Response to President Obama’s Keystone XL veto threat and remarks

WASHINGTON, D.C. — In a just-finished joint press conference with Canada’s Prime Minister Harper, President Obama reaffirmed his commitment to a “rigorous” review of the Keystone XL pipeline and threatened to veto any effort to force a rushed decision on the pipeline as part of his proposed payroll tax extension.

Kim Huynh, dirty fuels campaigner at Friends of the Earth U.S., had the following response:

“I’m glad to see President Obama stand up to Prime Minister Harper and the oil industry’s friends in Congress by affirming his commitment to a rigorous review and by pledging to veto legislation that would rush a decision.

“President Obama must now fulfill his promise of a rigorous, transparent, independent analysis that protects the health and safety of the American public. In part, this means the president must rein in State Department officials who have shown inappropriate pro-pipeline bias and who generated a deeply flawed initial environmental impacts analysis. The State Department’s new review must be conducted by independent, unbiased experts — not the tainted contractor Cardno Entrix — and it must take tar sands oil’s potentially devastating impacts on our climate seriously.”

Contacto:
Kelly Trout, 202-222-0722, [email protected]
Nick Berning, 202-222-0748, [email protected]

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Amigos de la Tierra lucha por defender el medio ambiente y crear un mundo más sano y justo. Nuestras campañas se centran en promover la energía limpia y las soluciones al cambio climático, mantener las tecnologías tóxicas y peligrosas fuera de los alimentos que consumimos y los productos que utilizamos, y proteger los ecosistemas marinos y a las personas que viven y trabajan cerca de ellos.