ClimateSpeak

Double-stalemating the China gambit

The tar sands industry's longstanding threat to send Alberta's oil to China if it is denied the Keystone XL pipeline to the United States is looking more and more like an empty bluff.

As I wrote last month, the two proposed pipeline projects from Alberta to the British Columbia coast, Enbridge Northern Gateway and Kinder-Morgan Trans Mountain, have faced strong opposition from the B.C. public. Yet the Trans Mountain project seemed the more difficult of the two to stop, because it merely entails expansion of the existing pipeline rather than construction of an all-new line such as the Enbridge project. The Save the Fraser Declaration, signed in December 2010 by the province's First Nations, or native tribes, mentions only the Enbridge line.

No longer. Yesterday, Dec. 1, B.C. First Nations broadened their opposition to include any and all pipelines to the coast carrying tar sands crude. A First Nations press release explains:

The Save the Fraser Declaration, signed by more than 61 First Nations, bans tar sands oil pipelines throughout the Fraser River watershed. It also prohibits tar sands crude oil tankers in the ocean migration routes of Fraser River salmon. Until now, the Declaration has been used to fight Enbridge's northern pipeline plans. Now it is being recognized by First Nations as effectively banning tar sands crude oil exports on the whole coast, including the south. Adding to the chorus last week, the Union of BC Indian Chiefs - representing most First Nations in BC - passed a resolution endorsing the Save the Fraser Declaration and the Coastal First Nations Declaration, and expressly recognizing that they prohibit the transportation of tar sands crude by pipeline and tanker anywhere in BC.

The First Nations leaders also raised the ante on tactics, saying they will physically block construction if needed:

"Everyone involved — including myself — have made commitments that we'll do whatever it takes legally and otherwise," said Haisla elder Gerald Amos. "I am prepared to do as others have done before me in our communities and stand on the line to prevent any machinery moving onto the site."

As I discussed last month, most B.C. First Nations have never reached land treaties with the Canadian federal government to relinquish their historic territorial rights. These "non-treaty" First Nations enjoy significant yet vaguely-defined legal rights in Canada's legal system. Under federal law, First Nations must be granted "effective and meaningful consultation" on any project in their territories, and Canadian courts have generally defined this process in ways that give considerable powers to non-treaty First Nations. 

The upshot is that B.C. First Nations may be able to block outright any pipeline project to the Pacific -- or at least strangle it in many years of litigation. 

Here is a map of the two proposed pipeline projects, courtesy of the Wilderness Committee, a Vancouver-based environmental group:

Another death knell for Keystone XL?

As I wrote recently, the Nov. 9 announcement by Enbridge and Enterprise Products Partners that they were forging ahead with the Wrangler Pipeline from Cushing, Okla., to the Gulf Coast, seemed proof that Keystone XL would have a hard time justifying its business model.

Now comes more proof, of the whiplash headspin variety. Yesterday, Nov. 23, Wrangler's owners announced that after only two weeks they had decided to suspend the project in favor of an easier, quicker solution -- reversing the Seaway Pipeline, which currently covers the same route from south to north. The 669-mile-long Seaway line is projected to carry up to 400,000 barrels per day of crude to the Gulf Coast by early 2013.

Granted, those 400,000 barrels will only carry a small part of North America's new oil boom, which I have discussed in previous posts (most recently here). But Seaway's capacity is roughly equal to the projected volume of Keystone XL's Phase 3, which would cover the same ground and was seen as a cash cow for the longer Keystone XL route reaching north to the Alberta tar sands.

If two savvy pipeline operators didn't see enough potential volume on that route to make money from both Wrangler and Seaway, why would Keystone XL make money on that route? This has nothing to do with the many environmental concerns about Keystone, but it could be a game-changer nonetheless.

Now for the hard part -- Wrangler Pipeline

With the Keystone XL blocked for the time being, environmentalists will have to decide whether they will make a second all-out effort to stop another conduit for tar sands oil -- the Wrangler Pipeline.

Wrangler has received much less publicity than Keystone XL because it goes nowhere near the tar sands in Alberta. The proposed 500-mile line would extend from the oil storage center at Cushing, Okla., to the cluster of refineries near Houston.

