Or, rather, irrational solutions from the zealots will discredit the entire cause.
The irrational solution is to not offer support for controlling emissions at the same time. Most Republicans only offer Kingstone and nothing else; it is like the Temperance movement when they came up with draconian laws that banned even beer and wine, the end result was an eventual complete defeat of the zealots.
The zealots today are like Inhofe, still declaring that all scientists are perpetrating a hoax when the scientists advise that fossil fuel emissions should be controlled.
First, as already noted, there are numerous environmental issues under debate, both local domestic environmental issues and the larger global environmental issues.
Second, the very first phase of Keystone four and a half years ago was also a cross-border State Department approval issue.
The issues really under debate here are between scientific reality and industrial profit.
I wish I didn’t agree with this, but I see little to contradict it. We have been and continue to destroy the environment in exchange for higher profits. At first we didn’t believe that the environment was seriously at risk, and now (I think) TPTB are counting on future technology to dig us out of the hole we’ve put ourselves into.
Which might happen, or might not, and it’s a helluva gamble.
That’s not “the” alternative. It’s one alternative that won’t happen.
As a US taxpayer, I ask “What’s in it for us,” and I’m not seeing much payback. Canadian oil gets shipped to other countries, but we have to take the environmental risks? Doesn’t Canada have any seaports of their own?
No, wait, then they’ll ship it out of Thunder Bay and I get my drinking water from Lake Michigan, downstream from there. It’s very complex, even when I reduce it to the potential effects on me, alone. Still don’t like it.
First of all, there is a vast difference between shipping light crude oil by pipeline and shipping what will be in the Keystone XL, which is dilbit, or diluted bitumen. As Enbridge has found out , when your pipeline leaks, and it will leak, the costs of cleanup are much higher than for traditional light crude.
The land over which Keystone will traverse, specifically that portion over the Oglalla Aquifer, feeds a lot of farmland, and* if*, that were to be compromised could have devastating affects to a goodly chunk of the farmland in the US.
Keystone XL is good for the bottom line of the oil companies, but not much else.
In and of itself Keystone is only a small part of the puzzle and there are a lot of pipelines already in existence in the US and Canada. That doesn’t mean we should blindly accept one more.
To those of you advocating market forces, how are people going to heat their homes and get from place to place if you don’t foster alternatives? Once you have a monopoly, you have a vested interest in suppressing competition.
Dr. Paul Miessner said it succinctly,
"As an invention enters more deeply into our daily life and has greater value for the general welfare, and the more simple the principles upon which it is based, so much greater in proportion is the opposition to it, for at the very beginning it is bound to cross certain private interests of such parties as are living by their wits, and insults the pride and selfishness of others that are non-producers, both of whom are consumed by jealousy and short sightedness, because something useful has developed in the brain of a third party. Both the opposition parties, though they hate each other, will combine to cry down the invention and crush the inventor.”
He was referring to the then revolutionary concept of central warm air heating, but it applies just as truly to “Green” energies now. Any technology that might get us away from a petro economy is going to be stridently and vociferously attacked by those who have a vested interest in the status quo.
[QUOTE=swampspruce]
He was referring to the then revolutionary concept of central warm air heating, but it applies just as truly to “Green” energies now. Any technology that might get us away from a petro economy is going to be stridently and vociferously attacked by those who have a vested interest in the status quo.
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Probably why we are still using horses, buggy whips, steam powered trains and whale oil to light our lamps and heat our houses. 
We DO foster alternatives, though. They simply can’t compete, yet, with fossil fuels at the scale we are talking about, and instead are currently niche solutions by and large. As the price of fossil fuels rise, or as breakthroughs occur (or both), then they will chip away at that until we see a large decline in fossil fuels. Stopping this pipeline won’t hasten this at all. And it WILL be market forces, not wishful thinking or this sort of loopy logic of stopping this pipeline to save the world that will have the largest impact on helping the environment in the long run.
Unfortunately the right wing has made the great unwashed masses giddy with the anticipated results of the pipeline. It’s going to make gas go under a buck a gallon, create tens of thousand of jobs, and give us complete energy independence forever. The only thing that stands between us and an energy glut utopia is Obama and the Democrats. Not quite. The jobs will be in the dozens, not thousands. It will put slightly more oil in the world market and allow Canadian producers to get their oil to overseas markets. And it’s about the dirtiest oil there is.
