A couple weeks ago I posted a pissed-off-at-Fred-Upton diary. Yes, the Fred Upton who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee. I live in his district, and I'm on his subscription list, and he'd sent an email that pissed me off.
Just a couple of hours ago, I got another email from him that included this announcement:
On May 22, 2013, the House passed H.R. 3, the Northern Route Approval Act with a bipartisan vote removing roadblocks to the [Keystone XL] pipeline's construction. The legislation now heads to the Senate to await further consideration.
So now I'm way more pissed off than I was two weeks ago.
In that earlier email, he whined about how the Keystone XL pipeline got delayed indefinitely. I responded saying, among other things
I hope the indefinite KXL delay lasts forever. I hope, for the sake of my grandchildren, that local, state, and federal legislators, regulators, and agencies all across America learn to stop kowtowing to the oil industry and its lobbyists before it’s too late for human survival. I just hope it’s not too late already.
In today's email, Upton reiterates that he favors an “all of the above” energy policy. He says “we can protect our environment while also bolstering our economy and energy security” and that “these goals need not be mutually exclusive.” He explains that pipelines are “safe,” and he points out that the State Department (which must have a staff of, oh, I guess thousands of universally acclaimed environmental experts) “completed an Environmental Impact study” and “found the project to have almost no harmful impacts.” Yeah, "almost no."
Upton further reports:
Keystone represents a responsible, safe, and much needed economic boost to our economy that will benefit millions of Americans. After four and a half years and 15,500 pages of review, there is no need for further delay.
So I sent him this response:
Please count me among those who consider an “all of the above” energy policy to be wrong for the nation and wrong for the planet. You mention that the pipeline will be safe and that its construction will have “almost no harmful impacts.” But to my mind, the impact the pipeline’s construction will have on its immediate environment is a small part of the overall issue. The larger issue is the impact when we burn the fuel it delivers.
I understand that we can’t suddenly stop burning fossil fuels right now, today. At the same time, I believe that every project like KXL—projects that keep fossil fuels easily available, projects that keep dirty-energy prices from rising, projects that keep the oil business among the nation’s most profitable, all such projects—push our absolutely necessary transition from dirty energy to clean that much farther into the future. We’ll eventually run out of future if we don’t stop promoting dirty energy.
I’m further convinced that the billions we spend subsidizing the oil industry is money we should stop burning right now, today. All these dollars should support the business of clean energy, not dirty. You say, “Keystone represents a responsible, safe, and much needed economic boost to our economy that will benefit millions of Americans.” Think about the benefits for all Americans and the boost to our economy if all the time and money we spend pushing projects like KXL and subsidizing dirty energy were spent on the research, development, production, and delivery of clean energy.
I can only hope that H.R. 3, the new Northern Route Approval Act that removes roadblocks to the pipeline's construction dies in the Senate.
Then I hustled my ass off Daily Kos to sound the alarm.
- Senator Mary Landrieu (D, LA) chairs the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. Here’s her contact page. Please ask her to make sure the bill dies in her committee.
- Sign this MoveOn petition telling Representative Upton that if he can’t drop his “all of the above” energy policy and take a leadership role in our transition from dirty energy to clean, he should retire.
Representative Fred Upton is on his 28th year in the House. That’s enough.