Ronald Bailey On How Obama Is Losing the Keystone Pipeline Battle
In January, President Barack Obama declared that building the Keystone XL pipeline was not in the national interest, giving Republicans a huge political stick with which they have been beating him ever since. The pipeline would transport more than 800,000 barrels per day of Canadian oil to U.S. Gulf Coast refineries. Building it would create at least 6,000 jobs in an economy which is experiencing 8 percent unemployment. However, environmental lobbyists strongly oppose the pipeline citing worries about damaging leaks and increased global warming. Obama originally bowed to the environmental lobby, but the fight between two of the bigger Democratic Party factions, labor unions versus greens, is not over. More decisions about the pipeline are now pending and Reason Science Correspondent Ronald Bailey wonders which constituency the president will choose to anger this time?