Lately, the left isn’t taking so kindly to Hillary’s silence on a number of issues ranging from Iran’s nuclear deal to the Keystone XL Pipeline. In December 2013, MoveOn.org launched a petition to motivate Hillary to weigh in on Iran’s nuclear deal. Now, the left-leaning grassroots group is asking where Hillary stands on the Keystone XL Pipeline. Yesterday, Robert Naiman wrote in the Huffington Post about MoveOn.org’s petition asking where’s Hillary on the Keystone XL pipeline? According to MoveOn:
We have a key strategic opportunity now to turn this around. Because it is widely assumed that Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee for President in 2016, if she comes out against approval of the Keystone XL pipeline now, it will galvanize opposition to the pipeline among Democrats, and make it much less likely that President Obama will approve it.
So far, the petition has over 16,000 Democrat signatures.
Hillary was Secretary of State for 4 years and managed to duck the issue at every turn, despite three studies conducted by The State Department, including one during her tenure, that concluded the pipeline poses little environmental risk. In 2011, The State Department admitted that “the proposed project would not likely affect the overall quality or quantity of crude oil refined in the gulf coast region, and, as a result, would not likely effect refinery emissions.” In 2013, the Department said that “approval or denial of the proposed project is unlikely to have a substantial impact on the rate of development in the oil sands, or on the amount of heavy crude oil refined in the gulf coast area.” And earlier this year, The Department’s Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement For The Keystone XL Project concluded the pipeline “is unlikely to significantly impact the rate of extraction in the oil sands” and if Keystone is constructed, climate conditions “would not differ substantially” from what they are currently and what they are projected to be in the future.
With the left listening intently and hearing nothing, the public remains left in the dark yet again when it comes to what Hillary really thinks.