Map: WranglerPipeline.com

The line, to be owned by Enbridge, is projected to be operational in mid-2013, moving 800,000 barrels per day. It would do much of what Keystone XL would have done -- eliminate the bottleneck of oil at Cushing and move it to the Gulf refineries, after which it can be either exported or fed into the U.S. domestic supply chain. The net result would almost certainly be to facilitate an increase of tar sands production.

For environmentalists, Wrangler is likely to be more difficult to stop than Keystone XL. The pipeline route does not cross any sensitive environmental areas, such as Nebraska's Sand Hills. Because the pipeline will not cross an international border, it will not require a presidential permit. It will need permits from a variety of state and local authorities, such as the Oklahoma Corporation Commission and the Texas Railroad Commission, which are strongly supportive of the oil industry. All three members of the OCC and all three members of the TRC are Republicans.

As Reuters reported recently, the pipeline would complete an important link for the ongoing increase in North American oil production:

While previous proposals for a big link between Cushing and the Gulf Coast have struggled for commercial backing, Enbridge already transports the majority of Canadian oil exports as well as a substantial chunk of North Dakota production.

These producers are looking for premium markets away from Cushing and Enbridge is offering it.

Thus, the second part of the Wrangler project, Enbridge's Flanagan South pipeline. Flanagan South essentially doubles the capacity of Enbridge's existing Spearhead pipeline that runs from the Chicago area to Cushing.

This will be the key to pulling even more oil sands crude into the U.S. market as well as shifting rising production from the Bakken formation in North Dakota to more-profitable destinations.

Environmentalists' best chance is if landowners en route object to Enbridge's exercise of eminent domain and forced pooling to take control of the pipeline route. As I wrote several weeks ago, TransCanada had already sparked opposition from Texas landowners because of the company's heavy-handed use of its legal rights to grab land for the Keystone XL right of way.

The Wrangler Pipeline website helpfully explains:

A pipeline right-of-way is a strip of land that is usually between 30 to 125 feet wide.

(...) When evaluating various route alternatives, the preferred route attempts to follow existing pipeline and utility routes to the extent feasible. The Wrangler Pipeline will often be adjacent to (but not within) these existing rights-of-way, and Wrangler Pipeline project representatives will need to obtain a separate permanent easement agreement from affected landowners as well as obtain temporary construction work space from landowners and in some cases additional workspace from the holder of the adjacent utility or pipeline easement to minimize impacts.

Street cred and victory narratives

As the Keystone XL victory parties continue, some critics are questioning whether it was the protesters who won or the Nebraska Republicans. Who really defeated the pipeline?

While we will have to wait for a while to get the insider's version of how the administration made this decision, it's highly likely that a major factor was the demand of Nebraska Republicans -- from Gov. Dave Heineman to the unicameral legislature -- that the existing route through the Sand Hills be discarded.

As a Los Angeles Times article puts it, "The state has, in effect, turned into a massive prairie sand trap for the $7-billion project."

Some of the pipeline's supporters are now trying to spin the decision as having little to do with the environmentalist campaigners. As Andrew Leach, a professor at the University of Alberta, writes:

Today’s decision was about Nebraska, landowners, and people not wanting an oil pipeline in their backyards.  According to the State Department briefing, “what (the Review is) really looking at is an approach that would minimize or avoid the Sand hill region of Nebraska,” and, in answer to a question of whether GHG or other impacts of oil extraction would be considered, that, “the purpose of the review that we’re going to be doing is specifically to look at the alternative routes through Nebraska. It wouldn’t be broader than that.” The words Canada (apart from TransCanada), Alberta, oilsands, tarsands or climate do not appear in today’s briefing, and GHGs are mentioned just that once.

All this is partly true, but it misses the larger political reality. Whatever the exact proportions were in Obama's decision, it's undeniable that the cards would not have fallen the way they did without the visionary, risky effort by Bill McKibben, the Sierra Club and many others to make Keystone XL a make-or-break litmus test.

Yes, the enviros were blessed by extraordinary luck, sailing into the middle of a perfect storm of Nebraska Republicans and State Department bungling that helped them grab victory. But it was a triumph nonetheless. And in human history, winning is what counts, no matter how accidental or messy it may have been or how narrow the margin of victory. 

A very similar dynamic played out at the Seattle summit of the World Trade Organization in 1999. Environmental and labor groups made a huge effort at mobilizing street protests, which led to a wildly excessive police crackdown and the collapse of the summit. Let's remember these scenes, which transfixed the world:

Photo: Steve Kaiser

The so-called Battle of Seattle was widely viewed as a bellwether event, and it was indeed just that. The summit's collapse led to a major stalling of the free trade impetus and ideology, endowing the anti-free-trade camp with an aura of power and influence that it still enjoys to this day. 

