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

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.”

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

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Friends of the Earth fights to defend the environment and create a more healthy and just world. Our campaigns focus on promoting clean energy and solutions to climate change, keeping toxic and risky technologies out of the food we eat and products we use, and protecting marine ecosystems and the people who live and work near them.

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