Joe Nocera has been hit-and-miss since joining the New York Times op-ed page. But, his Keystone XL column is truly clueless.
If he truly thinks Keystone oil will go to the U.S. and not China, if he truly thinks it's not that much dirtier than Saudi oil, and in double cluelessness, he thinks the pipeline would help "energy security," well, he's in Tom Friedman stupidity territory at least, because none of those claims are remotely close to being true.
Reality? It's dirty oil that would take a lot of cleaning up to meet U.S. environmental standards. (That's also, contra Nocera, why we still use a lot more Saudi oil than we do dirty/heavy oil from Venezuela.)
The only thing Nocera does get right is that Obama is a centrist and that fear of losing too many environmentalist votes is why he didn't already OK it.
Frank Bruni has been somewhat better, but Nocera, ugh. The NYT op-ed page is a good illustration of the Peter principle.
And, his "take 2" isn't a lot better, starting from relying on the successor to Cambridge Energy Resource Associations, IHS Cera, Dan Yergin's new outfit, as a source of information.
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