These eco-radicals do not give up easily, I’ll give them that. The State Department’s environmental impact report released in January essentially concluded — as they have now done several times over — that the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline will have a negligible net impact on climate change, because Canada plans on developing their oil sands regardless and will ship them through alternate routes and methods even if Keystone XL never becomes a reality. The self-proclaimed green groups didn’t like that at all, which of course necessitates that they do their own report, via HuffPo:

The State Department’s final environmental impact analysis for the proposed Keystone XL pipeline downplays the significance the pipeline would have for development of the Canadian tar sands, according to a new analysis from a United Kingdom-based group. The analysis also argues that the State Department underestimated the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that would come with that development.

The Carbon Tracker Initiative, a nonprofit that focuses on how carbon budgets interact with financial markets, released the new report on Monday, making its case for why Keystone XL is more important in the context of global emissions than the State Department’s study indicates. …

Carbon Tracker says the government’s analysis “does not fully explore” how the lower transportation costs of pipeline transportation, when compared to rail transportation, would affect future oil sands production. The price of oil would have to be higher to make shipping by rail cost effective. Given the difference in price points at which the various methods of shipping become cost effective, oil companies could produce much as 525,000 more barrels of oil per day out of the tar sands if they have access to the Keystone XL pipeline.

“The price of oil would have to be higher to make shipping by rail cost effective.” …Man, you guys catch on fast. That the Keystone XL pipeline would be the most efficient, cost-effective, and not to mention ecologically sound method of transport is kind of the idea. Yes, the pipeline will indeed likely allow Canada to develop those oil-sands resources at a fast rate than they otherwise might, but those oil sands will get developed eventually, and without Keystone XL, Canada will likely build their own outward pipelines to ship their stuff to Asia — feats on which they’ve already gotten started. This is really just another eco-radical attempt at trying to persuade the world to act directly against its own economic interests and wean themselves off of fossil fuels — and they’re going to need to do a lot better than that if they want the world to stop building pipelines that enable fossil-fuel development.

In a letter to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry as part of the National Interest Determination review of the Alberta-to-U.S.-Gulf project, Canada’s ambassador to the United States, Gary Doer, plays up Canada’s climate change record and promises more to come, including long-delayed action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in its oil industry and openness to act jointly with the U.S. on new regulation. …

Coincidentally, three other major oil pipelines are making leaps forward this week, demonstrating the denial of Keystone XL, as advocated by the environmental movement, won’t cap growth of Canada’s oil sands or give the president much to brag about on the climate front.

TransCanada Corp., proponent of KXL, said Tuesday it has taken the first step toward a regulatory filing for its Energy East pipeline from Alberta to the Canadian East Coast; Earlier, Enbridge Inc. said it plans to double the capacity of its Line 3 from Alberta to Wisconsin, which the company says doesn’t require a presidential permit because it’s a maintenance project. On Thursday, the National Energy Board will hand down a ruling on whether its Line 9 can be reversed and expanded to carry Alberta oil through Ontario and Quebec.