The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.
WASHINGTON — Despite renewed rallying efforts from environmentalists intended to stir broad opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline and extensive media coverage of several serious spills involving Alberta oil sands crude, Americans still solidly back the controversial project to funnel Canadian crude to Texas refineries, according to a new poll.
Even after president Barack Obama defined a new bar for approving Keystone XL — that it not add significantly to carbon emissions driving global warming — more than two-thirds of Americans (67 per cent) want the long-delayed project approved.
Public support is up slightly since January while opposition to TransCanada’s $5.3-billion pipeline from Alberta to sprawling refineries on the Gulf Coast remains stuck below one-quarter, at 24 per cent. While Republicans were more strongly in favour, the poll found a solid majority – 56 per cent – of Democrats also backed Keystone XL, suggesting that even among his base, Mr. Obama faces no serious threat if he gives the project a green light.
The president is expected to decide sometime later this year. Opponents had vowed to create a new groundswell of opposition over the summer, with funding from billionaire turned climate-change activist Tom Steyer. But so far, despite scattered and persistent demonstrations dogging the president and a single large – but below expectations – rally in Washington, there’s no evidence of a swing in public opinion away from broad backing of the project.
Still, as the National Journal, an influential publication read primarily by Washington insiders and Congressional staffers noted, those polled were told “that Keystone supporters “say it will ease America’s dependence on Mideast oil and create jobs,” while opponents “fear the environmental impact” of building the pipeline. Specific environmental impacts, such as emissions and the risk of spills, were not enumerated as part of the question.”
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