For those in the business of reading political tea leaves the speech last week in Jakarta by Secretary of State John Kerry is an important milestone.Ok so I'm mixing metaphors, its an important lump of tea leaves just doesn't do it and furthermore makes light of an issue far too important for us to make light of.
Kerry's speech was the strongest statement yet from an administration that has already made Climate change a cornerstone issue. Most important, Kerry did not mince words. He spoke more like a scientist than as a politician, noting that when 98.9 percent of the scientists say that the world is round, we don't give equal time to the Flat Earth Society and we should treat climate change the same way or we will destroy the only home we have.
Kerry did not polish the rough edges of his speech, he did not "put a shine on it" as some would say; he came right out and said that Climate change was a weapon of mass destruction that we were arming against our own future.
A speech like this is not done in a vacuum. The Secretary of State has plenty of latitude to do his/her job of course but when he makes a speech as powerful as this one, he has to have run it up the flagpole with the White House.
If John Kerry has not intentionally teed up the Keystone Pipeline for a veto by President Obama then he has at the very least put his hand on the scales. Kudos to him for that.
Keystone is bad for the planet but the root problem is not the pipeline, it is the harvesting of the Tar Sands themselves and until we find a way to address the root problem, a Keystone veto will only be a wrinkle in the rug that will pop up somewhere else in the house of cards we call Planet Earth.
~wdk
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