as genuinely pro-environment, promising progress, said Warren, a political analyst and pollster for more than three decades.
âNow the greens are putting the squeeze on him,â Warren said, âand Obama is saying, âI know, I know, I know but I canât do what you want me to do with this pipeline. Donât you understand?ââ
Evidently not. Claiming it should be a simple decision for Obama, hard-core greens frame the issue like this. Approving the $7 billion project would open a spigot to unneeded dirty fuel and reward the presidentâs bitterest Big Oil enemies, who are intent on limiting him to one term. Rejecting it, on the other hand, would defuse a âcarbon bombâ and reignite the devotion of an increasingly demoralized environmental community that raised piles of money and rounded up disengaged voters to help elect him in 2008.
That black and white clarity blurs to a murky gray hue, however, for a president up for re-election in less than 13 months, meanwhile saddled with sagging approval ratings, an unemployment rate stubbornly stuck at 9.1 percent and a sluggish economy on the verge of slumping back into a recession.
Anti-pipeline forces say those woes are no excuse for Obama to back-pedal on his commitment to action on climate change.
âThe presidentâs core constituencies are saying enough is enough,â said Damon Moglen, director of the climate and energy program at the advocacy group Friends of the Earth. âAgain and again and again, we do not see the president standing up for the environment and public health. We will no longer retreat.â
Polls show that most Americans support a clean and healthy environment, explained Warren. But when the economy sinks into the doldrums, environmental concerns become luxuries.
âOften, specialty groups are so very narrowly focused that they are not willing to see the broad picture or be sensitive to circumstances,â he said. âThey are not sophisticated enough to sense the political climate and the realities of the time.
âWhat can you possibly hope for environmentally during this terrible economy when the top priority is jobs?â
Jobs, Gasoline Prices Top Worry List
Warrenâs insights resonate with Ted Nordhaus, chairman and co-founder of the Oakland, Calif.-based Breakthrough Institute. The independent public policy think tank takes an innovation-centered approach to national and global energy and climate challenges.
âLike it or not, various environmental demands conflict with or are construed as being bad for the economy,â Nordhaus said. Â âAs much as Obama may be concerned about his environmental constituency, he obviously is concerned about doing anything that could be construed as hurting the economy.â
In addition to jobs, he said, that list of worries includes a particularly incendiary oneâgasoline prices. Rightly or wrongly, the motoring public will fume if Obama says no to the pipeline and then prices at the pump rise.
âThe Obama administration is in a bit of retreat on energy policies,â Nordhaus said. âThe message from them right now is, âSorry we canât go there with the pipeline right now.ââ
He pointed to how the president and Energy Department are taking it on the chin from Republicans who are questioning the return on federal stimulus investments in green jobs and having a heyday with the investigation of a failed California-based solar panel manufacturer that received a $535 million government-backed loan.
Nordhaus finds it especially curious that conservationists have chosen to adopt TransCanadaâs proposed 1,702-mile Keystone XL pipeline as a symbol of Obamaâs allegiance. One, he said, they havenât offered a credible alternative for weaning the country off fossil fuels, and two, Albertaâs oil sands mines will be fully developed whether the diluted bitumen is shipped here or elsewhere.
By drawing a line in the sand over the pipeline, he said, environmental groups risk increasing the perception that they are a âpaper tiger.â
âI canât see it working out for them,â Nordhaus said. âItâs hard to see Obama doing what they want him to do because of larger issues with the economy.
[imgcontainer] [img:pipelinehearing2.jpg] [source]Alexandra Matzke[/source] At the hearing in Atkinson, Nebraska. [/imgcontainer]
âProspects for Obamaâs re-election donât look very good. Strategists can come up with all sorts of cockamamie ideas but macroeconomics are the biggest determinant in whether incumbents get re-elected. Obama will rise and fall with the economy.â
Warren said that unparalleled partisanship on Capitol Hill, combined with the increasing power of well-financed special interest groups, has created the trickiest political landscape in more than 70 years. Not even President Franklin Delano Rooseveltâthe iconic Democrat credited with lifting the country out of the Great Depressionâcould have survived re-election in an era compounded by the pressures of 24/7 news, blogs and late-night comics, he said.
âWe have to go back to the 1930s to find anything like these very, very hard times weâre experiencing,â Warren said. âObama has been criticized by all sides. I understand his plight and actually feel sorry for him. Heâs between a rock and a hard place.â
Tanking Economy No Excuse
Vermont activist and author Bill McKibben said he is totally aware of the angst Obama faces while navigating an uneven economy as the 2012 campaign sparks to life. But he expressed little sympathy for the presidentâs predicament in explaining why the White House should jettison the Keystone XL.
