I knew the aftermath of the midterms would be rocky. But I didn’t expect such madness so soon—from the Democrats. In a lame duck session that’s going to be one long battle, that SHOULD be a process of defining themselves and their differences from the Republicans, a bunch of Democratic Senators want to start out by handing the GOP a major victory in return for…nothing.
Why?
Come below the Fleur D’Orange to see.
Because poor Mary Landrieu of Louisiana came in first in her run for re-election to the Senate, but narrowly first out of 8 or so candidates, with far less than 50% of the vote. There will be a run-off in January. She decided that if the Democrats just gave her a big juicy plum of a present, she could convince her state’s voters that she’s really a great Senator and they’ll send her back to Washington, where she will vote with the Dems more often than not, though not by a great margin. She wants the Democrats to give her the Keystone XL pipeline. Or give it to the GOP and the Oil Barons as a kind of indirect ransom on her behalf.
And by God it looks like they may do it. It looked VERY likely until the House Republicans decided to move fast, and vote to authorize the pipeline before the Senate did, thereby getting credit for the REPUBLICANS as being the instigators of this great accomplishment, not the Democrats. (Also they’re ALL ignoring the legal role of the President in approving cross-border projects like this, but hell, what’s a little law here or there when there’s huge money to be made?)
So now the GOP and the Dems are competing to give away the juicy plum. There’s a vote scheduled for Tuesday, last I heard.
Coming right after the efforts many of us put into these midterms, this is a little hard to take. The willingness of our party to toss KXL on the table as a chip equal in value to one (ONE) vote in the Senate shows a profound self-absorption, a shocking misunderstanding of the seriousness of Global Warming (which may destroy 70% of Earth’s species in this century), an ignorant disregard for the future of our Western states, casual dismissiveness toward the Indian nations who’ve been working hard to build a pro-Democratic voting force in those states, and contempt for progressives and environmentalist. It shows the usual, expected, but intolerable obsequiousness of many Dems to corporate interests, and the standard blank-stare disinterest of our primarily urban party concerning things agricultural and rural.
Why?
Cowardice, lies, heartlessness, or stupidity?
Let’s go with “stupid” first. Start with the obvious.
Laying KXL at the feet of the Republicans will not save Landrieu's seat. The plain fact is she's going to lose. She’s going to LOSE, people! DO THE MATH! In Louisiana’s weird election system, multiple members of the same party can run in the general if they damned well want to. Landrieu only won the first round because three Republicans and a libertarian were dividing the right-wing hordes, so her 614,000 votes were well over 200,000 short. Now the third place Repub (200,000 votes) has endorsed the Repub who came in second, and the flood of combined Republican votes will wash Mary Landrieu out to sea. For more detail on vote numbers, see comments in this good earlier post on this mess.
I generally support protecting even flawed Democrats in deep red states, but here it's not possible. This is not only stupid, but monumentally, fantastically, spectacularly unreal. Does she really think scores of thousands of Democrats who didn’t vote before are going to pour out, cheering for KXL, and put her over the top? Not going to happen. Especially now that the action in DC is shaping up as a blatant Republican victory with some Democrats voting with them, not a Democratic event. How does that make people vote for Mary?
So the ransom won’t save poor Mary. And it would be too high a price to pay even if it could.
Tar Sands oil is different from “normal” oil. As every damned Senator should know by now. It’s a heavy, sticky tar-like substance mixed with sand, clay, and gravel. The processing required to extract “bitumen” -- something oil-like enough to ship to a refinery -- produces an extra load of carbon emissions, much of it from burning natural gas. Then the bitumen must be diluted with toxic chemicals and water so it can be moved through a pipeline. Its corrosive nature will make leaks more likely, and the chemicals involved will make pollution more damaging.
World Watch Institute says that processing tar sands oil produces three times the carbon emissions of other oil. Related environmentally harmful effects begin with the destruction of Canada’s boreal forests, which constitute a quarter of the intact forests still left on Earth. (Got that? A quarter of what’s left, and the Oil Barons are out to industrialize it to death just as fast as possible.) Massive use of water to process tar sands, long-lasting pollution including heavy metals, strip mining, and forest fragmentation all threaten wildlife as well as habitat crucial to 30% of North American songbirds and 40% of North American waterfowl. Did I mention that cancer rates and other illnesses are rising in nearby First Nations communities? Hey – who could have predicted?
