The Sierra Club’s top official fired a political shot across the bow at the White House Friday, warning it will be hard to motivate activists on President Obama’s behalf next year unless he rejects the proposed Keystone XL oil sands pipeline.
“We don’t think that we will be able to effectively mobilize our members until the president keeps his promise to fight climate change effectively and stand up to big polluters and to protect public health,” Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune told reporters on a conference call.
The Sierra Club and the League of Conservation voters have the environmental movement’s biggest political operations.
Brune said Keystone is one of three big decisions they’re watching. They also want to ensure the administration goes ahead with power plant air toxics and greenhouse gas rules, both of which the Environmental Protection Agency says it’s committed to issuing.
Environmentalists are pressing the White House not to permit TransCanada Corp.’s proposed $7 billion, 1,700-mile pipeline to bring crude from Alberta’s oil sands projects to Gulf Coast refineries.
The issue has shot to the top of green groups’ agendas, and a major Nov. 6 demonstration at the White House calling for rejection of the project is in the works.
The Sierra Club is active in both presidential and congressional races. The group has not made a formal presidential endorsement yet, although it’s highly, highly unlikely to back one of Obama’s GOP rivals.
But the disappointment that would stem from a decision to approve Keystone could affect how the Sierra Club spends its field campaign and ad resources between the White House and congressional races it’s involved in.
Asked about how a decision to approve the pipeline would affect the group’s allocation of resources, Brune replied: “It will have a very big impact.”
The State Department, which is heading the Obama administration’s review of the pipeline, plans to make a decision by the end of the year, although a news report this week said that timeline could slip somewhat.
Brune spoke on a call with top officials from the Natural Resources Defense Council and Friends of the Earth.
They and several other groups on Friday wrote to Harold Geisel, State Department deputy inspector general, asking him probe State's review process, which the environmentalists say is rigged in TransCanada’s favor.
The letter follows a similar request this week from more than a dozen lawmakers led by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.).
Business groups including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Petroleum Institute are lobbying in favor of the project, arguing it would create scores of jobs while improving energy security by expanding imports from a friendly neighbor. Canada is already the largest supplier of oil to the U.S.
TransCanada claims the pipeline would create 20,000 direct jobs and many more spin-off jobs, and is emphasizing that it would operate under strict safety standards.
But environmental groups, which have called the jobs estimates inflated, oppose the pipeline due to greenhouse gas emissions, forest damage and other impacts from oil sands projects, as well as the potential for pipeline spills that could contaminate farmland and drinking water in states along the route.
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