Yet in Seattle and afterward, the real cause of the breakdown in consensus on free trade was the spreading spider-web of cracks in global capitalism. The economic self-interest of old and new capitalist blocs was no longer identical, as tectonic faultlines opened between the United States, Europe, the so-called BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) large emerging nations, as well as the smaller and poorer nations. 

The dynamic with Keystone XL could be the same. The environmentalists won a major victory, aided by a perfect storm, and they now have a huge amount of political street cred. With a lot more hard work and a little more luck, they could change whole narrative of climate politics for years to come.

Stick a fork in Keystone XL

As I wrote here two days ago, there were emerging signs that the Obama administration was planning to punt the Keystone XL decision until after next year's election. Now comes a one-two-three punch to confirm what I wrote. The Associated Press and Reuters each ran articles today quoting an unnamed "U.S. official" -- who, given the context, could be State Department but I would wager is more likely White House.

This is how policy wars are often fought and decisions made inside U.S. presidential administrations -- by coordinated leaks that are intended for the widest possible distribution (in this case, AP and Reuters simultaneously) to telegraph a message to the opposing camp that the party line has changed and it's time to fall in line.

This message has come through loud and clear to the nation's main oil industry lobbying group, the American Petroleum Institute. In a nervous press release issued today titled, "API: Denying or delaying Keystone XL is reckless policy," API complained:

Each delay has bred nothing but more delay which is standing in the way of safely moving vital energy for American consumers and the overall economy.  .... If a decision is not made in 2011, the President will have failed to fulfill a promise of creating jobs and strengthening our energy security. We hope that he does not go back on his word.

... When the House passed legislation requiring a decision on Keystone XL by November 1 with an overwhelming bipartisan margin, the administration claimed it was "unnecessary" because the State Department was committed to making a decision on the project by year's end.  We again call on the President to stick to his word.

Update 11/10/11: As I predicted, the State Department has fallen in line with the White House decision to punt the whole thing until post-election -- at which point TransCanada may have already pulled the plug, or the administration may decide to kill it off. State has just issued a press release confirming that it will conduct a new review of the pipeline route in Nebraska. The most important part is this:

Based on the Department’s experience with pipeline project reviews and the time typically required for environmental reviews of similar scope by other agencies, it is reasonable to expect that this process including a public comment period on a supplement to the final EIS consistent with NEPA could be completed as early as the first quarter of 2013. After obtaining the additional information, the Department would determine, in consultation with the eight other agencies identified in the Executive Order, whether the proposed pipeline was in the national interest, considering all of the relevant issues together. Among the relevant issues that would be considered are environmental concerns (including climate change), energy security, economic impacts, and foreign policy.

At Tar Sands Action, the environmental coalition opposing the pipeline, Bill McKibben has claimed a (qualified) victory. His new post today is appropriately titled, "Big news: We won. You won." Check it out. It's not often that progressives and environmentalists get to say this.

Stalling for time in U.S. and Canada

Given the amount of heat that environmentalists are putting on President Obama over the Keystone XL pipeline, it's political common sense that Obama might want to stall for time. Why anger supporters and/or powerful interest groups by making a decision in the middle of a hard-fought campaign? Why not just punt it until after the election?

Seems like that's what he may be planning to do.

As I wrote a week ago, the pipeline opponents' street protests have received a big boost from the insider hardball being played by Sen. Bernard Sanders and Rep. Earl Blumenauer. The two lawmakers, joined by 10 others,  requested an internal legal review of the State Department's handling of the project. Sanders revealed today that the State Department's inspector general has agreed to carry out the request, as explained in the IG's letter dated Nov. 4. The process of conducting such a review is likely to take months.

In addition, the Los Angeles Times reported that Obama is considering asking the State Department to carry out an Environmental Impact Report on a possible new route for the Keystone XL that would avoid the Ogallala Aquifer, as Nebraska politicians are demanding. It's important to note that EIRs of this sort typically are encyclopedic door-stoppers that total hundreds of pages. Their preparation involves whole armies of consultants, cumbersome public meetings and multiple layers of bureaucratic review. The process could require a year or more, potentially driving up the pipeline's price by hundreds of millions of dollars and leading TransCanada to throw up its hands.

