President Obama has said repeatedly that he doesn’t have a stance on Keystone yet. Greens: OFA dodging Keystone

Climate activists already pessimistic about the Obama administration’s upcoming decision on the Keystone XL pipeline are seizing on another reason for worry: The president’s grass-roots political organization is refusing their pleas to take a stance against the project.

Organizing for Action has been winning cheers from environmentalists for calling out climate change skeptics in Congress. But they say activists who support OFA also want the group to press President Barack Obama to oppose the pipeline, which they call a major threat to the Earth’s climate.


“If you’re going to be a grass roots, you have to actually listen to the grass roots,” said Daniel Kessler, spokesman for 350.org, a group that has organized mass sit-ins in front of the White House to protest the pipeline.

( PHOTOS: Keystone XL pipeline protest)

“I think they’re going to have to respond to calls to address these issues,” he added. “You cannot expect to have the passion of the people if you’re not satisfying what their demands are.”

Other anti-Keystone groups like Bold Nebraska and CREDO Action also want to see OFA on their side.

But OFA’s mission statement says the group was created to support Obama’s agenda. And Obama has said repeatedly that he doesn’t have a stance on Keystone yet — he’s still waiting for the State Department to complete its review of the pipeline’s environmental impact.

OFA echoes that argument.

“It has been made clear since our first day as an organization that we support the president’s plans from comprehensive immigration reform to reducing gun violence to climate change, including the completion of the State Department review,” said OFA spokeswoman Katie Hogan.

Instead, she said, OFA is focusing on climate change through its campaign against “deniers” in Congress — a recent email to supporters was labeled “tin foil hat alert” — and its push against Republicans who boycotted a committee vote on Gina McCarthy’s EPA administrator nomination. The group also held 99 action planning sessions across the country on climate change to promote the denier campaign.

But the anti-Keystone activists say they can read between the lines.

They’re pointing to talking points OFA has handed out to supporters and people who attend its events in which the group says that “if people believe that Keystone XL is the primary fight to be engaged in, there are many groups who have taken a position, and we are happy to make suggestions about who volunteers might work with on that or other issues.”

Jane Kleeb of Bold Nebraska said OFA can’t avoid Keystone forever.

“Since climate change is such a huge issue for the president’s base, they’re not going to be able to dance around that,” she said.

Kessler said OFA could use its millions of members — and connections to Obama — to drive the conversation around environmental issues toward action.

Specifically, Kessler said OFA could work to get the president to reject the pipeline, enact carbon regulations and help close coal plants. It should also push Obama to support a moratorium on fracking until government reviews on the practice are complete and work to develop a national energy policy that weans the U.S. off fossil fuels.

Environmentalists are also complaining that Keystone proponents have access to Obama and the White House.

They pointed to recent news stories about Obama meeting with energy CEOs and expressed consternation at Obama’s speech Friday at Ellicott Dredges in Baltimore, a day after the company’s CEO testified before a House Small Business subcommittee on the benefits of Keystone.

Bold Nebraska said it had invited Obama to meet with ranchers and farmers for a “beer and beef summit” to discuss the pipeline, but the White House declined. The group renewed its invitation Friday.

The White House did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

Still, there’s evidence that green voices haven’t been completely shut out from the White House. For example, Obama attended a fundraising event in California last month at the home of billionaire environmentalist and Keystone opponent Tom Steyer, even though the president avoided publicly mentioning the pipeline.

But that’s different from meeting with the people affected by Keystone, Kleeb said.

“We don’t want access to a fundraiser, and we don’t live to rub elbows with the president,” she said. “What we want the president to do is to come look at the families in the eye, those folks who would be living with the pipeline.”