A couple of tweets from a White House reporter have the feel of a trial balloon leak:
and
It's an appalling idea from both policy and political points of view.
Approval of the Keystone XL pipeline locks in development of so much carbon that climate scientist James Hansen has famously called it "game over" for the planet. It's ranked no. 5 on Point of No Return, a January 2013 Greenpeace report calculating climate impacts of the planet's 14 worst fossil fuel projects. (Australian coal is no. 1; United States projects include the Powder River Basin coal mine, no. 3; Arctic oil exploration, no. 6; and fracked shale gas, no. 10.)
From a climate policy point of view, trading the enormous carbon impact of the Keystone pipeline for a modest 5% bump in a renewable electricity standard is an appalling idea. A meaningful trade would be a complete halt to mining the Powder River Basin's coal on both public and private lands; or an end to Arctic oil extraction; or an end to all fracking of natural gas in the United States on both public and private lands. (The fact that any of these is seen as politically impossible shows how thoroughly fossil fuel interests have permeated every aspect of the American political elite.)
The swap may have a certain superficial appeal to those disengaged from politics, but it will cause civil war within the Democratic base just in time for the midterm election. Keystone XL has fired up and unified environmentalists as no other issue in recent memory. We've submitted hundreds of thousands of comments on online petitions. We've marched. We've pledged civil disobedience. In short, the pipeline has acquired political currency. A no vote on Keystone will energize environmentally inclined Democrats; it may even cause me to revisit OFA meetings, which I've been shunning since the pipeline became an issue.
If this is a trial balloon, it's one that will sink like a stone.