Didn’t see this one coming (except we totally did): Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman is not going to stand in the way of TransCanada building its 1,700-mile Keystone XL pipeline and shipping massive quantities of dirty, corrosive tar sands oil across Cornhusker country. Heineman says that his state’s own environmental review (separate from the one being conducted by the U.S. State Department) found nothing to worry about with TransCanada’s newly proposed pipeline route, despite persistent concerns about potential spills and massive environmental damage. And besides, TransCanada assured the state that if anything did go wrong, it would just clean up its mess lickety split, no harm no foul -- just like its competitor, Enbridge, continued to clean up a tar sands spill into Michigan’s Kalamazoo River more than two years later (pictured above). It probably helped the governor’s peace of mind that the firm hired to perform Nebraska’s assessment of the project has close financial ties to TransCanada, so there was no possible reason for the review not to be completely thorough or objective. Oh wait... New York Times
Over to you, Obama: So now President Obama, who surprised pretty much everyone by putting climate change front and center in his second inaugural address, gets to make the final decision on whether to approve Keystone XL. (Well, technically, it’s the State Department -- because the pipeline crosses international borders -- but no one thinks the agency will give the go-ahead if the president objects.) So Obama gets an early opportunity to show how serious he really is about fighting global warming. Don’t expect a quick decision, though -- the State Department now says it can’t finish its environmental review until after March. Hey, there’s this firm in Nebraska that’ll be happy to do it for you, guys, with no preconceived notions or anything. Call Heineman for their number. Associated Press, Reuters
Must read: The latest edition of MIT professor Kerry Emanuel’s What We Know About Climate Change has been published. If only it had come out before the holidays ... your Today OnEarth correspondent could have used a stocking stuffer for all of his climate-denying, Fox News-loving relatives. (Wonder if the president got an early copy?) Mother Jones
These windows are whack: Best/worst paragraph we’ve read so far today: “Because of its location on migratory routes, Chicago’s skyline kills more birds than any other in the country. Navigating by the stars and hungry after flights from as far away as Peru, the birds arrive on Lake Michigan’s shoreline in search of food. There, the twinkling city and its canyons become a death trap.” Grist
Insert smelly French joke here: First the air pollution in Beijing was making all the headlines (and getting its own catchy meme -- the “airpocalypse.”) Now the air in France, apparently not willing to be upstaged, is getting in on the act. A cloud of foul gas escaped from a chemical plant in Normandy this week, then drifted over the French countryside and even across the English Channel, gagging people with the smell of rotten eggs along the way. Officials said the chemicals in the cloud are largely harmless at low doses -- if you ignore the nausea created by the nostril-assaulting odor. Apparently even noses accustomed to foul-smelling cheese are offended. ABC News
Cat fight!: Two kinds of animal lovers are at war in New Zealand: cat fanciers, and a guy who wants to eradicate all felines from the island, because of the damage they’re doing to native birds and other animals. To be clear, this anti-cat crusader doesn’t suggest killing them off (well, “not necessarily,” he says) -- just spaying and neutering them so they can’t breed more. But it seems Kiwi cat owners aren’t willing to pledge that their current tabby will be their last. Associated Press
So long, and thanks for...: Want to see a video of a dolphin that “asks” divers for help getting untangled from fishing line? Yes, yes you do. TreeHugger
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