So for a slight uptick in the world oil supply, we’re going to put more carbon in the air and take a risk of contaminating the Ogallala Aquifer and make the interior of the nation pretty much uninhabitable. In my benefit/cost ratio, I see the denominator much larger than the numerator.
I haven’t heard anybody actually say such things, so I’m not giving those arguments any credit. However, as I’m sure you’re aware, knocking down a straw man isn’t a convincing argument for why the pipeline shouldn’t be built.
The aquifer argument does seem to have some currency in my mind. But I’m not clear on a few things: don’t a lot of pipelines already cross the aquifer? Is there something intrinsic to this pipeline or the oil that it would carry that is a greater risk to the aquifer?
Secondly, is there a way to mitigate the risk to the aquifer? I think I have read something about the precise route of the pipeline still being under discussion, and that having it built along some freeway corridor where there are other existing pipelines would mitigate that risk.
Finally, if the risk to the aquifer is substantial, why isn’t the EPA going bonkers about it?
Just googling maps shows one solution might be to double up along the Hardisty to Chicago Enbridge pipe, drop due south, then dog-leg west to Port Arthur.
Canadian and US Pipelines
In this map of the Keystone Pipe one can see the already built pipe which already crosses the mighty Ogallala, and the proposed addition which crosses it rather more.
One has to assume the people involved have pondered this, but constraints of money and safety to Americans in the populated areas affected means they cannot afford another route.
"When support for the Keystone Pipeline is at an all-time high, the president should approve this project that has had over five years of review instead of enacting another executive action,” Jenkins said. “In delaying this project again, the President has denied thousands of Americans a good paying job, a stronger economy, and more energy security.” –my local congressional rep, Lynn Jenkins
Thousands of Americans aren’t going to get a good paying job out of the pipeline (the last estimates I saw were in the vicinity of 35 permanent jobs and maybe 2500 temporary construction jobs), and a pipeline designed to move oil to the export terminals doesn’t do anything to enhance energy security, but repeated statements like these lead a lot of people to believe in “gas go under a buck a gallon, create tens of thousand of jobs, and give us complete energy independence forever.”
No pipelines carrying diluted bitumen currently cross the aquifer, and dilibit is a lot harder to clean up than “regular” crude. See, e.g., the Kalamazoo River oil spillin 2010; the utility had to dredge large chunks of the river bottom because the bitumen settled there. How would you even begin to think about cleaning an aquifer?
Yes, a route avoiding some of the most sensitive areas could reduce the risks (although the presence of other pipelines carrying other materials would not).
The EPA has in fact criticized the draft environmental impact statement conducted by the State Dept, calling it inadequate.
[QUOTE=slash2k]
No pipelines carrying diluted bitumen currently cross the aquifer, and dilibit is a lot harder to clean up than “regular” crude. See, e.g., the Kalamazoo River oil spill in 2010; the utility had to dredge large chunks of the river bottom because the bitumen settled there. How would you even begin to think about cleaning an aquifer?
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Um…you do realize that the aquifer is underground, right? I don’t see how bitumen would be more dangerous in penetrating to something like 300 feet below ground than regular crude oil, and from what I recall neither are considered to be high risk in the event of a leak. Can you explain why this would be harder to clean FROM THE AQUIFER than ‘regular’ crude?
Except that in what you quoted there he’s not saying anything about ‘gas go under a buck a gallon’, so that’s a strawman. As for the 10’s of thousands of jobs, I’ve seen a range of between 9k and over 20k for construction (I’ve not seen anyone say they could do this with just 2500 total temp jobs…do you have a cite for that?), which could take several years, and this doesn’t count the presumably more jobs on the logistics and transport side, let alone refinery expansion if that’s what we are taking about (i.e. what are we planning to DO with this oil if not use it somehow?).
There is a lot of hype and bullshit on both sides of this issue, with both sides attempting to demonize the other and paint their own side as singing with the angels.
But their issue isn’t with the threat to the aquifer, but instead is about greenhouse gases and CO2 potential.
OK, so maybe the drawbacks are minor. But what are the advantages? What’s in it for the US? Do we, in fact, derive any benefit at all from this thing?
