President Obama characterized the Keystone XL Pipeline as “Neither the silver bullet for the economy, as was promised by some; nor the express lane to climate disaster proclaimed by others.”
He said the U.S. State Department rejected the pipeline because, “First, the pipeline would not make a meaningful long-term contribution to our economy."
Obama added, “If Congress is serious about wanting to created jobs . . . what we should be doing is passing a bipartisan infrastructure plan that in the short term could create more than 30 times as many jobs per year as the pipeline would, and in the long run would benefit our economy and workers for decades to come.
“Second, the pipeline would not lower gas prices for American consumers.”
“Third, shipping dirtier crude oil into our country would not increase America’s energy security.
“What has increased America’s energy security is our strategy over the past several years to reduce our dependence on dirty fossil fuels from unstable parts of the world.
“Three years ago I set a goal to cut our oil imports in half by 2020. Between producing more oil here at home and using less oil throughout our economy, we met that goal last year (2014). In fact for the first time in two decades, the United States of America now produces more oil than we buy from other countries.
Obama pointed out that the U.S. transition to a clean-energy economy is moving faster than anticipated and “there are already parts of America where clean energy from the wind or the sun is finally cheaper than dirtier conventional power.
“The point is that the old rules said we couldn’t promote economic growth and protect our environment at the same time. But this is America, and we have come up with new ways and new technologies to break down the old rules. So that today, homegrown American energy is booming, energy prices are falling, and over the past decade, even as our economy has continued to grow, America’s cut our total carbon pollution more than any other country on Earth.
Obama asserted that U.S. leadership working with countries like China on combatting climate change contributed to bringing plans to cut pollution from more than 150 nations representing nearly 90% of global emissions.
“America is now a global leader when it comes to taking serious action to fight climate change. And frankly, approving this project (the Keystone XL Pipeline) would have undercut that global leadership. And that’s the biggest risk we face: not acting.
“Today, we’re continuing to lead by example. Because ultimately, if we’re gonna prevent large parts of this Earth from becoming not only inhospitable, but uninhabitable in our lifetimes, we’re going to have to keep some fossil fuels in the ground rather than burn them and release more dangerous pollution into the sky.
“If we want to prevent the worst affects of climate change before it’s too late, the time to act is now. And I’m optimistic about what we can accomplish together. I’m optimistic because our own country proves every day, one step at a time, that not only do we have the power to combat this threat, we can do it while creating new jobs, while growing our economy, while saving money, while helping consumers, and most of all leaving our kids a cleaner, safer planet at the same time.”