The Obama administration has been procrastinating on its decision on the Keystone XL pipeline for years — and now comes word that it may kick the can even further down the road. From Reuters:

The Obama administration is unlikely to make a decision on the Canada-to-Nebraska Keystone XL pipeline until late this year as it painstakingly weighs the project’s impact on the environment and on energy security, a U.S. official and analysts said on Friday.

The decision may not be made until November, December or even early 2014, said a U.S. official … who did not want to be named given the sensitive nature of the project.

Analysts agreed that a decision would not be made by this summer as the State Department had suggested when it issued an environmental review on the pipeline on March 1.

If Obama can just delay until Jan. 20, 2017, then finally it’ll be somebody else’s problem.

Republicans on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee refused to show up for work Thursday morning, basically because they really don’t like the EPA.

The committee was scheduled to vote on the nomination of Gina McCarthy, President Obama’s pick to head the EPA. The vote had already been delayed three weeks to accommodate grumbling Republicans, according to committee chair Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.). Then, this morning, right before the scheduled committee hearing, the eight GOP members sent a letter saying they were going to boycott.

From Politico:

“This has nothing to do with Gina McCarthy,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who charged that the boycott has more to do with a desire to obstruct EPA’s role in climate change regulations. …

Committee ranking member David Vitter (R-La.) announced the boycott by all eight GOP members around 8:30 a.m., saying they would deny the panel a quorum because McCarthy and the EPA haven’t provided answers to the questions they’d posed.

Democrats have noted that the questions totaled more than 1,000 — what they call a record. Republicans also had five “requests” for EPA on issues such as how the agency handles outside groups’ threats of litigation — though Democrats said the GOP senators were actually asking the agency to offer major concessions in how it conducts public business. …

“As you know, all Republicans on our EPW committee have asked EPA to honor five very reasonable and basic requests in conjunction with the nomination of Gina McCarthy which focus on openness and transparency,” the GOP members wrote. “While you have allowed EPA adequate time to fully respond before any markup on the nomination, EPA has stonewalled on four of the five categories.”

John Walke sums up the Republicans’ logic at NRDC’s Switchboard blog:

[A] group of eight conservative Senators has staked their opposition to McCarthy on a mixed procedural-political syllogism that could fit on a bumper sticker: “Transparency good; EPA not transparent; therefore McCarthy bad.” …

The Republican Senators’ demands are less about transparency than wrapping anti-health grievances and obstructionist tactics in the pleasing garb of transparency concerns.

Walke then painstakingly explains why the GOP’s demands are ridiculous.

This little episode doesn’t bode well for McCarthy’s nomination — or the health of the Senate. From Politico again:

[The GOP boycott] prompted new calls by some liberals for changing the Senate’s filibuster rules — a tacit admission that McCarthy will have trouble getting 60 votes when her nomination finally heads to the floor.

“You know why some of us are going to be in favor of reforming the rules of the Senate? It’s because of abuses like this,” Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) said.

Boxer added, “This is outrageous. Get out of the fringe lane.”

Vice President Joe Biden told an activist on Friday that he doesn’t support the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, according to a post on the Sierra Club website.

While the veep was working the crowd at an event in South Carolina, Elaine Cooper got a moment with him:

I asked him about the administration’s commitment to making progress on climate and whether the president would reject the pipeline. He looked at the Sierra Club hat on my head, and he said “yes, I do — I share your views — but I am in the minority,” and he smiled. …

I know that this vice president is a man who isn’t afraid to speak from his heart, and who sometimes gets out in front of the rest of the administration on moral issues. It was nearly a year before, on May 6, 2012, that Biden said that he was “absolutely comfortable” with marriage equality. What the vice president said to me on Friday was equally brave and equally right.

Environmental leaders seized on the news, BuzzFeed reports:

[Friends of the Earth President Erich] Pica released a statement commending the vice president for “his blunt talk”; and Gene Karpinski, president of the League of Conservation Voters, issued a press release calling the remarks “a big deal” and a “game changer that should encourage Secretary Kerry and President Obama to reject the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.”

But did Biden really mean it? More from BuzzFeed:

Biden’s public position on the pipeline has been more reticent. Asked last year about Keystone, he deferred to the State Department’s ongoing review. “It’s going to go through the process and it will be made on an environmentally sound basis,” Biden said at the time.

What’s more, the vice president’s office told BuzzFeed Tuesday night that Biden’s views “haven’t changed” on the pipeline. “Any impression to the contrary would be mistaken,” an official said.

But activists cast the incident in South Carolina as a moment of candor from the often loose-lipped vice president. “I felt it was sincere at the time,” said Cooper.

