Demolition Agenda by Thomas O. McGarity

Author:Thomas O. McGarity
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The New Press

CHAPTER 11IMPEDIMENTS TO DEMOLITION

The previous chapters highlight many successful assaults by the Trump administration on the protective edifice, but they also reveal several failed assaults. This chapter focuses on the impediments that the Trump administration encountered as it hacked away at the edifice.

One of President Donald Trump’s earliest deregulatory actions was his high-profile reversal of the Obama administration’s denial of a permit for an extension of the Keystone pipeline. This major international artery transports crude oil from the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, eastward across two Canadian provinces before turning south and crossing the entire continental United States to refineries in Port Arthur and Houston, Texas. In 2008, TransCanada Corporation proposed to build a separate leg, called the Keystone XL pipeline, through which it hoped to transport up to 830,000 barrels of crude oil per day from Alberta and the Bakken shale play in Montana, through South Dakota, to its existing facilities in Steele City, Nebraska, from which it could be piped to Illinois or Texas. Such an extensive project required many permits from the federal government and the affected states. In particular, it needed the approval of the State Department to cross the international boundary between the United States and Canada, and that required a finding that the pipeline “would serve the national interest.”1

Determined to persuade Obama’s State Department not to issue the permit, opponents held protests throughout the country, many of which were supported by farmers, ranchers, and even some Tea Party activists. In addition to worrying about the threat that a pipeline breach would pose to the Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers and the aquifers upon which farmers and ranchers depended, the protesters objected to the millions of tons of greenhouse gases that would result from burning the oil that it transported. Pipeline proponents, including the American Petroleum Institute, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and four labor unions, touted the jobs that building the pipeline would create and the nation’s reduced dependence on oil from the Middle East. In a major victory for the environmental groups and the Native Americans who had for many years opposed the pipeline, Secretary of State John Kerry denied the application in November 2015, finding that it would not serve the national interest.2

With the election of Donald Trump, the petroleum industry and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce clamored for rapid approval of the pipeline. Without consulting the State Department staff, President Trump issued a Presidential Memorandum four days after his inauguration inviting TransCanada to apply once again for the permit and directing the State Department to conclude that the existing environmental impact statement, which had been prepared in August 2011, satisfied the National Environmental Policy Act. Two days later, TransCanada filed a new application, and the State Department issued the permit on April 4, 2017. The president proclaimed that it was “going to be an incredible pipeline.”3

The approval became a rallying cry for opponents of President Trump’s “energy dominance” policies. It precipitated a round of protests at the White House and the Trump Hotel in New York.

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