There are myths, and there is reality. Sometimes they coincide, but usually myths are invented to achieve a reality that otherwise would have such opposition, it would never occur.
Keystone is like that.
The myth is that Keystone will lower oil for us at the pump, and create jobs in the construction industry. If those were true then the bill would have a much easier time passing… They aren’t. The truth is that the Koch’s own a large part of the tar sands in Alberta and must have that pipeline to move that oil southward to their refineries. Otherwise if the pipeline goes east or west, other billionaire’s refineries will get the profit, not the Koch’s.
The oil is for import only. Not domestic consumption. There is no benefit to the USA to transport Canadian oil across America to refine it near Houston, and send it overseas in tankers. At best, we would have 10 more people monitoring the flow of oil, provided technical advances do not replace even them. There is a good likelihood they will.
As for jobs-building the pipeline, it appears that perhaps 2,500-3,000, most of them non-union and therefore low wages, would be the short term benefit… I believe Senator Mitch McConnell estimated 40,000 jobs. However Kinder Morgan which is building a bigger, better pipeline than the Keystone in question, is only swelling its job estimates to 4500, the equivalent number EDIS hires in Wilmington to build one single building, or Reybold hires to build one apartment complex in a former cornfield.
This is paltry. We create 250,000 new private sector jobs a month… 2500 + or – won’t make a dent anywhere.
The negatives are far more severe. First it would transfer the worst type of oil through America… Whereas an oil well is environmentally non-intrusive, a tar sands operation creates an environmental hell.
Photo courtesy of KQED
Far more worse than any train wreck to which Rick Jensen was alluding. Secondly, this pipeline crosses an aquifer that supplies the central US with almost all of its water. Were oil to seep, that water though plentiful, would be useless as ocean water for any agriculture purposes… No farming from North Dakota to Oklahoma. The bread basket of America, simply gone.
Proponents say pipelines are safe… they point to tankers on highways and trains that derail. However they go completely out of their way, even banning reporters from the town on Keystone I that had oil come up out of the ground and take over that town. It’s water supply is undrinkable.
If this already happened on Keystone I, it is a safe bet to assume it will certainly happen somewhere along the 1000 miles where the pipeline crosses America’s most important aquifer.
Courtesy of The Star
We have so far completely put a dent in any argument stating that Keystone is important for America’s survival.
Now we shall show you why it is currently a hot topic and is being rushed through a Republican Congress over all cognizant objections.
it is not a random occurrence that Sen. Mitch McConnell went to the Koch’s summit, promised a load of goods, got campaign money, and upon arriving as Majority Leader, made Senate Bill #1 the passage of Keystone. The Koch’s funded 44,000 ads in 2014.
The following map shows why. From this it is clear the pipeline has no other purpose than to get Koch oils sands down to existing Koch refineries.
Courtesy of Google Maps.
So it is clear as this debate goes forward. There is no advantage for America to build this pipeline. In fact there is a huge disadvantage if the slightest thing goes wrong. Yet there is a great advantage to the Koch Brothers who funded a large number of congressional races with both dark and legal money. In this time and age, it appears that if you spend enough to get in who you want, then they do exactly what you originally asked them to
The People be damned.
3 comments
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January 12, 2015 at 7:54 am
anonymous
Koch and Devastating Runaway Climate Change
“Scientists calculate that the safe level for carbon in the atmosphere is 350 parts per millions. But we are already significantly over that level — which is why we are already facing devastating climate change.
Only by drastically limiting our carbon emissions can we limit still greater devastation.
Why is a single pipeline — the Keystone XL — so important to this story?
Because it is the key link in an energy strategy that will radically escalate carbon emissions still further.
The energy strategy is to introduce large quantities of oil from Canadian tar sands. According to the US Department of Environmental Protection, the greenhouse gas emissions from Canadian oil sands crude oil will be more than 80% greater than oil refined in the US.
Independent estimates run up to three times more global warming pollution than conventional oil.”
http://www.labor4sustainability.org/articles/pipeline-climate-disaster-the-keystone-xl-pipeline-and-labor/
January 12, 2015 at 10:02 am
anonymous
Koch and Nothing Else
Expect the expected, Don’t drastically reduce CO2 and expect runaway methane releasing.
Runaway Methane: A 100 times the greenhouse warming effects of CO2, and of unspeakable, unstoppable quantities.
Unstoppable.
Koch however, is stoppable.
Your very future is in the hands of your politicians who are selling your future when they back – Koch and nothing else.
There are great scientific minds that want you to know, it isn’t necessary that the 1%ers are free to destroy life on the planet, as the billions of humans plus all of other life forms, remain voiceless.
January 12, 2015 at 1:45 pm
anonymous
Endless Corporate Greed
As powerful bullies, politicians knowingly ignore that children have Rights. The most important Right is to have a future. Politicians know, it’s easiest to take away the Rights of the smallest, the penniless, those without a voice, those who can’t fight back, those that struggle to live another day.
Where are the American movements, to protect what is rightfully theirs – the future, that looks dark and depressing as today’s landscape.
Youth are drugged in complacency, discouraged from thinking, drowned in student loans, or contained as degree-less losers, raised on chemical food, force fed fossil fuels, pacified with technology, denied a normal future climate. Unable to stand on their own feet and form, voice or change opinions to take back their future that is being stolen in the name of endless corporate greed.
http://www.occupylv.org/topics/why-young-americans-dont-fight-back