The anti-Keystone “All Risk No Reward” coalition has already put together an ad referencing the incident, which will run on Beltway news site Politico, The Washington Post reports.

[The ad] first show[s] images of the recent oil spill in Arkansas, and then Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry holding hands as they confer.

“Psst … You should oppose Keystone XL too,” the ad reads. “Tell President Obama and Secretary Kerry: Joe Biden is Right.”

Biden seems to be laying the groundwork for a 2016 presidential campaign, so he might be more eager to please green voters than the rest of the administration.

Colleges and universities have started to do it. Cities like San Francisco and Seattle have started to do it. But many of the biggest environmental and conservation groups in the U.S. still haven’t made any moves to dump their investments in oil, gas, and coal companies, reports Naomi Klein in The Nation:

One would assume that green groups would want to make absolutely sure that the money they have raised in the name of saving the planet is not being invested in the companies whose business model requires cooking said planet, and which have been sabotaging all attempts at serious climate action for more than two decades.

But in some cases at least, that was a false assumption. …

Conservation International, notorious for its partnerships with oil companies and other bad actors (the CEO of Northrop Grumman is on its board, for God’s sake), has close to $22 million invested in publicly traded securities and, according to a spokesperson, “We do not have any explicit policy prohibiting investment in energy companies.” The same goes for the Ocean Conservancy, which has $14.4 million invested in publicly traded securities, including hundreds of thousands in “energy,” “materials” and “utilities” holdings. A spokesperson confirmed in writing that the organization does “not have an environmental or social screen investment policy.”

Neither organization would divulge how much of its holdings were in fossil fuel companies or release a list of its investments. But according to Dan Apfel, executive director of the Responsible Endowments Coalition, unless an institution specifically directs its investment managers not to invest in fossil fuels, it will almost certainly hold some stock, simply because those stocks (including coal-burning utilities) make up about 13 percent of the US market, according to one standard index. “All investors are basically invested in fossil fuels,” says Apfel. “You can’t be an investor that is not invested in fossil fuels, unless you’ve actually worked very hard to ensure that you’re not.”

Another group that appears very far from divesting is the Wildlife Conservation Society. Its financial statement for fiscal year 2012 describes a subcategory of investments that includes “energy, mining, oil drilling, and agricultural businesses.” How much of WCS’s $377 million endowment is being held in energy and drilling companies? It failed to provide that information despite repeated requests.

The [World Wildlife Fund]-US told me that it doesn’t invest directly in corporations—but it refused to answer questions about whether it applies environmental screens to its very sizable mixed-asset funds. The National Wildlife Federation Endowment used to apply environmental screens for its $25.7 million of investments in publicly traded securities, but now, according to a spokesperson, it tells its investment managers to “look for best-in-class companies who were implementing conservation, environmental and sustainable practices.” In other words, not a fossil fuel divestment policy.

Meanwhile, the Nature Conservancy—the richest of all the green groups—has at least $22.8 million invested in the energy sector, according to its 2012 financial statements. Along with WCS, TNC completely refused to answer any of my questions or provide any further details about its holdings or policies.

Alongside her article, Klein has published a “cheat sheet” listing 14 big green groups and specifics about what they are — or are not — doing to get their financial houses in order. The Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society come out smelling the rosiest. (Klein is on the board of 350.org, which has been pushing a divestment campaign.)

Over at Forbes.com, Tim Worstall plays the contrarian:

[I]t seems most righteous to take the profits being made in the [fossil fuel] field to use to campaign against those profits. … We, of course, can then take the moral decision as to what to do with that extra money: buy solar cells, hug panda bears, whatever. I myself might use it to subsidise the research I already do into how to make fuel cells.

Do you buy that logic? Tell us below in comments.

Mitt Romney’s got a solution to Republicans’ demographic woes. It’s not to embrace immigration reform, or stop putting misogynistic nut jobs on the ballot, or pursue economic policies that would benefit groups other than rich, old, white people.

No, Mitt Romney’s big idea is that conservatives need to have more kids.

During a commencement address he gave this past weekend at Southern Virginia University, a predominately Mormon college, Romney urged new grads to get married young and start poppin’ ‘em out.

He wove his speech around a quote from Jesus in the New Testament — “Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets” — which he interpreted to mean that one should live a deep, meaningful life, not a shallow one.

How do you do that? Well, getting married is one way of launching into the deep. I’m so glad I found Ann when I was still so young. … Some people could get married but choose to take more time, they say, for themselves. Others plan to wait until they’re well into their 30s or 40s before they think about getting married. They’re going to miss so much of living, I’m afraid. …

Now, bringing children into the world is also launching into the deep. I had friends who weren’t sure they were going to have kids. They told me they were going to buy a dog first to see how that went. A dog!

