Category Archives: climate change
Pipeline to Paris
When President Obama killed the Keystone Pipeline last Friday he threw blue collar unions under the bus in favor of elitist greens. That’s according to Terry O’Sullivan, president of the Laborers International Union of North America.
Obama agrees:
“Approving this project would have undercut our global leadership on climate.”
He hopes to lead the UN climate conference in Paris at the end of the month.
Keystone Killed
After seven years of dithering, President Obama killed the Keystone pipeline on Friday. He said the project wouldn’t make a meaningful long term contribution to the economy.
Matt Lewis in The Week explains the real reason the president took so long. Labor unions were for the pipeline and environmentalists were against it. Labor isn’t happy:
We are dismayed and disgusted that the president has once again thrown the members of [The Laborers’ International Union of North America], and other hard-working, blue-collar workers under the bus of his vaunted ‘legacy,’ while doing little or nothing to make a real difference in global climate change. His actions are shameful. [LIUNA, via The Hill]
New Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took the slap in the face more gracefully.
Warren Buffett took the news gracefully too. Oil not shipped by pipeline will have to he shipped by train. He owns the trains.
Emissions from Volkswagen
Reuters reports that Volkswagen will “repair” up to 11 million cars rigged to give misleading emissions info to inspectors. The “fix” will cost $6.5 billion.
Emissions
The evil geniuses at VW figured out a way for its diesel emissions systems to recognize when they were being tested. During a test the system stifles emissions according to government standards. The rest of the time the system turns itself down or off, allowing for great mileage and more power but higher emissions.
Who but the greenest among us is going to want to bring his car in for that repair?
Climate Catholic
Mike Grunwald, in Politico, was surprised the pope didn’t directly mention the climate in his speech to Congress. Instead the Holy Father referred to his 184 page encyclical on climate and capitalism. Gunwald went back and actually read the thing. He found it to be “super weird”:
The pope’s message in Laudato Si is surprisingly gloomy for such an inspiring figure, especially at a time when the world’s largest emitters, the U.S. and China, are cleaning up their own act and leading a push for global reductions in Paris. Pope Francis writes about the dangers of excessive growth, which “leads to the planet being squeezed dry beyond every limit,” but economic growth usually produces better environmental protection, which often seems to be a luxury poor countries can’t afford…
“There is also the fact that most people no longer seem to believe in a happy future,” the pope wrote in Laudato Si.
Aw, Your Holiness, is that really a fact? It really feels like things are starting to get a little better, and may be on path to get a lot better. Have faith.
Mass in Cuba
AP
Pope Francis celebrated Mass in Cuba on Sunday. Standing before a giant image of Che Guevara, he said “Service is never ideological, for we don’t serve ideas, we serve people.” Afterward he met with Fidel but not with Cuban dissidents.
He will meet with dissidents in the United States. President Obama has invited Catholic dissidents to a reception for the pope.
