A handler holds aloft Phil the groundhog during festivities in Punxsutawney, PA. (Photo: SchultzLabs/flickr)

What does any of this have to do with wildlife? Well, besides the obvious Punxsutawney Phil reference (he’s the “official” groundhog) it’s a pretty good analogy for what’s going on with the Keystone XL pipeline because, once again, Congress is trying to short-circuit environmental reviews and build the [dang] thing. This time, our old buddies Senator David Vitter (R-Louisiana) and Rep. Lee Terry (R-Nebraska) are introducing yet another pair of bills in Congress that would mandate construction of the 2,000 mile tar sands pipeline, skipping over President Obama and giving a big gift to the oil industry.

If at first you don’t succeed…

These bills mark at least the sixth (and seventh) attempts by Congress to cram Keystone XL down our throats, joining legislation pushed by:

• Sen. John Hoeven (R-ND) – January 2012
• Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX) – January 2012
• Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-MT) – December 2011
• Senators Richard Lugar (R-IN), Hoeven and Vitter (again)- November 2011
• Rep. Terry (again)- May 2011

All of these bills started from the same basic premise: “We’ve studied Keystone enough! Let’s put it in the ground!” This is a truly terrible premise to start from, considering the inadequacy of the studies that have been performed to date — we don’t even have comprehensive information on how much the project would raise global climate emissions, which is like rating Bill Murray’s career based solely on the awful fever dream that was the “Garfield” movie. (And speaking of career ratings, my favorite sentence of the year has to be this gem from Public Policy Polling, which found that “Congress is now less popular than root canals, NFL replacement referees, head lice, the rock band Nickelback, colonoscopies, carnies, traffic jams, cockroaches, Donald Trump, France, Genghis Khan, used-car salesmen and Brussel sprouts.)

Tar sands industrial complex in Alberta, Canada (Photo: Kris Krug)

Now, nobody is shocked that Sen. Vitter and Rep. Terry are pushing pro-Big Oil policies; it’s sort of what they’re known for. But that doesn’t make it any less frustrating, because Congress keeps resurrecting the issue despite Americans’ desire to move toward a clean energy economy — in fact, a recent voter poll from the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication shows overwhelming support across the political spectrum for renewables like wind and solar, as well as the belief that the government needs to act to combat the climate crisis.

President Obama understands what’s at stake, if you take his inaugural address at face value:

We, the people, still believe that our obligations as Americans are not just to ourselves, but to all posterity. We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations.

It would be hard to put it any stronger, and a lot of people have been asking what that means for his decision on Keystone, which will go a long way toward shaping Obama’s climate legacy. This decision is way beyond mere symbolism: the oil industry is desperate for pipelines to export tar sands to new markets, so Keystone really is a huge factor in how fast and how large Canadian mining operations will grow.

Tens of thousands expected at massive climate rally

If Keystone XL gets built, we won’t need Punxsutawney Phil to predict the weather for us in years to come: the project would lock us into a bleak future of escalating oil consumption, degraded habitat, and a climate that is hotter and less hospitable for people and wildlife around the globe. We need Obama to stand up to Big Oil and their friends in Congress, by saying NO to the Keystone pipeline. JOIN US on February 17th to protect wildlife from climate change, when tens of thousands of Americans will rally at the White House in Washington, DC to protest tar sands and demand action on climate. RSVP HERE!

You can help! Tell President Obama to reject Keystone XL and dirty tar sands oil.

Ken Salazar, Secretary of the Interior, was scheduled for a pay adjustment that would bring his salary in line with the other Cabinet secretaries; before he joined the White House, Salazar was a member of the US Senate and therefore ineligible for the higher-paying Cabinet salary. But Sen. Vitter, a champion for his state’s oil and gas industry, accused Salazar of stifling production in the Gulf of Mexico and vowed to block the raise until the Interior Department meets his demands.

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar helps volunteers clean up oil damage to beach at Gulf Islands National Seashore (photo: Tami A. Heilmann-DOI)

From TheHill.com:

“Given the completely unsatisfactory pace of your department’s issuance of new deepwater exploratory permits in the Gulf, I cannot possibly give my assent,” Vitter said in a letter to Salazar. […]

Vitter said he would agree to Salazar’s pay increase once BOEMRE begins issuing deepwater permits for new exploratory wells in the Gulf at a rate of six per month.

Politico’s David Rogers writes that Sen. Vitter’s tactics may cross the line on Congressional ethics rules:

It was Washington politics at its rawest, but Vitter’s actions also tread close to federal statutes which make it a crime to offer anything of value to a public official “to influence any official act.”

“It reads like the bribery statute,” said a Washington defense attorney with long experience dealing with such cases. And in a letter provided Tuesday to Capitol newspapers including POLITICO, Salazar— a former state attorney general in Colorado— asked that the pay bill be withdrawn rather than give in to what he saw as Vitter’s “attempted coercion of public acts here at the Department.”

Vitter has been working closely with his Democratic counterpart, Mary Landrieu, on legislation to restore the Gulf’s damaged ecosystem, but it’s not the first time he’s taken on the Administration over drilling decisions—Vitter has also blocked Senate confirmation of the the US Fish & Wildlife Service director until 15 new deepwater permits have been issued for the Gulf. The Interior Department has already issued 14 permits this year, and President Obama recently announced plans to accelerate drilling in the Arctic and off the Atlantic coast.

The Deepwater Horizon rig burns (photo: Anthony Posey/flickr)

Congress remains starkly divided on the issue—last week the Senate rejected a bill that would have opened new areas to offshore drilling, sped up the permitting process and removed important environmental safeguards. The House passed three similar measures earlier this month, drawing fire from worker safety advocates and environmental groups who pointed out that Congress still hasn’t passed legislation responding to the Deepwater Horizon tragedy.