6 facts about climate change

WASHINGTON — President Obama on Tuesday rejected an attempt by lawmakers to force his hand on the Keystone XL oil pipeline, using his veto pen to sweep aside one of the first major challenges to his authority by the new Republican Congress.

With no fanfare and a 104-word letter to the Senate , Mr. Obama vetoed legislation to authorize construction of a 1,179-mile pipeline that would carry 800,000 barrels of heavy petroleum a day from the oil sands of Alberta to ports and refineries on the Gulf Coast.

In exercising the unique power of the Oval Office for only the third time since his election in 2008, Mr. Obama accused lawmakers of seeking to circumvent the administration’s approval process for the pipeline by cutting short “consideration of issues that could bear on our national interest.”

By rejecting the legislation, Mr. Obama retains the right to make a final judgment on the pipeline on his own timeline. But he did little to calm the political debate over Keystone, which has become a symbol of the continuing struggle between environmentalists and conservatives.

Backers of the pipeline denounced Mr. Obama’s actions and vowed to keep fighting for its construction.

The House speaker, John A. Boehner of Ohio, called the president’s veto “ a national embarrassment ” and accused Mr. Obama of being “too close to environmental extremists” and “too invested in left-fringe politics.”

Environmentalists quickly hailed the decision, which they said clearly indicated Mr. Obama’s intention to reject the pipeline’s construction. The White House has said the president will decide whether to allow the pipeline when all of the environmental reviews are completed in the coming weeks.

“Republicans in Congress continued to waste everyone’s time with a bill destined to go nowhere, just to satisfy the agenda of their big oil allies,” said Michael Brune, the executive director of the Sierra Club. “The president has all the evidence he needs to reject Keystone XL now, and we are confident that he will.”

Since 2011, the proposed Keystone pipeline has emerged as a broader symbol of the partisan political clash over energy, climate change and the economy.

Most energy policy experts say the project will have a minimal impact on jobs and climate. But Republicans insist that the pipeline will increase employment by linking the United States to an energy supply from a friendly neighbor. Environmentalists say it will contribute to ecological destruction and damaging climate change.

Mr. Obama has hinted that he thinks both sides have inflated their arguments, but he has not said what he will decide.

In his State of the Union address last month, Mr. Obama urged lawmakers to move past the pipeline debate, calling for passage of a comprehensive infrastructure plan. “Let’s set our sights higher than a single oil pipeline,” he said.

Republican leaders had promised to use the veto, which was expected, to denounce Mr. Obama as a partisan obstructionist. They made good on that promise minutes after the president’s veto message was read on the floor of the Senate on Tuesday.

“The fact he vetoed the bipartisan Keystone Pipeline in private shows how out of step he is with the priorities of the American people, who overwhelmingly support this vital jobs and infrastructure project,” Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, said in a statement .

In recent months, the environmental activists — who have spent years marching, protesting and getting arrested outside the White House in their quest to persuade Mr. Obama to reject the project — have said they are increasingly optimistic that their efforts will succeed.

“Hopefully the ongoing legislative charade has strengthened his commitment to do the right thing,” said Bill McKibben, a founder of the group 350.org, which has led the campaign to urge Mr. Obama to reject the pipeline.

The debate began in 2008, when the TransCanada Corporation applied for a permit to construct the pipeline. The State Department is required to determine whether the pipeline is in the national interest, but the last word on whether the project will go forward ultimately rests with the president.

Mr. Obama has delayed making that decision until all the legal and environmental reviews of the process are completed. He has said a critical factor in his decision will be whether the project contributes to climate change.

Last year, an 11-volume environmental impact review by the State Department concluded that oil extracted from the Canadian oil sands produced about 17 percent more carbon pollution than conventionally extracted oil.

But the review said the pipeline was unlikely to contribute to a significant increase in planet-warming greenhouse gases because the fuel would probably be extracted from the oil sands and sold with or without construction of the pipeline.

This month, environmentalists pointed to a letter from the Environmental Protection Agency that they said proved that the pipeline could add to greenhouse gases .

The question of whether to build the pipeline comes as Mr. Obama hopes to make climate change policy a cornerstone of his legacy. This summer, the E.P.A. is expected to issue sweeping regulations to cut greenhouse gas pollution from power plants, a move experts say would have vastly more impact on the nation’s carbon footprint than construction of the Keystone pipeline.

In December, world leaders hope to sign a global United Nations accord in Paris that would commit every nation in the world to enacting plans to reduce its rates of planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions. In the coming months, countries are expected to begin putting forward those policies for cutting carbon emissions.