In Canada, meanwhile, delays are the order of the day for two proposed pipelines from the tar sands to the Pacific Coast.

Last month, Kinder Morgan Canada began soliciting bids for a doubling of the capacity of its existing Trans Mountain pipeline, to enable delivery of tar sands crude to Asia-bound tankers at the port of Burnaby, near Vancouver. 

However, the proposal has run into stiff opposition from Vancouver-area politicians and environmentalists who fear that supertankers could cause oil spills in Vancouver harbor. On Sept. 30, the Union of B.C. Municipalities passed a resolution urging the National Energy Board, other federal authorities and Port Metro Vancouver to subject the proposal to the "highest degree" of environmental review. Lawsuits seem inevitable to block the necessary dredging of the harbor to allow passage of the larger tankers. 

Just a few days later, a new public opinion poll showed that only 31 percent of British Columbians support the expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline.

A few hundred miles north, the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline project also seems to be going nowhere. The project, which would pump tar sands crude to tankers at Kitimat, a port on the northern B.C. coast, faces fierce opposition from the First Nations, or native tribes, along the pipeline's route. A joint declaration against the project, the Save the Fraser Gathering of Nations, was signed in December 2010 by 61 indigenous communities. It concluded: “We will not allow the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway pipelines, or similar Tar Sands projects, to cross our lands, territories and watersheds, or the ocean migration routes of Fraser River salmon.”

Many of these First Nations have never reached land treaties with the Canadian federal government to relinquish their historic territorial rights, in contrast to the United States, where the last Native claims were relinquished in the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971. These "non-treaty" First Nations enjoy significant clout in Canada's legal system, and they are likely to be able to block outright the Enbridge Northern Gateway -- or, at least, postpone a final reckoning for years.

The result of all these delays? The tar sands oil may remain bottled up for many years to come. Death by Kafka, not by firing squad.

All in all, not a conclusive, dramatic victory for Mother Nature, but victory nonetheless.

Keystone XL and litmus tests

Once again, thousands of protesters have rallied at the White House on Sunday to urge President Obama to reject the Keystone XL pipeline. They put on a solid showing with a clear, simple message:

 

Photo: Emma Cassidy/Tar Sands Action 

Because President Obama announced last week that he, not the State Department, will personally make the final decision on Keystone XL, this issue is shaping up as a major litmus test for Obama's relationship with environmentalists. If he approves the pipeline he will face intense criticism from greens and progressives, many of whom supported him actively in the 2008 campaign. If he rejects the pipeline, he will be attacked mercilessly by conservatives and many mainstream pundits for capitulating.

But wait -- did you say a litmus test? All the Very Serious People, as Paul Krugman calls them, and many mainstream Democrats (overlapping groups, of course), oppose anything resembling a litmus test. Such all-or-nothing tactics are seen as excessive, or unbecoming, or extremist, or something. So we should expect that in the coming months, environmentalists will be subjected to much clucking of tongues and wagging of fingers regarding the Keystone XL litmus test. They will be pressed to deny that it is a litmus test, and will be criticized if they refuse.

This will be part of the next framing narrative of the Keystone XL issue in the coming months. Understanding litmus tests, how they work and who uses them is crucial.

When used judiciously and infrequently, litmus tests are a smart and necessary part of effective politics. A party or movement that is afraid to use them is destined to be treated as a doormat by the powers that be. Small-d democratic politics is not an ivory tower. It necessarily involves lots of push and pull -- and the occasional elbow jab to the solar plexus.

Environmentalists' and progressives' general reluctance to use litmus tests is a large part of the reason why they have been treated as doormats by the Obama administration, and by the Clinton administration before that.

Conservatives love litmus tests and have used them to enormous success, while liberals abhor them. 

Below is a quick, back-of-the-envelope summary of litmus tests currently in use:

Conservatives:

• Denial that global warming exists or is caused by human activity
• Drill, baby drill
• Pro-Ryan budget
• Pro-repeal of Roe v. Wade
• Anti-union
• Pro-tax cuts for wealthy, anti-new taxes or fees
• Anti-gun control
• Anti-gay marriage

Progressives/environmentalists:

• Recognition that global warming exists and is largely caused by human activity
• Anti-repeal of Roe v. Wade
• Support for Social Security and Medicare

Get the difference? Conservatives' litmus tests tend to be numerous, aggressive and proactive, while the litmus tests of progressives and environmentalists are few and defensive.

