Former New York City mayor and environmental philanthropist Michael Bloomberg has a pragmatic compromise for the Keystone Pipeline debate.
Canadian website National Post printed a letter written by Bloomberg who thinks the Keystone Pipeline can be approved along with a comprehensive set of environmental agreements made by Canada and the U.S.
Will you offer us a hand? Every gift, regardless of size, fuels our future.
Your critical contribution enables us to maintain our independence from shareholders or wealthy owners, allowing us to keep up reporting without bias. It means we can continue to make Jewish Business News available to everyone.
You can support us for as little as $1 via PayPal at [email protected].
Thank you.
The goal is that the environmental measures taken by both countries would more than offset the emissions that would result from the approval of the Keystone Pipeline. President Obama recently vetoed a bill that would authorize the construction of the Keystone Pipeline. The issue is not dead yet, although the President dealt it a blow.
Bloomberg writes, “The Keystone XL Pipeline has become the perfect symbol of Washington dysfunction. Democrats exaggerate its environmental impact, while Republicans exaggerate its economic benefits.” Bloomberg’s philanthropic organization has invested heavily on the issue of climate change, and the former mayor recently attended a conference in India on expanding alternative energy in the country.
Bloomberg pointed out that the pipeline may benefit Canada economically more than the United States. Agreeing to the Keystone Pipeline could give the U.S. leverage to insist on a environmental agreements with Canada. Bloomberg writes that Canada needs to prove it is doing as much as it can to remedy climate change at home, given Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s devoting $300 million to help developing countries fight climate change.
Neither the U.S. nor Canada, according to Michael Bloomberg, are doing enough on the issue, and an agreement between the two countries in conjunction with an approval for the Keystone Pipeline, “The Republicans in Congress could declare an economic victory and the Democrats could declare an environmental victory. The President could declare both, while also burnishing his foreign policy legacy and building momentum for the (climate change) conference in Paris.”