No, that’s why at the turn of the century when oil was just starting out in conjunction with the automobile some of the established industries you named tried to get cars banned, and stove manufacturers started smear campaigns about how dangerous warm air heating was, the source of the quote I mentioned. Again, cars were a novelty item until the government built roads for them to drive on. Electricity was a novelty only available in the big cities, as was the telephone until the infrastructure was built. Unless I am mistaken, most of that infrastructure was built on taxpayer dollars until it was commercially viable at which time Industry took over.
Are these the same market forces that bailed out the banks, the car manufacturers, and the mortgage brokers while handing out tax breaks to some of the most profitable sectors of the American economy? Please.
The advantages are minor as well, and the US doesn’t really get that much out of it. That’s why, IMHO anyway, this whole thing is a tempest in a tea cup, and is really just a political football that both sides can kick about to buck up the troops and get them thinking about something unimportant. Sort of bread and circuses for the faithful.
[QUOTE=swampspruce]
Are these the same market forces that bailed out the banks, the car manufacturers, and the mortgage brokers while handing out tax breaks to some of the most profitable sectors of the American economy? Please.
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And the same market forces that have brought you that computer you types this screed on as well. You don’t seem to understand what ‘the market’ actually is, just that you dislike it because of BANKS(TM!!!). There is a lot more to it than that, but that is for another thread and for someone more willing to fight the ignorance than me.
Leaving aside all of the CT bullshit, no…IC personal vehicles using fuel refined from oil had already won in the market before the federal government built the interstate road system (which was built using tax dollars for military purposes, not to boost the car industry and put money in the pockets of Fat Cat™ Big Auto(arr) smoking their stogies, rolled on the thighs of virgin slaves and lit on the backs of the peasantry and twirling their mustaches, etc etc)…so, yes, you are mistaken. The interstate road network was built in the 50’s, and the IC pretty much had put down it’s competition by, oh, maybe the 20’s at the latest.
In the Nebraska Sand Hills and adjacent regions, the aquifer is very close to the surface (and in fact emerges at some points); the average depth to water is more like twenty to thirty feet rather than 300. If the bad stuff gets in the aquifer, regular crude would tend to float on top, while bitumen sinks through the entire depth. While cleaning the aquifer of either would likely not be possible with existing or foreseeable technology, in the event of contamination with regular crude oil it might be possible to pump reasonably clean water from underneath the layer of contaminants; that’s far less likely if there is no ‘underneath’ and the whole water column is contaminated.
That’s part of what she is referencing by “a stronger economy”; she and others have explicitly referenced cheap gas as an economic driver. Lots and lots of people believe the KXL will result in cheap gas (the specific dollar amount is rarely specified, true), when in fact the Canadians want the pipeline so they get more money for the same amount of crude, which in fact means more expensive gasoline.
“During construction, proposed Project spending would support approximately 42,100 jobs (direct, indirect, and induced), and approximately $2 billion in earnings throughout the United States. Of these jobs, approximately 3,900 would be direct construction jobs in the proposed Project area in Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas (3,900 over 1 year of construction, or 1,950 per year if construction took 2 years).”–State Dept Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement, Executive Summary, page ES-19. [Warning: PDF]
Other estimates (e.g., the Global Labor Institute at Cornell) came up with between 2500 and 4500 jobs, defining a job as one person employed for one year. The estimates for ten or twenty thousand direct construction jobs were really counting individuals, not jobs. The electrician who worked for two days stringing wire to a particular construction camp, then finished the job and rode off into the sunset with no further involvement in the KXL, counted as a “job” in those estimates even though he was only employed for two days. Using the definition of “one person employed for one year,” yes, 2500 is not outlandishly low.
Read the EPA letter again, specifically the section about pipeline safety and their comments on how the Kalamazoo spill has affected their understanding of the risks of diluted bitumen pipelines.
XT, I’ve obviously pressed a sore spot with you and I have obviously not made my point clearly.
My dislike isn’t with the banks or the bailouts for that matter. My issue is with free market types screaming how “The Market” TM will solve everything and then all you hear are crickets when some of the largest expressions of it fails.
Please explain CT as it is a term I’ve never seen before.
Government-built roads, however, long predate the interstate system; the first federal highway funding law was in 1916, and state-sponsored construction came well before that.