Keystone report sets stage for tar sands battle

>>> president obama 's second term cabinet is almost complete . he took a while to get going on second term nominations. we're weeks into his first term before he nominated anybody. but now the cabinet is actuallifying up. earlier today the president nominated three people to cabinet-level positions. first he nominated sylvia matthews burwell to run the very important office of management and budget . then the president nominated a nuclear scientist with amazing hair named ernest moniz to run the department of energy . he will replace nobel prize winner steven chu . and then gina mccarthy . the president nominated her to run the environmental protection agency . gina mccarthy is currently a deputy at the agency. at epa, she heads up the office of air and radiation, because that's one office. in the last few years, she has made quite a splash. she helped write new pollution rules related to lung-killing things like soot and mercury. power plants spit that stuff into the air, and it was gina mccarthy 's job to say hey, let's do that less. environmental groups seem to be pretty happy with an epa pick like gina mccarthy , which means environmental groups had a much better monday than they did a weekend. and that's because of what happened in the friday afternoon news dump. at 3:30 p.m . eastern on friday, or as most people call it, 90 minutes until the weekend o'clock, somebody at the state department decided it was time to release that department's long-awaited news that they figured would upset a lot of people. it goes without saying that if you want something to get a lot of attention, if you want the media to pay attention to it, you want stories and blog posts and tv shows about it, release it on a monday morn. but if you want something buried, we suggest the later in the day hours on a friday, like the state department did with their report on this big pipeline , which would bring tar sands oil into the united states from canada. hence the need for the state department to be involved since it crosses a border. it's an international matter. the pipeline crosses the border at montana and then runs clear down to the bottom of nebraska. for this pipeline , there is the mehta environmental issue of whether tar sands oil is the future we want given the global warming consequences. but also there is the less mehta environmental issue which is all about the land this pipeline runs through. all those ranch lands and those fresh water aquifers and lakes and homes, honestly we do not have great technology to clean up normal oil spills . but tar sands oil spills , we really do not know how to clean those up. that was the problem with the big disastrous kalamazoo oil spill a few years ago. because tar sands oil it turns out is harder to clean up. we're bad at all oil spill cleanup, but we are ilie bad at tar sands oil cleanup because we don't know how to do it. so what happens if and when something goes wrong? the state department and ultimately the president will have wrong? the state and the president will have to make those decisions. the pipeline , of course, has its boosters, republicans tried to make it an issue in the election against the president because he had not approved the pipeline . it's also easy to find people opposed to this thing, both locally where the pipeline is supposed to go and nationally. there were two weeks of anti-keystone protests. protesters doing civil disobedience . two months after that, anti-keystone protests in san diego , california . a month after that, november 2011 , a big protest outside the white house , thousands of people at the white house gates. november 2012 , protests in texas and more protests in washington, d.c., december 2012 , activists climb into the pipeline and blockade themselves inside it. anti- pipeline protesters in massachusetts, wisconsin and texas occupy the offices of the company that is building the pipeline the following month, february, more protests in texas and california . that's san diego , california you're looking at. and then also last month, big protests in washington, d.c.. this was a large protest. organizers claim there were tens of thousands of protesters there, there's been a lot of protests overall, including a lot of civil disobedience on this issue. on friday at 3:30 p.m . eastern and almost time to go home, the state department released its environmental impact report on the pipeline . according to the report, the pipeline won't have too much of an impact. won't have too much of an impact on the environment or it won't have enough of an impact to warrant the state department scuttling the deal on those grounds. environmental groups as you might imagine are not psyched. the state department will be taking comments on whether you think it should be approved or not for the next 45 days. 350.org say they are training more people in civil disobedience techniques. i expect we will see more of this kind of thing over the next few weeks and months. occasionale