(Shouldn’t he know not to make dog jokes?)

Again from the Bible, “children are a heritage of the Lord, and the fruit of the womb is his reward. … Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them.”

And in conclusion, just in case anyone didn’t get the point:

If you meet a person you love, get married. Have a quiver full of kids if you can.

There you have it, Mitt’s wise advice for people launching into adulthood: Breed early and breed often. Hey, it worked for him.

As for how you’ll support all those kids in a stagnant economy rigged to benefit the wealthy, Romney had no advice. And as for how the planet might support all those kids in a time of climate chaos, dwindling freshwater, and pinched food supplies … come on, what are you worried about? Haven’t you heard of the Second Coming?

ThinkProgress has the story:

Mark Zuckerberg’s new political group, which bills itself as a bipartisan entity dedicated to passing immigration reform, has spent considerable resources on ads advocating a host of anti-environmental causes — including drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and constructing the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.

The umbrella group, co-founded by Facebook’s Zuckerberg, NationBuilder’s Joe Green, LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman, Dropbox’s Drew Houston, and others in the tech industry, is called FWD.US. …

FWD.US is bankrolling two subsidiary organizations to purchase TV ads to advance the overarching agenda — one run by veteran Republican political operatives and one led by Democratic strategists.

Both of those subsidiary groups have put out ads that praise efforts to expand the oil industry — by increasing offshore oil drilling as well as building Keystone XL and opening up ANWR. The ads don’t even mention immigration, but instead “appear to be trying to give political cover to vulnerable centrists, in hopes of ensuring their support for major immigration reform,” ThinkProgress writes.

So much for all that talk about shifting from an old, dirty, fossil-fuel-driven economy to a new, clean, knowledge-based one.

But it’s really notable that the Sierra Club has now joined them. Over the past decade and a half, the club has had vicious leadership battles over immigration and population. But now the board of directors, which is elected by the group’s 1.4 million members, is unanimously agreed. From Politico:

The Sierra Club’s board voted Wednesday to support comprehensive immigration reform …

The decision is a major shift for the group, which has a storied past over the issue.

Sierra Club leaders in the mid-2000s fought off an insurgent effort trying to have the club take an explicitly anti-immigration stance, with some members claiming it was needed to overcome the effects of more people living more consumptive American life styles. The effort fell apart after a pitched battle.

Other environmental groups have historically helped financially support immigration reform opponents like Numbers USA and Federation for American Immigration Reform.

Here’s the official position adopted by the Sierra Club board:

Currently at least 11 million people live in the U.S. in the shadows of our society. Many of them work in jobs that expose them to dangerous conditions, chemicals and pesticides, and many more of them live in areas with disproportionate levels of toxic air, water, and soil pollution. To protect clean air and water and prevent the disruption of our climate, we must ensure that those who are most disenfranchised and most threatened by pollution within our borders have the voice to fight polluters and advocate for climate solutions without fear.

The Sierra Club takes a position to support an equitable path to citizenship for residents of the United States who lack official documentation. America’s undocumented population should be able to earn legalization and a timely pathway to citizenship, with all the rights to fully participate in our democracy, including influencing environmental and climate policies. The pathway to citizenship should be free of unreasonable barriers, and should facilitate keeping families together and reuniting those that are split whenever possible.

If you like (or hate!) this news, you might want to check out another recent Grist post on the issue: How immigration reform can lead us to a stronger environmental movement.

From The Huffington Post:

Organizing for Action, the advocacy arm pushing the Obama administration’s agenda, will begin its next big policy push on Thursday with a focus on climate change.

The group, which was formed using the 2012 Obama campaign’s machinery, will begin what organizers view as a potential multi-year effort to lay the groundwork for legislative action on climate change. The first steps will come in the form of an email blast to the group’s reported 20 million subscribers Thursday morning featuring a “greatest hits” video compilation of what it calls the climate deniers in Congress.

From the email: “If we ever want to see real progress on climate change, we need to change the conversation in Washington — right now. We need every member of Congress to be part of the solution. OFA is going to hold these climate deniers accountable — even if we have to go one by one.”

Here’s the video:

More from HuffPo:

Climate change activists likely will be heartened by OFA’s decision to tackle the subject, which has remained in the backdrop since Congress failed to pass cap-and-trade legislation in 2009. But a closer look at the specific objectives of the campaign is less likely to satisfy the growing community of scientists and advocates who see an immediate need for bold action.