Simply in terms of political tactics, the Keystone XL is an excellent choice to make for a litmus test. It's easy to understand and dramatic. The foreign-owned pipeline would bisect the nation, pumping dirty, high-carbon oil from the tar sands through America's prairies and farms, all the way down to the Texas coast. The visceral yet largely subconscious impact of this imagery among many patriotic Middle Americans should not be underestimated.

As Jake Schmidt noted last week on the NRDC Switchboard blog, there's one other major decision on Obama's plate -- whether to impose stiff new greenhouse gas emissions standards for power plants. This latter decision may have an even greater impact on total greenhouse gas emissions than the Keystone XL decision. But power plant regulations are hardly a bumper sticker subject, and it is unlikely to penetrate the popular consciousness. Keystone XL does all that, in spades. It is a perfect litmus test.

When your private property isn't really yours

How the issue of eminent domain is interpreted by regulatory agencies and the courts -- and whether environmental groups have the sense to dig their teeth into it and not let go -- will go a long way to determining whether "drill, baby drill" becomes the new national religion.

In the past 24 hours, the New York Times has done some excellent reporting on TransCanada's aggressive use of eminent domain to preemptively grab land in the path of the Keystone XL pipeline. What the articles don't mention, however, is the growing use of eminent domain to clear the way for other pipelines around the country. As I reported a month ago, a series of oil booms is underway nationwide, from Ohio to North Dakota to California. New technologies in fracking and slant drilling are unlocking huge new petroleum reserves that only recently were unreachable.

This is prompting new conflict between the oil industry and many naturally Republican-leaning constituencies. Every time some gun-loving, God-fearing, liberal-hating, freedom-loving rural folk suddenly get a lawyer's letter from a pipeline company telling them that a pipeline is getting punched through their property whether they like it or not ... well, that's the time the environmentalists just picked up another new ally.

In addition to eminent domain, pipeline companies often use a related legal weapon called forced pooling. Forced pooling is a growing controversy in Pennsylvania, Texas, Louisiana, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana and elsewhere. ProPublica gives a good explanation of forced pooling:

Thirty-nine states have some form of forced pooling law. West Virginia and Pennsylvania each have measures that don't apply to drilling in the Marcellus Shale, and proponents are trying to expand the laws in those states.

In New York, the owners of 60 percent of the acreage in the proposed drilling unit must agree to lease their land before the state oil and gas board will consider a driller's petition for compulsory integration, as it is known there.

In Virginia, only 25 percent of the land must be leased. In all states with such laws, drillers must notify all the landowners within the prospective drilling area of their right to participate in a hearing before the oil and gas board, or whatever regulatory agency the state has set up for that purpose.

If the board approves the driller's petition, holdout landowners typically have three choices: contribute to the cost of the well and share profits from the sale of the gas; don't pay for the well and share the gas profits after a "risk aversion" penalty is subtracted, or receive a state-mandated minimum royalty payment. Landowners who choose none of these options are automatically enrolled in the last plan. Opting out is not a possibility.

 ProPublica also has drawn up a useful chart of state rules on forced pooling.

Two contrasting tactics in opposing Keystone XL

In the past few days, two very different strategies have emerged from Congressional opponents to the Keystone XL pipeline.

On Friday, 36 House Democrats sent a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urging her to require that "the oil and refined product the pipeline transports to be sold in the United States." It reflects a bold and risky gamble by leading House Democrats, including Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) to frame the pipeline as economically counterproductive rather than environmentally dangerous.

The letter does not exactly come out against the pipeline, although many of the co-signers had previously expressed opposition to the project, and the letter appears to have been written for that purpose. Instead, the letter frames its message narrowly in economic terms within the "national interest" parameters of the State Department's decision-making powers. That is, rather than arguing that the Keystone XL would cause an unacceptable environmental impact through the danger of oil spills or the unleashing of ever-greater greenhouse gas emissions, the co-signers say that without additional safeguards, the pipeline would simply funnel the Canadian crude to export terminals on the Gulf Coast, from where it would be sent abroad, with virtually no benefit for the United States.

