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Oil sands & naked ladies in DC

Yesterday was a day of action and protest in the US for opponents of the Keystone XL pipeline. The Canadian Embassy here was a target. (The place has been busy. Last week, naked PETA protesters showed up. More on this later.)

Alberta recently Premier Ed Stelmach wrote to Hillary Clinton urging the State Dept. to approve the pipeline —  after a group of US lawmakers wrote to Clinton expressing their opposition.

The oil sands debate here, which is still in its early stages, has been very polarized: there are those who are pushing the resource and marketing it as “conflict-free oil” and those oppose it and those who portray it as an environmental menace up there with the BP spill.

But that could change. In the last few months, Alberta’s Pembina Institute has quietly set up shop here in Washington. Pembina is not here to stage protests. They criticize industry practices and government policy but they also work with industry and emphasizes best-practices. It will be useful to have their analyses of Canadian and American energy policies to add to the ongoing energy discussion — such as this paper on the American Power Act. I hope their arrival will lead to a more sophisticated discussion about the oil sands and US energy policy than we’ve heard here to date.

And now, since you read all the way to the end of this post, here are the ladies(?) of PETA:

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