While the Keystone pipeline is not expected to be part of the United States climate change plan, a public presidential decision on the project could be interpreted as a message about Mr. Obama’s symbolic commitment to the issue of climate change.

Until that decision is made, however, both sides of the Keystone fight are stepping up their tactics. Environmental groups are planning more marches and White House petitions, while Republicans in Congress are looking for ways to bring the Keystone measure back to Mr. Obama’s desk.

Senator John Hoeven, Republican of North Dakota, who sponsored the Keystone bill, said he would consider adding language requiring construction of the pipeline to other legislation, such as spending bills to fund federal agencies, which could make a veto far more politically risky for Mr. Obama.

A final decision by the president could come soon. Last month, a court in Nebraska reached a verdict in a case about the pipeline’s route through the state, clearing the way for construction. And this month, final reviews of the pipeline by eight federal agencies were completed.

However, Mr. Obama is under no legal obligation to make a final decision, and there is no official timetable for a decision. He could approve or deny the project at any time — or leave the decision to the next president.

HOUSTON — During his presidential campaign, Donald J. Trump repeatedly hailed the Keystone XL pipeline as a vital jobs program and one that sharply contrasted his vision for the economy with that of Hillary Clinton.

“Today we begin to make things right,” President Trump said Friday morning shortly after the State Department granted the pipeline giant TransCanada a permit for Keystone construction, a reversal of Obama administration policy.

The pipeline would link oil producers in Canada and North Dakota with refiners and export terminals on the Gulf Coast. It has long been an object of contention, with environmentalists saying it would contribute to climate change and the project’s proponents — Republicans, some labor unions and the oil industry — contending that it would help guarantee national energy security for decades to come.

When President Barack Obama rejected the project in late 2015, he said it would undermine American leadership in curbing reliance on carbon fuels.

The announcement on Friday said the State Department “considered a range of factors, including, but not limited to, foreign policy; energy security; environmental, cultural and economic impacts; and compliance with applicable law and policy.”

The new secretary of state, Rex W. Tillerson, formerly the chief executive of Exxon Mobil, had recused himself from the decision. The announcement said the permit was signed by the under secretary of state for political affairs, Thomas A. Shannon Jr.

The pipeline still faces hurdles before it can be built. It needs the approval of the Nebraska Public Service Commission and local landowners who are concerned about their water and land rights. Protests are likely since the project has become an important symbol for the environmental movement, with the Canadian oil sands among the most carbon-intensive oil supplies. Mining the oil sands requires vast amounts of energy for extraction and processing.

In addition, interest among many oil companies in the oil sands is waning amid sluggish oil prices. Extraction from the oil sands, situated in the sub-Arctic boreal forest, is expensive. Statoil and Total, two European energy giants, have abandoned their production projects. In recent weeks, Royal Dutch Shell agreed to sell most of its oil sands assets for $8.5 billion. And Exxon Mobil wrote down 3.5 billion barrels of reserves, conceding the oil sands were not economically attractive enough to develop for the next few years at least.

Nevertheless, Canadian production continues to grow as projects that were conceived when prices were higher begin to operate. And the Keystone effort is central to the future of TransCanada, a major force in the Canadian oil patch.

The United States Chamber of Commerce and other business groups applauded the administration’s action. Jack Gerard, the president and chief executive of the American Petroleum Institute, the primary industry lobbying arm, said the decision was “welcome news” and was “critical to creating American jobs, growing the economy and making our nation more energy secure.’’

Opponents say the pipeline is unnecessary at a time when American oil production is soaring and future demand has been put in question by increasingly efficient cars, electric cars and growing concerns over climate change.

“The Keystone pipeline would be a straw running through the heart of America to transport the dirtiest oil in the world to the thirstiest foreign markets,” said Senator Edward J. Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat.

Originally planned to open in 2012, the Keystone XL would transport up to 830,000 barrels a day of Canadian and North Dakota crude to Steele City, Neb., where it would connect with existing pipelines to deliver the sludgy oil to refineries in Texas and Louisiana for processing. Most of the refined product would probably be exported, or it might enable domestic producers to export more oil produced in Texas, Louisiana and Oklahoma.

When the project was in the planning stages, the United States was highly dependent on oil from the Middle East. The drilling boom in shale fields in Texas, North Dakota, Oklahoma and Colorado was still in its infancy.

