TYT: EPA Keystone XL Report Supports Obama's Veto Threat

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"Falling oil prices have changed the economic viability of the Keystone XL pipeline – and that means the project would result in much higher carbon pollution, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said on Tuesday.

The finding gives Barack Obama new grounds on which to reject the pipeline, only days after the Senate voted to force approval of the project and as the House Republican leadership moved to a final vote that could send a pipeline bill toward the president’s desk as soon as next week.

In a letter to the State Department, the EPA said the recent drop in oil prices meant that Keystone would indeed promote further expansion of the Alberta tar sands, unleashing more greenhouse gas emissions and worsening climate change.

“Until ongoing efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with the production of oil sands are more successful and widespread development of oil sands crude represents a significant increase in greenhouse gas emissions,” the EPA’s assistant administrator, Cynthia Giles, wrote in a letter posted on the agency’s website.

The agency said building the pipeline could increase emissions by as much as 27.4m metric tonnes a year – almost as much as building eight new coal-fired power plants."

Read more here: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/feb/03/keystone-xl-pipeline-climate-impact-oil-prices