“The president has been getting help from his allies on this. These are President Obama’s friends and it’s an election-year issue. Obama approved the [Alberta] Clipper pipeline in 2009. The only difference was that he wasn’t running for re-election.”
click on the image to enlarge
David Martosko
The Daily Caller
2/20/2012
A Powerpoint presentation obtained by The Daily Caller shows that during a July 2008 meeting, the $789 million Rockefeller Brothers Fund proposed to coordinate and fund a dozen environmental and anti-corporate activist groups’ efforts to scuttle pipelines carrying tar sands oil from Canada to the United States.
The most recent incarnation of that pipeline plan, the Keystone XL project, was the subject of intense public controversy until the Obama administration rejected it in January.
The 2008 meeting consisted of presentations from Rockefeller Brothers Fund program officer Michael Northrop, Corporate Ethics International Executive Director Michael Marx, Natural Resources Defense Council attorney Susan Casey-Lefkowitz and the director of a Canadian activist group called the Pembina Institute.
Northrop’s presentation described the extraction of oil from Canada’s vast tar sands oil deposits as a threat to environmentalists’ efforts to curb global warming. He outlined a ”globally significant response” consisting of a “network of leading US and Canadian NGOs” engaged in a “coordinated campaign structure.”
TheDC made repeated requests for comments from Northrup, Marx and Casey-Lefkowitz. None of them responded.
The subject of U.S. interests raining money on environmental organizations north of the border is a front-burner issue in Canada.
The informative three-page article continues, with a link to the Powerpoint presentation, at The Daily Caller.
Related: Yes, Mr. Kessler, there really is a crony capitalist in the White House
Hey, why let facts get in the way when you’re getting your Koch Brothers hate on?
Protesters say they believe the Koch brothers are involved with the Pipeline project despite the Koch brothers saying they have nothing to do with the proposed project.
“They refine 25 percent of tar sands oil that is imported into this country so this pipeline would put that tar sands production on steroids with development of this pipeline, so that’s why we see them as supportive,” said President of the Sierra Club, Robin Mann.
But Koch Industries is firing back, denying any involvement with the pipeline…
Read the whole thing.
