Seven members of the Democratic National Committee have joined with environmental activists, celebrities and a group of Nobel Peace Prize winners in calling on President Obama to deny a permit to build the Keystone XL pipeline.
The New York Times reports:
Authored by Maryland state legislator and Democratic national committeewoman Heather Mizeur — who drew fire from the natural gas industry this year after pitching a bill to “pause” the extraction technique of hydraulic fracturing in the Free State — the resolution won an endorsement from Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.), a DNC vice chairman, as well as five other state-level DNC representatives. Its emergence on the heels of a two-week White House sit-in against Keystone XL suggests that liberals are coming to embrace the pipeline as a grass-roots touchstone and could portend more inter-party ire at Obama if the project is approved…
“The president alone has the authority to reject this pipeline,” the summary states, echoing many of the anti-XL arguments made by green groups during a years-long clash over its still-pending permit bid with the State Department. The new pipeline, Mizeur’s supporters add, “would increase carbon emissions, place one of America’s largest aquifers in the line of danger, and do little to improve America’s energy security.”
DNC rules ask that resolutions come 21 days before an upcoming meeting in order to merit consideration, meaning that Mizeur’s effort may not reach formal debate in the committee until after the Obama administration makes its final decision on Keystone XL.
Whether this will have any influence over the president remains to be seen.
No Iowa DNC delegates have yet signed on to the effort, which is being supported by Mizeur, Honda, Gilda Cobb-Hunter of South Carolina, Pat Cotham of North Carolina, Carol Pensky of Maryland, Valerie Rongey of Washington and Rick Stafford of Minnesota.
