Clinton, at energy event, won’t take position on Keystone pipeline

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Fox News:

Hillary Clinton rebuffed a question Monday about her position on the Keystone XL oil pipeline even as she unveiled new energy proposals, opening the door to jeers from Republicans who accused her of "dodging."

 

The Democratic presidential candidate for months has avoided taking a position on the Canada-to-Texas oil pipeline, which remains under review at the State Department she once led. But given her entry into the White House race, and a new package of clean-energy ideas being put out by her campaign, Clinton was asked again Monday if she would at last weigh in.

 

Rather than stake out her stance, Clinton said only that she's "confident" the pipeline's impact on greenhouse gas emissions will be a "major factor" in the State Department's review.

 

"I will refrain from commenting because I had a leading role in getting that process started," Clinton said. "And I think that we have to let it run its course."

 

She noted that decision would be made by her successor, Secretary of State John Kerry, and President Obama.

________

 

Piping it in.

[Valin]

Hillary’s Hot Air Balloon [updated]

Steven Hayward

July 27, 2015

 

I’m starting to think Hillary Clinton believes her own B.S., or represents the first attempt at a human self-inflated hot air balloon. Back in the 1960s, Great Society liberals told us that they’d abolish poverty in 10 years (Sargent Shriver declared this confidently in Capitol Hill testimony). Yeah—how’d that work out for them?

 

Having learned nothing from that kind of grandiosity, Hillary Clinton today “pledged to take steps as president to ensure that within a decade, the U.S. will produce enough clean, renewable energy to power every home in the country. And she set a target of half a billion solar panels installed in the U.S. by the end of her first term.”

 

This is energy illiteracy of the first order. There’s a long history of energy transitions in advanced industrial nations (the best work on this coming from Vaclav Smil, a left-leaning Canadian whom I once heard call Al Gore’s energy views “embarrassing”), always involving new energy sources that were cheaper and more abundant than those they displaced (think kerosene over whale oil, as a simple example). There is no example of an energy transition of this scale on this time line.

 

(Snip)

 

UPDATE by JOHN: Readers who rely on the Associated Press will get no hint that Hillary’s “plan” is delusional: its laudatory article is headlined Clinton Aims High In Green Energy Plan. The AP’s only concern is that Hillary might not go far enough; she still won’t commit herself on the Keystone Pipeline.