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Since 2008 – Progress Through Politics

Public Meeting on Keystone XL Pipeline

I hope you didn’t have plans, because you do now!  At least if you live in D.C.

Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center

Atrium Hall

1300 Pennsylvania Avenue

Washington, District of Columbia 20004

10:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m.

This is all from a pile of email alerts I get:

On October 7, the Department of State will hold a public meeting about the proposed Keystone XL pipeline project. The purpose of the meeting is to give individuals an opportunity to voice their views on whether granting or denying a Presidential Permit for the pipeline would be in the U.S. national interest.

This meeting, like the eight meetings held last week in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, and Montana, will be a listening session. All comments will be transcribed by a court reporter and will become part of the administrative record.

Speakers will be signed up on a first-come, first-served basis (with an exception made for elected officials at the Presiding Officer’s discretion). Sign-up will begin approximately 30 minutes before the meeting’s start time. Speakers will each be given three minutes to speak.

The Department will be providing a webcast of the October 7 public meeting via the project website: www.keystonepipeline-xl.state.gov

To accommodate those who cannot attend or who are unable to deliver their full comments in the allotted time, the Department is accepting written comments through October 9. All written comments will have equal standing with spoken comments from the public meeting and will become part of the administrative record.

Details about how to submit written comments are available on the project website: www.kesytonepipeline-xl.state.gov.

This meeting is open press. Media planning to bring video cameras should arrive by 8:30 a.m. to accommodate set-up. Media representatives may attend this event upon presentation of one of the following: (1) a U.S. Government-issued identification card (Department of State, White House, Congress, Department of Defense or Foreign Press Center), (2) a media-issued photo identification card, or (3) a letter from their employer on letterhead verifying their employment as a journalist, accompanied by an official photo identification card (driver’s license or passport).

Yay!  Even those of us who do not live in D.C. can send a public comment for consideration, so please get to typin’ and email this to everyone you know.  If you want any info/material for comment fodder, just click on the tar sands tag at the bottom; we’ve collected lots and lots of diaries on the subject.

I hope you can make it!

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Categories: Uncategorized.

/ 2 Comments

2 comments

  2. Shaun Appleby

    I don’t know much about this Keystone XL project outside of a few things over time at Huffington Post.  But we are involved here in Australia, specifically New South Wales but also WA and Queensland, in oil shale drilling issues which have taken a surprising turn.

    Queensland was first to go and they are sort of our Texas, the “deep North” as we call it sometimes.  I used to live there.  And the most stunning movement to emerge, which has united Greens and pastoralists, is the “Lock the Gate” campaign.  It’s self-explanatory; and while not my strategy (I think it puts individuals at too much risk) it has been, so far, bloody effective.  And it has started to do something I thought I would never see and that is a tacit, albeit mistrustful, alliance among the gumboot and ute cohort and our local hippies.  It’s pretty impressive, really.  I’m sure it is repeated all over the rural United States in certain localities, I sure hope so because it is remarkably useful.  When the most conservative and most progressive factions unite it seems they have a disproportionate advantage.  It is very cool to watch.

    My angle is a little different.  As far as I am concerned before the corporations entirely take over we can at least use their own arguments against them.  To me, these are all public liability issues.  Fracking is safe so you say?  OK, put your money where your mouth is, surely then you have no objection to putting up a public liability bond of say, 300 million dollars?  Your friends could trade it as a derivative, you don’t even need the cash just let it be so.

    You will probably find, as in the nuclear and other industries, that the liability is actually capped by legislation or public contract and that the taxpayer is the underwriter of last resort.  No businessperson would put up with that, why should taxpayers?

    For all this #occupywallstreet hand-wringing their message is perfectly clear, “Give us the fucking money back.”  I think it is the best thing that’s happened in years.  Give them a fright and let’s make it a good one.  I think the whole country has underestimated what happened in Wisconsin.  Now the unions are going out with the #occupywallstreet folks?  I read in the Voice a few days ago that the TWU was objecting to moving the arrested protesters in commandeered MTA buses.  Fancy that.  Labour is the soul of the progressive movement.  Join a union.

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