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Environmentalists have a hope.

If they can block the Keystone XL pipeline, they can keep Canada from developing more of its dirty tar sands oil. It takes a lot of energy to get it out of the ground and turn it into gasoline, so it has a bigger greenhouse gas footprint than conventional oil.

But the State Department report, which was released Friday, says Keystone won't have much of an impact on the development of that oil from Alberta, Canada.

Industry analyst Kevin Book of ClearView Energy Partners says that finding will make it easier for the Obama administration to say the project wouldn't affect climate change.

"The State Department said, 'We agree with industry.' They're saying this oil would have gone to market anyway," Book says. "The facts are the oil in the ground in Canada isn't going to stay there if there's a buyer. And there is a buyer. The buyer's here in the U.S., right now, and the oil is coming here by train, by truck and in some cases by barge."

It's also already flowing to the U.S. through existing pipelines.

Industry experts do say in the short-term, Keystone could get oil flowing faster.

Canadian investment researcher Chris Damas says the industry wants to increase production dramatically. And it's hard to see how trains could keep up, especially since there's already a big backlog for new tanker cars.

"Unless you can find a pipeline that can cross the border without presidential approval, I think that the Canadians ... and I'm a proud Canadian, we have a problem," Damas says. "We have landlocked oil, so there's no easy fix to this problem."

Already, transportation constraints have driven down the price of Canadian oil.

Damas says, if that continues, producing this oil just won't be profitable any more.

"If the price goes too low, these projects will slow down," he says.

Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, fears the State Department's analysis will push the Obama administration to OK the project.

"This makes the president's job to follow through on his commitment to be tough on climate change, it makes that job much more difficult," Brune says.

Of course, the impact on climate isn't the only thing the Obama administration will consider. While the pipeline is being built, it will support 42,000 jobs bringing $2 billion in wages.

But Brune says it's not over yet.

"We are going to fight," Brune says. "We will use all of the resources that the Sierra Club has to offer. Our law department, our organizers, our lobbyists, the 2.1 million members and supporters across the country, 170 groups who joined together at the climate rally in Washington, D.C., to make sure that the pipeline is rejected and that we go all-in on clean energy instead."

University of California, Davis, energy expert Amy Myers Jaffe says the only way to keep the oil from Canada under the ground is to change the way we live.

"Really, truly, it's a lifestyle issue. We use 18 to 19 million barrels a day of oil in this country," Jaffe says.

That's more than 20 percent of oil consumed in the whole world.

"We're only 5 percent of the population," Jaffe says. "And we need to look in the mirror."

Jaffe says once we reduce our consumption, we can have the luxury of rejecting Canada's oil.

President Hugo Chavez has been receiving chemotherapy since recovering from a severe respiratory infection in mid-January and "continues his battle for life," his vice president said late Friday.

Vice President Nicolas Maduro suggested the chemotherapy was continuing in the government's first mention of it as among treatments that Venezuela's cancer-stricken president has received since his Dec. 11 cancer surgery in Cuba.

Maduro made the disclosure after a Mass for Chavez in a new chapel outside the military hospital where authorities say the socialist leader has been since being flown back to Caracas on Feb. 18.

The vice president quoted Chavez as saying he decided to return to Venezuela because he was entering "a new phase" of "more intense and tough" treatments and wanted to be in Caracas for them.

Maduro's offering of the most detailed rundown to date of Chavez's post-operative struggle came hours after an accusation by opposition leader Henrique Capriles that the government has repeatedly lied about Chavez's condition.

"We'll see how they explain to the country in the (coming) days all the lies they've been telling about the president's situation," Capriles, whom Chavez defeated in Oct. 7 elections, said in a tweet.

Chavez has not been seen nor heard from since going to Cuba for his fourth cancer surgery, except for a set of "proof of life" photos released Feb. 15 while he was still in Havana.

Chavez first revealed an unspecified cancer in the pelvic region in June 2011, and reported undergoing radiation treatment and chemotherapy after earlier operations.

The government has sent mixed signals on Chavez's condition, although Maduro has said several times that Chavez was battling for his life. He repeated that Friday, and also accused opponents of spreading rumors about Chavez's health to destabilize the nation.

Maduro, Chavez's chosen successor, said his boss' condition was extremely delicate over New Year's as he battled a respiratory infection that required a tracheal tube.

"In mid-January he was improving, the infection could be controlled, but he continued with problems of respiratory insufficiency. Afterward, there was a general improvement, and the doctors along with President Chavez decided to initiate complementary treatments," Maduro said.

"You know what the complementary treatments are, right? They are chemotherapy that is applied to patients after operations."

Cancer specialists couldn't be reached immediately for comment on Maduro's announcement. But oncologists have said that chemotherapy is sometimes given to slow a cancer's progression, ease symptoms and extend a patient's life.

The opposition says Chavez should either be sworn in for the new term he won in the election or declare himself incapable and call a new election. The constitution says he should have been sworn in on Jan. 10, but Venezuela's Supreme Court said it was OK to wait.

Earlier Friday, Maduro accused the Spanish newspaper ABC and Colombia's Caracol network of spreading lies about Chavez's condition.

ABC said without specifying its source that Chavez's cancer had spread to a lung. It said he had been moved to an island compound in the Caribbean.

Chavez's son-in-law, Science Minister Jorge Arreaza, said on state TV that Chavez continues "to fight hard and is in the military hospital, as peaceful as he could be, with his doctors, with his family."

It's your right to send complaints to your government officials. The trick is, after you send those letters, someone has to read them. That's where political analyst, blogger, and author Keli Goff got her start. Now, she serves as a political correspondent for The Root, and makes frequent appearances on MSNBC, CNN, and NPR. Goff has also written a few books, including the critically acclaimed Party Crashing: How the Hip-Hop Generation Declared Political Independence.

More From This Episode

Special Pundits Unit

On researching the history of Jews in 18th century Paris

"I did go to Paris and went to the museums and walked the streets. But before that, I found a wonderful researcher named Max McGuinness. Together we really had to try to crack the case of Jews in Paris in the 18th century, because there were so few. There were about 500 of them. Most of the evidence for their lives is the police reports, because there was a particular policeman who was the inspector in charge of Jewish affairs at the time whose job it was to really record the comings and goings and, in fact, the character and occupation of every single male Jew in Paris. And sometimes, if they had families, who they lived with in their apartment, whose apartment they lived in, what they sold, if they had been arrested for being in Paris without a passport. They were very strictly monitored. And so those police reports really were like a gold mine for me. And in fact, I used a lot of the actual names of the Jews; I used the name of Inspector Buhot, which was in fact his name. So I grounded my writing in reality."

On imagining Jacob's Folly as a film

"It's tempting. It's very visual and it could be funny, but I think I need distance. In the past I always had the technique that I would not let the scab form. I would write the book, and then immediately, if I was going to write the screenplay, write the screenplay. I always had this feeling that you can never go back. You're not the same person five years [later]. You might not even understand it anymore, what you wrote. But with this one, I have a feeling that if I ever do it, it would be better if I have a little distance."

On how much her artistic background (as a painter, actor and film director) and artistic lineage come through in her writing

"I think certainly I'm a very visual writer. I tend to try to communicate emotion and ideas through visual means so that you see it in your eye of your mind. And I think I have an ear for dialogue, which, I remember listening to my father read his plays out loud all the time, and I think I might have inherited certainly a fascination with dialogue and character. But it's always difficult to know where everything comes from."

Read an excerpt of Jacob's Folly