Over the weekend, 35,000 Forward On Climate protesters called on President Obama to reject the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. They apparently had one surprising ally: News Corp. owner Rupert Murdoch.
In a series of tweets Friday, Murdoch questioned if the Keystone XL project is worth the risk:
@rupertmurdoch “Is Keystone Pipeline really good idea? Bringing lots of heavy, dirty oil across country, when fracked , cheaper, cleaner energy available”
@rupertmurdoch ” Keystone Pipeline not needed for energy independence. Many opinions, let’s discuss. And let’s stop wasting money on ridiculous windmills.”
Murdoch’s two tweets do manage to misrepresent clean energy and natural gas, which is not surprising from the oil shale investor. There is nothing ridiculous about wind energy when it isbeating natural gas in new capacity and supports 76,000 jobs; at the same time, methane emissions from natural gas poses a major climate threat.
But Murdoch still alludes to one painful fact. Fully exploiting Canadian tar sands crude through Keystone XL, while burning oil, gas, and coal, would mean “game over” for the climate, since the carbon-intensive tar sands contain more emissions than our entire global consumption in history.
He would never have known this watching News Corp-owned Fox News, given some of the network’s grossly exaggerated claims about the pipeline’s benefits. Fox reporting includes ratcheting up the number of jobs TransCanada would create to “hundreds of thousands” or a “million,” when the project is poised to create just 20 permanent jobs. Throughout its coverage, Fox has mostly quoted Keystone XL proponents, and after the historic climate rally this weekend, Neil Cavuto mocked protesters for holding a global warming rally during winter.
This article was originally posted at Climate Progress. Re-posted with permission.