As I discussed in two posts last month (here and here), the case that the pipeline would be largely for exports is built on broad extrapolations from limited evidence. To build the anti-pipeline argument solely on that pillar seems quite risky. Pro-pipeline analysts in the Obama administration need only undermine that one pillar and the whole argument crumbles.

Which doesn't mean the framing isn't tactically astute. The State Department has said it will decide by the end of this year whether the 1,700-mile, $7 billion Keystone XL pipeline project is in the "national interest." This term is notably vague, although the Obama administration's election-oriented focus on jobs may mean that the term will be defined mainly according to its perceived economic impact. So if the environment is simply not taken seriously anymore by the administration, you use whatever topic does indeed get traction.

This kind of maneuvering is far, far Inside the Beltway. For those of us who live across the country and do not spend large amounts of time on Capitol Hill, we can only shrug and trust that the D.C folks have top-notch insider intelligence and are making the right calculations. Let's hope they assess the odds more accurately than they did last year with the cap-and-trade strategy debacle.

The second strategy is to use a straightforward argument on environmental grounds -- saying that the pipeline would be a disaster and that the official assessment process has been marred irretrievably by the State Department's blatant conflicts of interest with lobbyists for TransCanada. It's the basis of a separate Congressional letter to Clinton, one that is still being circulated for more signatures. At last report, it only had seven co-signers -- a rather underwhelming result.

The factual basis for that argument seems much more rock-solid and undeniable, however. It also lays the groundwork for a potential lawsuit after the final decision, alleging bias and improper procedure in the State Department's Keystone XL review.

Double standards alert

In the next few days, it will be fascinating to see whether the U.S. media and the political establishment give as much attention to the emerging scandal over Keystone XL insider back-scratching as they have lavished on the Solyndra issue.

Most Republican politicians, of course, will look the other way at the new revelations about the State Department's encouragement of conflicts of interest in the pipeline analysis process. With the exception of a few GOP politicians in the pipeline's direct path who have opposed the project, such as Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman, most national Republicans have enthusiastically supported the pipeline. And with mainstream Democrats reluctant to criticize the Obama administration, that leaves liberals and environmentalists as the only ones likely to make noise.

I hate to quote Bill McKibben, who is so prolific and ubiquitous nowadays, but he's really on target, especially in his piece Saturday in the Daily Beast (with Naomi Klein), which included this riff:

This is quite possibly the biggest potential scandal of the Obama years. But there’s a danger that it will go ignored for three reasons:

First, it’s so incredibly blatant that it’s hard to believe—neither of us are naifs, but we are still astonished that they’d show their industry bias this clearly.  There were plenty of other signs, of course—emails released last week, for instance, showed Department officials cheerleading for the pipeline. But the Entrix connection is truly mind-boggling. It’s the kind of thing Dick Cheney might have done, on a particularly sloppy day.

Second, the Republicans that have done such a noisy job of drawing attention to Solyndra will, we predict, studiously ignore the Keystone scandal. Why? Because the project’s biggest backers include the Chamber of Commerce and the Koch Brothers. We’re guessing cronyism gets a pass when it’s on behalf of the oil industry—in slightly less obvious guises, the old boy network has been steering subsidies to the fossil-fuel industry for decades.

Third, the officials in charge seem utterly unconcerned about the conflicts of interest that have plagued this project from the start. Hillary Clinton has stood by while her former deputy campaign manager took a job as TransCanada’s chief lobbyist; stories late last week on DeSmogBlog found several big-money bundlers from Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign working for lobbyists under contract to TransCanada.

And Obama? Obama’s said nothing about Keystone all year long. Not when 1,253 people were arrested outside his door in late summer, the biggest civil-disobedience protests in 30 years. Not when 10 of his fellow Nobel Peace laureates wrote to tell him the pipeline was immoral. Not now that this scandal is breaking, even though he promised the “most transparent” administration ever. 

Will the media and politicians make a fuss over this? Will normally hard-nosed reporters push State Department officials to go beyond the empty blandishments Friday from Kerri-Ann Jones, the Hillary Clinton aide at the State Department who is in charge of Keystone XL review?

If anything comes of this, we should all tip our hats to McKibben, who is emerging as not just a great organizer but one of the best environmental communicators of our time. In just the past week, his op-eds in the New York Times and the Washington Post have been masterpieces of messaging that is punchy, powerful and insightful.

Speaking of masterpieces, the current New Yorker magazine cover may well be the totemic image of our times: