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Articles by Staff Writer Jake Bittle

Jake Bittle is a staff writer at Grist, covering climate change, energy, and natural disasters. He is the author of The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration. He is writing a book about Kern County, California, and is currently a New America fellow.

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Featured Article

On the first day of his presidency back in 2021, Joe Biden revoked a key permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have brought oil from Canada’s tar sands into the U.S. The decision to kill Keystone XL was perhaps Biden’s clearest gift to the environmental movement. 

But now, five years later, a family of Wyoming oil tycoons is bringing the Keystone concept back from the dead — and the Trump administration is signaling its support. Last week, President Trump signed a presidential permit for the so-called Bridger expansion pipeline, which would likely deliver oil from the carbon-intensive Alberta tar sands to a pipeline hub in central Wyoming, 647 miles away. From there, the oil could move through other pipelines to key refineries as far south as the Gulf of Mexico.

“Slightly different than the last administration,” Trump said ⁠at the White House last Thursday when he signed the presidential permit. “They wouldn’t sign a pipeline deal, and we have pipelines going up.”

The president... Read more

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