I intend no derogation towards people working on the Tar Sands issue on this site when I note that, to see how the issue is playing, you have to get off of this site as well.
I was on Facebook just now looking at an item that Josh Marshall posted to tease this story. It's a typically good and measured Brian Beutler story, with observations (perhaps passe for DKos eyes) like this:
For six days and counting now, hundreds of protesters have gathered outside the White House to demand President Obama intervene and stop the construction of an oil pipeline that will span the breadth of the United States -- from Montana to the Gulf of Mexico. Over 300 of them have been arrested -- and not just wild-eyed idealistic college students, but high-profile advocates including environmental leader Bill McKibben. Despite all this, the administration says this is a question for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
What the heck is this all about?
At issue isn't just NIMBYism or standard concerns about oil spills, but the question of whether the United States should accelerate an extraction process that some environmental experts say will lose the fight against global warming forever.
The oil in question comes from the Canadian oil sands -- or tar sands, as opponents refer to it. It's not just regular oil, but highly corrosive and particularly carbon intensive. The process of extracting the oil from the sands is more energy intensive than drilling for crude. It entails destruction of Canada's Boreal forest, which serves as a carbon sink, making this particular resource extraction a global warming double whammy.
And there's tons of it -- perhaps as much as 200 billion barrels-worth.
So far so good. And then I read the comments -- these, presumably, from people who are tuned-in enough to follow TPM in the first place. Anyone who discounts discussions of meta discussions, come see where meta matters -- where the rubber, in effect, meets the asphalt.
I'll be a little selective here, covering both sides but trying to include the anti-environmentalist ones.
Chris Fox: Obama can't just pretend that the ball is solely in the State Department's court and that he's helpless to make a decision: that sand tar will stick to him. How many more key constituencies does he think he can alienate?
Kewp DeVille: I've only heard Tar Sands and Keystone XL pipeline mentioned 1 time on the news - and that was a local Tulsa tv station - re: property owners in Oklahoma fighting with TransCanada over eminent domain.
Dan Hagen: When it's make or break with Obama, the result is always, "Snap!"
Mark Garrity: There's a whole lot of "little people" who don't have the time to take off work to protest at the WH who are paying almost $4 a gallon for gas. Most of them couldn't pick Alberta out on a map and could care less about it. They buy GOP arguments that Obama is trying to make gas more expensive to please a bunch of treehuggers and killing this project would confirm that for them. That's the political reality of the situation. Unless you have a way to sell shutting down this pipeline project to them that doesn't involve turning over the WH to Rick Perry who would probably speed up it's construction you're not helping fix the policy or poltical problem.
David Vorland: Come on, get real. Most people don't give a rat's ass about tar sands, let alone Canada.
Asher Miller @ Mark Garrity: You may be right that this is the political reality right now, but Obama IS the President of the United States. He CAN try to shift the public conversation. If he spoke honestly to the American people to explain all the reasons why the tar sands pipeline might seem to make sense (reduced dependency on oil from hostile regimes, reduced price) and all the reasons it doesn't, and then explained WHY the arguments for don't hold water, maybe he can, you know, actually LEAD.
Heck, he doesn't even need to talk about climate change. There are enough reasons not to approve the pipeline without that, even though it's the biggest reason.
John Pace: "Make or Break issue with Obama"????? If my fellow environmentalists are that f'g myopic, I wish them well under the Perry administration.
Apparently, we need to make the stakes even more clear. This isn't just "making things dirty." This is "making things irreversible." And anyone who says that pressuring Obama on this issue is just "helping to elect Rick Perry" has better rethink what politics is about.
12:55 PM PT: This diary precipitated an unexpected amount of debate. for which I'm grateful. Please refer down to Patriot Daily's review of arguments presented in last week's Tar Sands diary series for lots of links to the critical underlying arguments against the project.