Energy Secretary Steven Chu is a scientist and a scholar. He surely knows the effects of production of tar sands oil on climate change. He knows that it takes a massive amount of energy to do the strip mining necessary to extract tar sands oil. He knows about the potential for environmental damage from a 1,700-mile pipeline to distribute that tar sands oil from the source in Alberta, Canada to refineries in Texas. He’s a smart man.

But he happens to work for an Administration that supports the tar sands pipeline.

The story is basically this. Oil production is static, if not falling, and emerging markets are increasing and broadening their wealth, leading more and more Chinese and Indians and Indonesians and Brazilians to desire a higher standard of living. Invariably this means oil demand goes up. Therefore, when global GDP growth increases, demand for oil and then the price of oil increases.

And around the world, but especially in a country like ours that’s extremely dependent on oil, this creates a price shock and a reduction in growth. The political cartoon of this would be a man named “economic growth” jumping to the ceiling and consistently hitting his head on “the oil supply.” So we’re in a constant cycle of low growth and stable oil prices, followed by higher growth and oil shocks, which knocks the economy back to lower growth.

As expected, the State Department essentially gave its environmental blessing to the Keystone XL pipeline today, which would stretch nearly 1,700 miles from Alberta, Canada to Texas, and which would deliver as much as 700,000 barrels of noxious tar sands oil every day. This is not a final approval on the project, but getting a favorable environmental impact study (EIS) is a necessary hurdle before final approval.

The next couple months will be consumed with discussion about the Catfood Commission II, and their efforts to reach a $1.5 trillion or higher deficit package. This will frustrate any attempt to pivot to jobs. But as long as that’s known, activists and organizations can point out best practices on that committee while trying to force the conversation in a different direction.

One way to do that is to consistently point out that job creation is the best and most robust way to ensure any deficit reduction, and that reducing the deficit with 9% unemployment is a near-impossibility. Another way is to point out how much deficit savings can be gained merely by engaging in the vitally necessary actions of protecting the earth from climate change.

The New York Times editorializes on the federal gas tax today, which is a bit depressing. The tax is much smaller than in other countries around the world, and yet when it expires September 30, what is normally a routine extension could turn into another hostage situation from the Tea Party crowd.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen and Sen. Chuck Schumer tallied up what amounted to a list of demands from Democrats on revenue in the debt limit negotiations. They are a collection of real but pretty mild steps.

There may be ongoing claims that will drain out a bit more money. But it won’t be much more than 20% of the total funds negotiated that will be used. I don’t know whether this can be attributed to program eligibility or a lack of publicity or bad design. But that number seems quite low compared to the devastation that BP wreaked upon the Gulf Coast.

Sanders went so far as to accuse Gensler of breaking the law for not implementing the Dodd-Frank regulation on position limits. He cited the now well-worn quote by Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson, that the price of oil under regular market conditions should be $60-$70 a barrel (it’s currently trading at around $100). Sanders also cited the recent lawsuits from the CFTC against Parnon Energy, Arcadia Petroleum and Arcadia Energy for driving up prices during the spike of 2008, and stated that the same conditions exist today.

It took the Obama Administration years to build a case against a few financial firms for their role in the 2008 oil spike, but at least they’ve gotten around to it. The people most equipped to know the existence of the problem were screaming to the government at the time that speculation, not supply and demand, was driving prices.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission charged one trading house and two individuals for illegally manipulating oil prices during the price spike of 2008, when oil reached $147 a barrel, by creating the appearance of a shortage to drive up the benchmark for crude. While the action covers oil trading in 2008, the connection to today, where speculation is seen as a primary cause for higher gas prices, is unmistakable.