Pipelines by nature avoid heavily settled areas. People don’t really care to live next to them, which means there’s little-to-no-risk of habitat destruction beyond the immediate pipeline. Sure, it eventally comes out somewhere, but the basic point remains. Nebraska is thinly settled, which makes the pipeline easier, but that’s not the issue I’m mentioning, and would be the same even if it went though New York or Massachussetts.
I’m not handwaving it. Anything has real risks, and this is certainly something. However, this has been going nowhere fast forever. No serious studies are being done, no significant progress towards some theoretical information we need. It’s been studied. I’ve looked, but I see no serious arguments based on geology or other risks. Not one. I have seen wild alarmism. And that’s my problem.
This isn’t about protecting the environment - it’s about Obama trying to protect his political chances. I’ll be upfront: this is exactly the same kind of nonsense which prevents us from using Nuclear power effectively.
Wait a minute. I thought the eminent domain issue was as big, and becoming even bigger, than the environmental greenie issues? That’s all about people.
And we might learn more in the next 40 years.
It might be fine. I’m just questioning the arrogance of the assumption that we are so smart today we can build stuff that never will fail. I specialize in failure, so I’m sensitive to this.
It’s not arrogance; things fail all the time. Planes drop out of the air. Tankers and cruise ships run aground. Cars crash and burn. Integrated circuits experience early life failure. Bridges collapse. Apollo capsules burn up on the launch pad. Sometimes pipes leak.
We learn from the mistakes and move on.
Have a look at the current oil and gas pipeline web in North America.
Smiling bandit has it right; “it’s about Obama trying to protect his political chances.”
Wait, you first assert that we’ve learned a lot over the last 40 years, suggesting that failure is absurdly unlikely. Then you say stuff fails, but it will be no big deal.
Isn’t the second contingent on none of the land under said pipeline not being particularly sensitive to a spill? And isn’t an ecological survey the sort of thing you’d do to assess this?
The fact is that the Republicans wanted to force a decision without time for the ecological work so they could paint Obama as anti-job.
I guess what I meant is, we go ahead with projects all the time knowing that we’ve designed them in such a way as to minimize failure, but we are aware that failure does in fact happen and is part of the risk.
True enough. The liberal media is covering it up, but there was a massive accident at a local wind farm recently. No one even knows how much air was spilled into the environment!
And we have to compare the cost of a failure versus the benefit of doing the project.
We learn from the mistakes and move on.
Funny you should mention that. I live not that far from the recent San Bruno pipeline explosion. It is apparent that this happened not due to random factors, but due to PG&Es focus on profit over safety. They were granted rate increases to improve the pipeline infrastructure, and used them to pad the bottom line.
And the Republicans didn’t add this absurd requirement to an unrelated bill for political reasons? It’s about time he told them to fuck off.
This is the part that pisses me off. I think it’s a worthwhile project, and gets tanked because of people playing politics instead of busting ass to get the damn work done.
Instead of inserting an unreasonable deadline, authorize spending to get enough of the right people reviewing the environmental impact and design, so that the job is done, and done right.
Well, yes, technically it is more secure in that the amount of oil we get from Canada doesn’t have to come from other oil-producing nations, assuming of course that all pipeline oil will be used here, which isn’t necessarily so. In any case, how real is the threat of an unstable Middle East/South America preventing the US from getting all the oil it needs from those areas? A quick check on Wiki shows that the US consumes 2.5 times as many barrels a day as the next biggest consumer (China). It seems to me that ME/SA countries cannot for any length of time refuse to sell us their oil. That would be like McDonald’s refusing to sell hamburgers to meat-eaters.
The original plan was to have the decision made after election day, which would have reduced the politics and given enough time to analyze the new route that would avoid the more sensitive areas. Moving up the decision for political reasons and then accusing Obama of playing politics is pure chutzpah.
Exactly how much have you looked into this? If you had gone so far as to Google the XL Pipeline’s wiki page, you would have discovered this:
I’d say poisoning the water supply for 8 states is a pretty big fucking deal no matter how you slice it. The GOP’s disregard for environmental caution is appallingly idiotic. Their willingness to put the citizens of this country’s asses on the line (again) in order to serve their oil industry campaign contributors could not be more glaringly clear. Only a corporate shill would propose settling this with an arbitrary deadline.
This is pretty much exactly how the GOM spill got started, a bunch of jackass politicians and corporate assholes willing to throw caution to the wind because they get all the profits, and the risks are all shoved off on someone else.
You want energy independence? What is wrong with mass transportation? I don’t know, but the GOP governors of Wisconsin and Florida turned down major rail projects that would have created scads of permanent jobs while reducing our dependence on oil itself. Who is the job killer?
What’s wrong with solutions that extract us from our dependence on oil itself? I don’t know, but the same people pushing this pipeline are the people who never miss a chance to put an obstacle in the progress of alternative forms of energy. Invest the billions we are handing to oil companies in the form of subsidies into clean energy and hybrid vehicle incentives/infrastructure instead and we just won’t need as much oil, from any source. An electric car gets the equivalent of about 100 mpg you know, and there is no chance of a spill. But the GOP blocks those efforts at every turn. Fuck them.
Want lots of new jobs while shrinking the government and also increasing tax revenues? Legalize pot. Businesses spring up everywhere (what’s wrong with business?), courts, cops, and prisons are freed up to focus on real problems. But no, change the subject away from oil and suddenly it isn’t about jobs anymore, it threatens the sanctity of marriage or the Christian identity of America or some other bullshit.
The GOP hollering about Obama being a job-killer because of this is a colossal lie-by-omission, as if we have already forgotten their obstruction of literally every other suggestion. Their hypocrisy is staggering. End the GOP, they are a threat.
Nice try. Canada is moving full steam ahead on opening up the Asian market, and the purpose of this XL extension down to the gulf is to enable TransCanada to sell its oil from there, as well.
I’m all for money not going to the Saudis, but can you convince me that will be the result? What we have here is the usual 1%-ers making more profits and keeping it. Isn’t it fairly well understood now, that money does not trickle down from the 1% anymore, nor does it lead to job creation?
One of the criticisms of this project is that it may result in additional unemployment in the midwest region.
Any reason you want the 1% to get richer while the 99% living in the midwest get poorer, and have to shoulder the risk and liability?
Another factor in the midst, people. Who is going to work all these wonderful, albeit temporary jobs? Heavy machine operators, truckers, welders, for the most part, men. No one is likely to move their family to the middle of nowhere, but unemployed men will flock to this. They will require, ah, diversions. Entertainment. Hookers and drugs, to get crude about it. Or they can drive fifty miles for the nightlife of Cornfed, NE.
Ever hear the expression “behavioral sink?” Way back when the Alaska pipeline was built, there was a very popular bumper sticker in Alaska: “Happiness is an Okie going home with a Texan under each arm.”
What about the unions? With unemployment as high as it is, there will be a lot of desperate family men fighting over the scraps, and, as you may know, businessmen are quite fond of keeping costs down.
And finally, our addiction to fossil fuels. Which we have to get over. So we are going to build a thousand mile straw to suck it out of Canada, and sell it to the Chinese.
140,000 people are directly employed in the energy sector in Alberta. I already know people who have been laid of because of the delay in this pipeline. So, rather than take the stance that the rich will get richer, please take your ignorance elsewhere. Following your ‘logic’, we might as well shut down all industry because it will only allow the rich to get richer.
Elucidator, you’ve been watching too much ‘Hell on wheels’.
