"Silicon Valley's Elite Comes Out Against the Keystone XL"

From BusinessWeek:

In a March 7 letter to Secretary of State John Kerry that was made public on Monday, more than 200 business owners, venture capitalists, and the odd Stanford B-school professor have asserted that the proposed Keystone XL pipeline is not in the economic interests of the U.S. Over its lifetime, the 875-mile extension linking Alberta tar sands to refineries and tankers in the Gulf of Mexico would cost billions more than it brings in, the letter states, and “these costs will be borne by U.S. citizens, businesses and taxpayers, while the profits from the pipeline will accrue to private corporations many of which are foreign interests.”

Sent by Washington-based Environmental Entrepreneurs (E2), the letter refutes the State Department’s recent report (PDF) suggesting that the tar sands will be developed with or without the Keystone XL and carbon emissions from the extraction and consumption of its oil reserves will thereby be negligibly higher with the pipeline in place. E2′s business leaders contend that the lower transportation costs of the Keystone XL are critical—if not indispensable—to the tar sands development plans, and they note that tar sands developers themselves are on record as saying as much. “Markets rely on both price and policy signals when making investment decisions,” the letter states. “While increasing prices for crude oil have driven interest in further development of tar sands, this development is not inevitable without continued high prices and policy support.”

E2 bills itself as “a non-profit, non-partisan group of business leaders and others who promote sound environmental policies that drive economic growth,” and its members claim to have collectively created more than 570,000 jobs while managing more than $175 billion in venture and private-equity capital. E2 is also an affiliate of the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), an environmental advocacy group that—with Robert Redford as its spokesman—has been against the Keystone XL from the start....MORE