But in recent years, domestic production has nearly doubled, and the United States now exports increasing amounts of oil and natural gas. Oil prices have been slashed in half over the last three years, although many analysts predict that petroleum prices will rebound in the next decade, when the pipeline would begin to operate.

For Canada, and especially Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the pipeline represents a mixed blessing. The pipeline would most likely raise the price of Canadian oil, which is now even more depressed than other international grades.

Mr. Trudeau publicly supports the pipeline as a tool to give Canada’s economy a lift, but an increase in oil sands production could undercut his commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as promised in the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

“We are pleased with the U.S. decision,” said the natural resources minister of Canada, Jim Carr. “Keystone XL will create thousands of good middle-class jobs for Canadians during construction.’’

Though Mr. Obama ultimately took a different stand, his State Department concluded in an environmental-impact statement that the pipeline project would not add to carbon pollution because the oil would find its way to market one way or another. Proponents have argued that rail or truck transport is more polluting and dangerous than pipelines.

That argument has been weakened somewhat with the fall in oil prices in recent years that has made oil sands production less attractive on oil markets.

Protests helped sway the Obama administration to reject the project, and environmentalists have been further emboldened by demonstrations last year in North Dakota, mostly by Native American groups, that have delayed another project, the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Environmental groups are already promising to aid local groups in blocking the Keystone pipeline’s construction. “We’ll use every tool in the kit to stop this dangerous tar sands oil pipeline project,” said Rhea Suh, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The project would provide for thousands of construction jobs, and it has attracted the support of several labor unions.

Mr. Trump has made infrastructure-building a centerpiece of his efforts to spur economic growth.

“The fact is that this $8 billion investment in American energy was delayed for so long demonstrates how the American government has failed the American people,” Mr. Trump said on Friday as he met with his National Economic Council at the White House.

At the beginning of his term, he instructed the Commerce Department to establish a plan requiring that new pipelines be constructed with American-made materials like steel. But the White House has since suggested that the Keystone project would not be subjected to those rules because it is not a new project.

WASHINGTON — The State Department released a report on Friday concluding that the Keystone XL pipeline would not substantially worsen carbon pollution, leaving an opening for President Obama to approve the politically divisive project.

The department’s long-awaited environmental impact statement appears to indicate that the project could pass the criteria Mr. Obama set forth in a speech last summer when he said he would approve the 1,700-mile pipeline if it would not “significantly exacerbate” the problem of greenhouse gas emissions. Although the pipeline would carry 830,000 barrels of oil a day from Canada to the Gulf Coast, the report appears to indicate that if it were not built, carbon-heavy oil would still be extracted at the same rate from pristine Alberta forest and transported to refineries by rail instead.

The report sets up a difficult decision for Secretary of State John Kerry, who now must make a recommendation on the international project to Mr. Obama. Mr. Kerry, who hopes to make action on climate change a key part of his legacy, has never publicly offered his personal views on the pipeline. Aides said Mr. Kerry was preparing to “dive into” the 11-volume report and would give high priority to the issue of global warming in making the decision. His aides offered no timetable.

“He’ll deliberate and take the time he needs,” said Kerri-Ann Jones, the assistant secretary of state for oceans and international affairs.

Environmentalists said they were dismayed at some of the report’s conclusions and disputed its objectivity, but they also said it offered Mr. Obama reasons to reject the pipeline. They said they planned to intensify efforts to try to influence Mr. Kerry’s decision. For more than two years, environmentalists have protested the project and been arrested in demonstrations against it around the country. But many Republicans and oil industry executives, who support the pipeline because they say it creates jobs and increases supplies from a friendly source of oil, embraced the findings.

The State Department is expected to shortly release the results of an inspector general’s investigation into the preparation of an earlier draft of the environmental impact report. The investigation was ordered after an environmental group obtained documents indicating that some consultants for the firm that wrote the draft report had previously done work for TransCanada, the company seeking to build the pipeline. If investigators determine a conflict of interest in the preparation of that draft, the State Department may have to conduct a new environmental review.

In light of the investigation, environmentalists were particularly critical of the report released on Friday.

“In what could be perceived as eagerness to please the oil industry and Canadian government, the State Department is issuing this report amidst an ongoing investigation into conflicts of interest, and lying, by its contractor,” said Erich Pica, the president of Friends of the Earth .

Some environmentalists saw reason for optimism in the review, which models several possible future oil market possibilities. Most involve a future of high oil prices and robust demand, in which the oil sands crude is rapidly developed with or without the Keystone pipeline. However, the report offers one alternative sequence, in which oil prices and demand are low. In that case, not building the pipeline might slow development, and thus slow carbon emissions. That possibility is unlikely, but it could provide the administration something to point to should it deny the project.