It’s no wonder that leading climate scientist Jim Hansen, along with other scientists and environmentalists have repeatedly warned us that the only safe thing to do with tar sands is to leave it in the ground. Jim Hansen has said that the planned development of Canada’s massive tar sands reserves would mean “Game over for the climate.”
This is the context in which environmentalists oppose Keystone KXL, a wide-open door for tar sands oil to pour into the US and through us to the rest of the world, just when we MUST hold the line on carbon emissions.
Yet carbon isn’t the only issue. Water is a resource more precious than oil in the US West. PIpelines leak. They leak the way highways have auto accidents -- it's an unintended but completely predictable side-effect of the basic process. Tar sands oil is particularly corrosive and toxic and hard to clean up. See the Kalamazoo River in Michigan, still a mess after $765 million spent on cleanup after a dilbit spill in 2010. There’s still tar in the river and the wetlands. And then there are the chemicals. What chemicals? Last I heard, we don’t know. Just as that company down in North Carolina washed newly mined coal with a mix of water and caustic chemicals, which then leaked into the drinking water of thousands of people, and they STILL wouldn’t tell the public what was in it. Just like the fracking companies, which mix huge amounts of water with chemicals and pump the mix deep into rock layers, under pressure great enough to crack the rock, and then feign innocent surprise when some of that mix gets into drinking water. Who could have predicted? And they won’t tell us what’s in the mix. The fact that it’s in the public’s water doesn’t count for a thing in comparison to their ownership rights. The fossil fuel companies have been allowed to develop an incredible arrogance, assuming their sovereign right to mess around in public resources however they damned well please, and we peons have no right to even know what they’re doing to us and our land.
We’re going to lose parts of the West to desertification as global warming proceeds – no doubt about that. The issue is how much. Water cannot be wantonly destroyed. That’s madness. And the Keystone XL passes over the Ogallala aquifer, one of the largest and most important in North America. That’s madness too – the madness of the rich who implicitly believe their right to get richer trumps any other consideration on Earth.
Millions of Americans depend on water from the Ogallala aquifer, which KXL will threaten and inevitably damage. How much? Nobody knows. But you can't clean up an aquifer. You can’t ever reach back down into those layers of rock and suck out the toxins. Which means, to say the very least, that the costs of KXL are not a good trade off for one Senate vote.
Do any of these Senators understand about the Ogallala Aquifer? Do they feel anything for the farmers in Nebraska who have become Pipeline Fighters, for the ranchers joining the Cowboy and Indian Alliance in South Dakota, because they love their land and fear for it? Do they understand how hard the Plains Indian nations have struggled to survive, not only as individuals but as cultures? Do they recognize that people who’ve struggled so hard won’t give up now? That whatever they decide in their white marble building in Washington next week, the fight against the pipeline will go on?
I remember reading about the voter registration drive on the reservations in South Dakota: the Kossacks who went out to be part of it, the many barriers ranging from a vote-suppressing state government to poverty and long distances. I remember that guy who walked over 30 miles to deliver voter registration forms, and got them in on time.
Those Senators who want to give away the pipeline – do they remember that man? Did they ever glimpse him in their minds eye? What tissue of lies and pretenses, ignorance and fear is keeping them blind? Now, this lame duck session – this is the time to reassert and clarify Democratic values. That’s the useful thing that can be done – the thing that prepares us for further battles and for winning. Winning elections for Senators who want to come back, and winning a decent future for the plains farmers and ranchers, for the Indians defending their heritage, for the land itself. Now is not the time for Democratic Senators to kick environmentalists to the curb, reject much of their base that rejects the Pipeline, and betray that young Lakota man in his long walk in service to his people.
So yeah, the election is over, but get back on the phone. Or the internet. Call your Senators. Speak to them sternly. Call or write the White House. Tell Obama if they commit this folly he has to save them from themselves – and the battered Earth from them – and get out his veto pen. May as well get in practice; he’s going to need it a lot.
Really, my friends. The KXL fight matters. There is going to be some tar-sands production; but we do NOT WANT a free full-scale flow of tar-sands oil. It’s a disaster, at a cost we can’t yet even measure. We don’t want our land ravaged more than it already will be by global warming. As Obama lays out an environmental and global warming agenda for the last 2 years of his administration, we don’t want Democrats undermining it with senseless, fantasy-based peace-offerings to the circling wolves. There’s just no gain in that.
Let them hear that Democratic activists care. Make sure they know we’re taking names.