She's doing everything one would do, in order to be the "Anti-Hilary" for 2016.
Elizabeth Warren Comes Down Hard Against Global Warming, Separates Herself From Hillary Clinton on Climate Change
by Eric Zuesse
On Friday, December 20th, Democratic U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren finally separated herself clearly from former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, regarding the issue of climate change and global warming.
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On December 17th, the Republican House budget chief, Paul Ryan, threatened to drive the U.S. Government into default unless President Obama approves the Keystone XL Pipeline .
President Obama himself is now trying to force the European Union to relax their anti-global-warming regulations so as to permit them to import the Kochs' dirty oil. His agent in this effort is his new U.S. Trade Representative, Michael Froman, from Wall Street.
But on December 20th, Senator Warren signed onto a letter criticizing the Obama Administration's apparent effort to force the European Union to agree to purchase this oil. As the Huffington Post's Kate Sheppard reported, "Six senators and 16 House members, all Democrats, wrote a letter to Froman on Friday asking him to elaborate on his position on the matter. 'If these reports are accurate, USTR's actions could undercut the EU's commendable goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions in its transportation sectors," these 22 Democratic lawmakers wrote.
This is, essentially, a rebellion by 22 progressive congressional Democrats against the Clinton-Obama effort to provide a market for the Kochs' dirty oil. This letter was actually written by Representative Henry Waxman and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, and co-signed by Senators Barbara Boxer, Ed Markey, Dick Durbin, Jeff Merkley, and Elizabeth Warren; and Representatives John Conyers, Jr., Barbara Lee, Raśl M. Grijalva, Rush Holt, Louise M. Slaughter, Jerrold Nadler, Judy Chu, Peter DeFazio, Anna G. Eshoo, Sam Farr, Peter Welch, Alan Lowenthal, Mark Pocan, and Steve Cohen.
What is at issue in the Keystone XL and Alberta tar sands matter is governmental policies that will determine whether the tar-sands oil will undercut the production-costs of normal oil. Right now, normal oil costs far less to mine, process, and get to market (because tar sands oil is so dirty and so land-locked). However, if the Kochs win, then the existing governmental policies will change in ways that will eliminate this cost-advantage of normal oil. The result of that would be increased sales and burning of the tar-sands oil, and thus reduced sales and burning of cleaner oil. That would throw into the atmosphere "more than $70 billion in additional damages associated with climate change over 50 years." However, that added $70 billion would be the added harms to the entire world, not to the owners of the tar sands.
President Obama holds the sole authority to approve or disapprove this project, because it crosses the international border, but he has delayed this decision for years, because he doesn't want to enrage the environmental community, and also because his tipping his hand in that way would be almost entirely a waste if he cannot first get Europe to weaken their environmental standards so as to allow this oil to compete in Europe with normal oil as if it weren't far more damaging to the climate than normal oil is -- just ignore that harm being added to the entire planet.
Thus, Senator Warren has now joined with the progressives on two big issues that arouse intense opposition to her from the aristocrats who finance most political campaigns: She opposes the taxpayer-handouts to Wall Street, and she now also opposes the entire planet's, basically, environmental handouts, to the owners of the most-harmfully polluting corporations, such as Koch Industries. (The other owners of tar-sands oil are Conoco-Phillips, Exxon-Mobil, and Chevron-Texaco.)
This could be a turning-point in Warren's political career. She's no longer at war against only the financial industry corruption that dominates the conservative, Clinton and Obama, establishment within the Democratic Party (and all of the Republican Party) , but she is also at war against their environmental corruption. For yet another example of that corruption: On 2 October 2013, Joe Romm at Think Progress headlined "More Bad News For Fracking: IPCC Warns Methane Traps Much More Heat," and he reported that, "The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports that methane ... is far more potent a greenhouse gas" than previously known, so bad it "would gut the climate benefits of switching from coal." And then, just five days after that, Jon Campbell in upstate New York headlined "In Oneida County, Hillary Clinton Touts U.S. Oil-and-Gas Production," and he reported that at Hamilton College, Hillary Clinton praised fracking for methane, by saying, "What that means for viable manufacturing and industrialization in this country is enormous." However, if Warren won't be able to get either Wall Street or the oil patch to finance her political campaigns, then how can she even possibly rise within the power-structure?
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.
https://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/12/23-5 