“We’re taking the inclusion of that scenario as good news,” said Susan Casey-Lefkowitz, director of international programs at the Natural Resources Defense Council .

The oil industry applauded the review.

“After five years and five environmental reviews, time and time again the Department of State analysis has shown that the pipeline is safe for the environment,” said Cindy Schild, the senior manager of refining and oil sands programs at the American Petroleum Institute , which lobbies for the oil industry.

There are political and strategic advantages to approving the pipeline: It would strengthen relations with Canada and provide a conduit for oil from a friendly neighbor. If the pipeline is approved this year, it could also help the re-election campaigns of two vulnerable Democratic senators from oil-rich states — Mary L. Landrieu of Louisiana and Mark Begich of Alaska — while silencing critics who for years have urged the president to move ahead with the pipeline.

Environmentalists said that if Mr. Obama were to approve the pipeline, it would destroy his efforts to make progress on climate change. Thomas F. Steyer, a California hedge fund billionaire and a major donor to Mr. Obama’s presidential campaigns, has started an advocacy group, NextGen Climate Action , that has spent heavily campaigning against the pipeline.

Larry Schweiger, the president of the National Wildlife Federation , said: “This is a large source of carbon that’s going to be unleashed. We’re headed in a terribly wrong direction with this project, and I don’t see how that large increase in carbon is going to be offset.”

Although the pipeline is a potent political symbol, its true impact on both the environment and the economy would be more limited than either its supporters or its opponents suggest.

The new State Department report concludes that the process used for producing the oil — by extracting what are called tar sands or oil sands from the Alberta forest — creates about 17 percent more greenhouse gas emissions than traditional oil. But the report concludes that this heavily polluting oil will still be brought to market. Energy companies are already moving the oil out of Canada by rail.

“At the end of the day, there’s a consensus among most energy experts that the oil will get shipped to market no matter what,” said Robert McNally, an energy consultant who was a senior energy and economic adviser to President George W. Bush. “It’s less important than I think it was perceived to be a year ago, both politically and on oil markets.”

The new State Department analysis took into account the growing global demand for oil and the rapidly growing practice of moving oil by rail in areas where pipelines have not been built. “Given the anticipated outlook of oil prices and the cost of development, no single project will likely affect the rate of extraction,” said a senior State Department official, who asked not to be named under the ground rules imposed by the department.

But moving oil by rail has its own hazards. As the practice has increased in recent years, so have incidents of explosions of rail cars carrying oil.

Supporters of the pipeline say it will create jobs, though the number may be limited. A study by the Cornell Global Labor Institute concluded that the pipeline would create about 3,900 construction jobs over two years.

Privately, people close to Mr. Obama say that although he is committed to building a climate legacy, he does not see the pipeline as a central part of that effort. Instead, the president is moving forward with a set of Environmental Protection Agency regulations on coal-fired power plants, the nation’s largest source of greenhouse gas emissions.

Those regulations do not have the potent political symbolism of the pipeline, but could have a far greater impact on the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions by freezing construction of new coal plants and closing hundreds of existing ones.

Ahead of making his decision, Mr. Kerry will take counsel from the leaders of eight other government agencies: the Departments of Defense, Justice, Interior, Commerce, Transportation, Energy and Homeland Security and the E.P.A. It is unclear when the decision might be made, but some close to the process say it could take as long as a year.

Environmentalists are preparing to influence the next stages of the decision-making process.

“This is the most scrutinized pipeline in the nation’s history,” said Brigham A. McCown, a former administrator of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. “The fact that it’s lasted as long as it has means one of two things. They’ve either done a very good, thorough job, or they’ve slowed it down due to political pressure.”

It was snowing steadily when I arrived at Stowe Mountain Resort last Tuesday. I was surprised by the absence of lift lines as I walked onto the bright red gondola. I was even more surprised when I dropped into a favorite ski run and snow boiled up around my thighs and a cold spray of snow hit my face.

A storm that had been forecast to deliver four inches instead dropped almost three feet of snow on Stowe over three days. The same storm buried Mount Snow with four feet and set a precipitation record in Burlington, Vt.

“This is by far the best week I’ve ever had riding,” said Emily Dierks, 44, a snowboarder from Boston, as we rode the gondola at Stowe.