âThese decisions are never easy calls for politicians,â McKibben said. âThis one strikes me as pretty easy. When [NASA climate scientist James Hansen] says mining Albertaâs tar sands is game over for climate change, this really ought to be one you can check off the list.â
A few months ago, McKibben put Obama on the spot about the pipeline by rallying the climate troops nationwide to risk arrest at the White House during a two-week sit-in. Last week, he joined hundreds of participants at the State Departmentâs final public meeting about whether the Keystone XL is in the national interest.
âThe odds are pretty strong heâll approve it,â he said. âBut weâve moved the odds in the last several months. So, weâll see.â
Obama has an obligation to tell the public exactly how many jobs the Keystone XL will generate, he said, compared to how many Americans could be permanently employed by promoting solar panels, wind turbines and other renewables.
McKibben is also upset about the pipeline review process, which he said has been compromised. As proof he pointed to recently released e-mail exchanges between TransCanada lobbyist Paul Elliottâwho served as deputy national campaign director during Secretary of State Hillary Clintonâs 2008 run for the presidencyâand State Department officials.
âIt has expanded beyond the point where itâs not just an environmental risk,âMcKibben said. âItâs now a question of political integrity. This is turning into a story about political corruption.â
That doesnât pass the sniff test for a president who promised to tackle global warming and lead a transparent government, he said.
McKibben and other activists also are dismayed by the State Departmentâs decision to hire the professional environmental consulting company, Cardno ENTRIXâa major TransCanada clientâto assess the environmental impact of the Keystone XL.
âAll of this shows that the State Department is cheerleading a project they are theoretically reviewing,â he said. Â âThatâs like hiring Fox & Associates to conduct a study of henhouse security.â
Moglen, of Friends of the Earth, said the coalition of anti-pipeline constituencies is perfectly justified in using the Keystone XL as a litmus test for the president.
âThey simply will not be able to support Obama if he says, âYour issues donât matter to me,ââ Moglen said. âThis president was brought into office by people who thought he was going to do the right thing. If he says he doesnât care about the climate there are going to be implications.
âInevitably, those politicians get kicked out of office. They spend so much time cutting their roots, they eventually get swept away.â
Jilted Greens Should Tread Carefully
Both Warren, the Saint Louis University professor, and Nordhaus, the Breakthrough Institute co-founder, are tuned in to why environmentalists feel jilted by Obama. After every election, hopeful voters are rudely reminded that their candidate has to transition from the poetry of stump speeches to the ugly prose of governing.
Green groups are still smarting from what they see as the presidentâs decision not to prod a Democratic-majority Senate into following the Houseâs 2009 lead and passing a cap-and-trade emissions bill.
More recently, Obama caved in to the anti-regulatory Tea Party element of the GOP by delaying action on smog standards, and the Environmental Protection Agency delayed some rules on regulating heat-trapping gases and other harmful pollutants from large emitters. Just last week, the House passed a bill designed to prevent the EPA from enacting clean-air safeguards for cement plants.
But Nordhaus warns that by making the Keystone XL their signature issue, pipeline naysayers could become an expendable fringe constituency in 2012. Obama wonât necessarily take them for grantedâbut he also might realize that he doesnât have to appease them.
While some younger activists have vowed they wonât rally around Obama on the fundraising or get-out-the-vote fronts if he gives the pipeline a thumbs-up, few can imagine them jumping parties to cast their support for the likes of Texas Gov. Rick Perry or former Godfatherâs Pizza chief executive officer Herman Cain.
âWith nobody challenging him in the primaries, Obama is aware heâs the only guy theyâve got,â Nordhaus said. âSuccessful candidates have to hold on to their base and do well with those in the middle. Obama hasnât figured out how to hang on to his base. At the end of the day, the election coming up will be determined by independent and moderate, undecided swing voters.â
Obamaâs message to environmentalists might just be that he has already expended his conservation capital and it has contributed in putting him on the political ropes.
âThe environmentalists have tried to make the battle over the pipeline more salient than it is,â Nordhaus said, adding that this is just another pipeline among the hundreds that already crisscross the nation. âObama has made big bets on what the environmentalists wanted, and it hasnât paid off for him.â
By insisting that office seekers pass an environmental purity test, he said, conservationists could end up alienating even eco-friendly candidates.
âIf environmentalists are going to keep being disappointed with their champions, then quite frankly those champions are going to say that itâs not worth delivering,â Nordhaus said. âThe costs are too high and thereâs very little evidence that this constituency can move votes and get people elected in swing districts.â
Elizabeth McGowan is a reporter for InsideClimate News, which published this story.Â
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