After a protracted political battle pitting the climate movement against the power players of Washington DC, TransCanada’s proposed Keystone XL tar-sands pipeline has been rejected by President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry.
Below is a brief and far from exhaustive list of political insiders who supported the Keystone XL tar-sands pipeline or predicted its approval at some point between 2011 and today:
- President Barack Obama
- Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
- Former president Bill Clinton
- Former president George W. Bush
- Former Obama chief economic advisor Austan Goolsbee
- Former senator Joe Lieberman
- Former senator Jeff Bingaman
- Former CNN reporter Steve Hargreaves President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness
- Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich
- Former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney
- American Legislative Exchange Council
- Rep. Fred Upton
- Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt
- Council on Foreign Relations fellow Michael Levi
- Harvard environmental economist Robert Stavins
- Former Montana governor Brian Schweitzer
- All corporate media
Actual climate scientists were near-unanimous in their opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline, based on a serious analysis of the pipeline’s potential climate impact. Ralph Keeling, James Hanson, Ken Caldeira, Peter Gleick, James McCarthy, Michael Oppenheimer, Michael Mann, Steve Running, Richard Somerville, Jason Box, George Woodwell, and many others supported calls for civil disobedience against the pipeline. Hansen and Jason Box were themselves arrested.