As predicted a couple of days ago: Obama administration "considering a move" to delay decision on the controversial Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. The hope, apparent in this Los Angeles Times story, is that the pipeline proves too controversial to survive a transparent vetting.
From Neela Banerjee's story, which should make the front page.
"The tar sands are awful and they need to stay in the ground," said Courtney Hight, 32, a former Obama organizer and former staff member for the White House Council on Environmental Quality. "Building the pipeline is not the way to break free from oil."
Hight was joined by several thousand peaceful protesters in Lafayette Park, just north of the White House.
Aretha Franklin's song "Respect" played over loudspeakers, and demonstrators, including a farmer from Kansas and townspeople from Nebraska, walked onto streets east and west of the White House and completed the encirclement just south of it.
The permit process for the $7-billion pipeline has already taken more than three years.
Further delays could make the pipeline financially unfeasible for TransCanada and the companies that plan to ship crude through it. The oil industry has argued that if Keystone XL does not get a permit, TransCanada and its clients would develop the oil sands anyway and ship the crude west in a pipeline to the Pacific Coast. But environmentalists contend that there is far too much local resistance in Canada for that to occur.
"My guess is, if there is a delay, it could very well kill the pipeline of its own weight," said John H. Adams, founding director of the Natural Resources Defense Council, at Sunday's rally.
From a photo feed of the protesters surrounding the White House today, an inspiring young activist refusing to accept the tar sands pipeline disaster.
Kit Stolz 