As the spring equinox arrives, at a point in the ski season when many areas wrap things up, snowfall records at ski areas across the country are falling as fast as the feathery flakes, especially in California and Utah. Skiers are reaping the bounty — if they can get to the slopes and the lifts are running.

Ski areas nearing record snowfalls include Palisades Tahoe (662 inches, or 55 feet) and Mammoth Mountain (618 inches) in California, and numerous resorts in Utah: Alta (681 inches, the most snow recorded by this date ), Park City (479 inches, a record), Deer Valley (485 inches, a record), Solitude (623 inches, near record) and Snowbird (625 inches, near record).

This week, Brighton , also in Utah, is closing in on its record snowfall of 751 inches, “the equivalent of 10 Subarus or nine moose stacked on top of one another,” wrote Alison Palmintere, communications director of Ski Utah, in an email.

“The snow coverage at resorts is amazing right now, probably top five all-time,” said Michael Reitzell, president of Ski California, in an email. And more snow is expected this week.

In the Northeast, the late-season snow comes after a difficult year for many areas, which faced a snow drought in the early part of the season. Mike Solimano, the president and general manager of Killington and Pico ski areas, told me that the mountains’ accumulation is about even with the five-year average. But they got very little of it in December and January, when snowfall was 30 percent below average. “We are getting it all in March,” he said. “The annual total doesn’t tell the whole story.”

Are skiers paying attention to this late season bumper crop? Sam von Trapp, who runs the Trapp Family Lodge in Stowe, bemoans the fact that by late March “a lot people have moved on to the next sport. But it’s a great opportunity for people who know to take advantage of late season rates and less crowded conditions at ski areas.” Late season lodging discounts of 30 percent or more typically begin around April 1.

The dark side of snow

In the West, the bumper crop of snow may help ease issues of water shortages and wildfires , at least temporarily. But the snowfall has also created dangerous conditions, especially in California, where snowbound residents have died while trapped in their homes and buildings have collapsed. Heavy snows can also mean increased avalanche danger, especially in the backcountry .

Some ski areas have been overwhelmed by the snowy onslaught.

“These historic snowstorms have been challenging — we’ve seen lifts completely buried, increased avalanche activity and highway closures to name a few,” said Lauren Burke, a communications director at Mammoth Mountain, in an email. “There are many locations around the mountain where the snow has reached the chairlift height so there is a seemingly endless effort to dig out across the mountain in order to safely operate lifts.”

Skiers attempting to reach Alta and Snowbird on Highway 210 in Utah’s Little Cottonwood Canyon have had to contend with a record 22 road closures this season, compared with just four road closures last winter. The closures last anywhere from eight hours to two days as road crews perform avalanche control work and clear snow.

Berkshire East and Catamount ski areas in Western Massachusetts received nearly three feet of snow but were unable to open on March 14 and 15 because of power outages caused by the storm.

“This week’s storm is a harbinger of climate change in some ways,” said Gillian Galford, a professor of environmental science at the University of Vermont and the director of the Vermont Climate Assessment , which showed that Vermont’s winters could be shortened by up to a month by 2080. “We’re in a sweet spot in time where increasing precipitation and cold winters may create good winter recreation conditions. But in a few decades it could fall as rain.”

Heavy storms forced Palisades Tahoe to close for three days this winter. But Patrick Lacey, a resort spokesman, said that each day the resort closed in winter brought so much snow that “it is going to open up five to 10 extra days of skiing in the spring.”

Extra months of skiing and riding

Among the resorts that will stay open at least until Memorial Day are Mammoth and Palisades Tahoe, in California; Snowbird, in Utah; Arapahoe Basin, in Colorado; and Killington, in Vermont. Some areas are hinting that they may ski into June and even July.

Other areas extending their seasons a week or more into late April include Colorado’s Aspen Snowmass and Steamboat ; Park City and Solitude, in Utah; and Big Bear Mountain Resort, in California.

The longer season means that spring skiing passes offer a greater value. Killington has already sold 20 percent more of its $379 spring skiing passes than it did last year. The 2023- 2024 multi-mountain Ikon Pass (starting at $829 for the Ikon Base Pass, which limits days at some resorts) is valid starting in April at select ski areas, including Mammoth and Palisades Tahoe, adding months of skiing to the value of the pass.

As snow continues falling and skiers keep coming, ski areas are making the most of the record season.

“It’s been awesome,” said Caroline Dillon, 31, a ski patroller at Alta, who is on the mountain before dawn each day doing avalanche control. “I’m really tired but I’m really happy.”

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