Hillary Clinton’s appearance on “Saturday Night Live” over the weekend gathered few laughs from environmental groups, who appeared too distracted with the debate over oil exports in the House to laugh at her clever quipping about the Keystone XL pipeline.
The Democratic presidential hopeful used NBC’s 40-year-old comedy show to declare, yet again, her opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline, in a segment in which she played a bartender counseling herself on the campaign trail.
The grassroots climate change campaign 350.org was one of the only activist groups to refer to Clinton’s Oct. 3 comedy spot to underscore its clean energy priorities. “Keystone XL is in so much trouble, it’s literally a punchline for late night comedy,” 350.org posted on Twitter Monday.
Other groups such the long-standing Natural Resources Defense Council, Environmental Defense Fund and Sierra Club were surprisingly silent on Clinton’s appearance.
“Hillary,” played by SNL’s Kate McKinnon, started the sketch by sharing with bartender Val, played by Clinton herself, that she’s “had a hard couple of 22 years.” Val then shares that she’s “just an ordinary citizen who believes the Keystone pipeline will destroy our environment.” McKinnon as “Hillary” responds, “I agree with you there. It did take me a long time to decide that, but I am against it.”
The pipeline project, meant to deliver oil from Canada to refiners on the Gulf Coast, has been under review by the Obama administration for seven years, and it doesn’t seem likely that it will be approved any time soon. It may be that the groups don’t see it as a big threat, and groups like 350.org say it has been relegated to a punchline.
Instead, it would seem oil exports have replaced Keystone XL as the big looming threat to the environment.
Instead of responding to the comedy show, the Sierra Club took to Twitter on Monday to start a “take action” campaign to “stop Big Oil from ending the crude oil export ban.”
The House is scheduled to vote on lifting the 40-year-old ban on crude oil exports Friday. Republicans have made repealing the ban a key priority for creating jobs and boosting the economy.
But the Sierra Club argues that lifting the ban “would be a massive expansion of dangerous oil drilling, everywhere from fracking in North Dakota’s Bakken shale to drilling in the fragile Arctic,” the group’s campaign website says.
“That’d mean while American consumers and businesses are paying more at the pump, and American refinery workers see their jobs outsourced overseas, we’d be stuck with more oil spills, more oil train explosions, more damage to our climate and ecosystems, and more risk to our communities.”