OFA is not advocating any specific policy prescription, nor does its campaign address the lingering question of whether the president will sign off on the construction of the [upper] part of the Keystone XL, the controversial pipeline that would carry heavy crude oil from Canada to refineries in Oklahoma. Instead, OFA’s goal is simply getting lawmakers to acknowledge the reality of anthropogenic climate change.

So: Immigration-reform legislation is actually making progress through our bitterly divided Congress. Gun-control legislation at least got a vote, and is expected to return to the Senate floor. On climate change, the Obama team isn’t backing any legislation at all — it’s just trying to shame GOP deniers, who are notoriously shameless, by getting you to sign a petition.

I guess that’s progress?

Score one for the EPA — and everyone else who doesn’t like the idea of a coal company blasting the tops off mountains and dumping the waste into streams.

From The Wall Street Journal:

The Environmental Protection Agency won an important legal victory Tuesday in a long-brewing battle with Arch Coal Inc. over a coal mining project in West Virginia known as Spruce No. 1.

The case tests whether the EPA can revoke a permit for the controversial practice known as mountaintop mining after another federal agency, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, has already approved it.

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the EPA can indeed revoke such a permit, acting under the authority of the Clean Water Act. (Turns out that dumping tons of dirt and rock into streams does not promote clean water.)

The ruling is “is likely to set off considerable political backlash from industry, some utilities and their congressional allies who have long contended that the EPA’s regulatory efforts are killing the coal sector,” reports the L.A. Times.

Coal-loving Rep. Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.) is leading that anti-EPA charge. “I will soon be reintroducing the Clean Water Cooperative Federalism Act, legislation the House approved last year to prevent the EPA from using the guise of clean water as a means to disrupt coal mining as they have now done with respect to the Spruce Mine in Logan County, West Virginia,” he said.

The Spruce No. 1 case isn’t resolved yet; it’s been sent back to a lower court for consideration of other issues.

But Tuesday’s ruling is a win for now, so anti-mining activists, like Mary Anne Hitt of the Sierra Club, are celebrating.

The EPA has a special Earth Day message for the State Department: You still haven’t done your homework on the Keystone XL pipeline‘s potential environmental effects.

That’s the gist of the EPA’s official comments [PDF] on the State Department’s draft environmental impact statement for the proposed pipeline, submitted on the final day of the comment period. (Procrastination: It’s not just for college students.) State’s report found that Keystone would not have significant environmental impacts, but EPA says the report included “insufficient information” to reach a conclusion on the impacts.

From The Hill:

EPA said [the State Department] failed to fully consider alternative routes for the Canada-to-Texas pipeline. …

Further, EPA urged the State Department to revisit its suggestion that Keystone would not expedite production of Canada’s carbon-intensive oil sands or significantly ramp up greenhouse gas emissions — two major assertions made by the pipeline’s critics.

It said the State Department used an outdated “energy-economic modeling effort” in its analysis that concluded oil sands would find its way to market without Keystone — likely through rail transport.

A Reuters investigation last week raised a lot of questions about whether rail is a viable alternative to pipeline transport for Alberta’s tar-sands oil.

Nebraska Watchdog has more on EPA’s analysis:

The EPA also said it has learned from the 2010 Enbridge oil spill in Michigan that tar sands spills may require different responses and can have different impacts than conventional oil spills. The agency said those differences should be more fully addressed in the State Department’s final report, noting that the Enbridge spill involved a 30-inch-wide pipeline, and Keystone XL proposes a 36-inch diameter pipe. In Michigan, the oil sands crude sank to the bottom of the Kalamazoo River and mixed with the sediment and organic matter, making it difficult to recover.

After nearly three years of cleanup, the EPA recently decided the bottom sediments will need to be dredged to protect the environment and public, largely because the oil “will not appreciably biodegrade.” The EPA recommended the final report more clearly acknowledge that in the event of a spill in water, large portions of dilbit will sink and that “submerged oil significantly changes spill response and impacts.”

The InsideClimate news site won a Pulitzer Prize last week for its reporting on the devastating effects of the 2010 Enbridge spill in Michigan.

Environmental groups and Keystone opponents are feeling vindicated by the EPA’s analysis.

Now that the comment period on the draft environmental study is over, the State Department will review the million-plus comments received and publish a final study. Then, perhaps in September, State will announce whether it thinks Keystone is in the “national interest.” And then, someday, President Obama will make the final call on whether or not to approve the pipeline.

Meanwhile, activists are gearing up to fight the pipeline through civil disobedience. The Rainforest Action Network, the company CREDO Mobile, and other groups plan to enlist tens of thousands of Americans to join in demonstrations. If that sounds like your kind of thing, sign the “Keystone XL Pledge of Resistance” and get hooked up with other activists ready to be arrested for the cause.