The leader of a radical eco-extremist group celebrated President Joe Biden canceling the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, even as the move killed thousands of jobs.
Co-founder of 350.org and New Yorker contributor Bill McKibben bellowed in a recent op-ed that “In his first hours in office, Joe Biden has settled—almost certainly, once and for all—one of the greatest environmental battles this country has seen [killing the Keystone XL].”
He proceeded to praise how “the story behind that victory illustrates a lot about where we stand in the push for a fair and working planet.” McKibben fawned how he was “very grateful” for Biden’s action before outrageously claiming that the pipeline was “far too closely identified with climate carelessness for a Democratic President to be able to waver.”
But it’s ridiculous to argue that the pipeline was “identified with climate carelessness.” The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board wrote Jan. 20 that “[t]he Obama State Department found five separate times that the pipeline would have no material impact on greenhouse gas emissions since crude would still be extracted.” When you choose to be a fanatic about eco-extremism like McKibben, facts that don’t support your preexisting dispositions tend to fall by the wayside.
The Journal proceeded to note that “[k]illing Keystone won’t keep fossil fuels in the ground.” It continued: “It will merely strand billions of dollars in Canadian investment and kill thousands of U.S. jobs while enriching adversaries and alienating an ally.”
McKibben is the same eco-doomsayer whose past climate predictions were so extreme, even Scientific American called him out in 2011 for throwing up “overheated rhetoric” and “fear-mongering.” McKibben also just happens to write "The Climate Crisis," The New Yorker's newsletter on the environment.
McKibben’s group had been fighting to destroy the Keystone pipeline for years. McKibben’s group had also received at least $86,250 from liberal billionaire George Soros since it was first founded in 2008 to 2017.
McKibben traced the history of his anti-oil crusade against the pipeline in his latest op-ed: “In the spring of 2011, the NASA climate scientist James Hansen helped orient the [Keystone XL] pipeline as a climate-related fight, pointing to the massive amounts of carbon contained in the Canadian tar-sand deposits and making the case that, if they were fully exploited, it would be ‘game over’ for the climate.” He continued: “That brought the climate movement into the picture; a letter (full disclosure: I drafted it) went out in the summer of 2011, asking people to engage in civil disobedience outside the White House.”
The environmentalist efforts, alleged McKibben, led to former President Barack Obama announcing a “delay, in order to consider the question [on the pipeline] more closely.”
The 350.org founder praised how “The events of 2011 also showed that the fossil-fuel industry was not unbeatable, and it encouraged people to oppose the construction of just about every new fracking well and coal port and liquid-natural-gas terminal.”
McKibben stated that he wants Biden to kill other pipelines as well. He warned that failure to do so would mean that Biden will anger his core base:
If [Biden] allows the Dakota Access and Line 3 pipelines to proceed, he will dismay many core supporters, not to mention allow infrastructure that will be spewing carbon into the air for many decades to come. But perhaps this son of Scranton is uniquely positioned to solve this conundrum.
By “uniquely positioned,” McKibben meant Biden could concoct a “grand bargain” that arbitrarily reprograms workers who lost their jobs working on fossil fuel infrastructure to shift to “building solar panels, wind turbines, water pipes that don’t carry lead, and so on.”
But as The Journal concluded: “On day one Mr. Biden has already managed to kill high-paying, working-class jobs. Expect many more losses.”
Conservatives are under attack. Contact The New Yorker at 800-444-7570 and demand the magazine stop publishing eco-extremist propaganda.
