Senator Patrick Leahy(D-VT), Senate President Pro Tempore and chairman of the Appropriations Committee's State Department and Foreign Operations Subcommittee, and Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), a member of the Senate environment and energy committees, reacted with trepidation to the State Department's final EIS on the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline, which was released Friday.
Leahy said: "I look forward to reviewing the Final Environmental Impact Statement for the Keystone XL Pipeline.
"While this process has included more than 1.5 million public comments and several years of analysis, I am concerned that it may not fully take into account the overwhelming evidence that this project will greatly accelerate the release of greenhouse gas pollution and further worsen climate change. This process was fraught with earlier missteps, and now a further review will occur, which is intended to evaluate this project in terms of our own national interests.
"I hope that Secretary Kerry and President Obama will closely review this, and the subsequent national interest evaluation. I hope that, in the end,the United Stateswill not green-light this misguided project, which would put our farms, fresh water, homes, and future generations in danger.The United States should not be a willing and active partner in an environmental travesty."
Sanders said:
‘The State Department study turns a blind eye to the ugly reality that extracting and refining dirty tar sands oil will spew into our atmosphere more and more of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming. To my mind, global warming is the most serious environmental crisis facing the world today and President Obama should block construction of the Keystone pipeline.’
SOURCE Office of US SenatorPatrick Leahy, Bernie Sanders 1.31.2014
Leahy, Sanders react to State Department's Final EIS on Keystone XL pipeline
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