Paul Driessen
What is this
incessant nonsense over Keystone XL?
It’s a pipeline,
for crying out loud. The United States already has 185,000 miles of liquid
petroleum pipelines, 320,000 miles of natural gas transmission pipelines, and
more than 2,000,000 miles of gas distribution pipelines. Using the latest
steel, valves and other technologies to build another 1,179 miles of
pipe – to move 830,000 barrels of oil per day safely from Alberta, Canada oil
sands country and North Dakota’s Bakken shale territory to Texas refineries – should not
be an earth-shattering matter.
KXL would create jobs – in an economy that grew at a
pathetic Depression-era clip of 0.1% during the first quarter, and where the true jobless rate
(unemployed, underemployed and those no longer looking) is almost 13 percent,
and much worse for minorities.
In fact, Keystone would create some 20,000 construction
jobs; another 10,000 in factories that make the steel, pipelines, valves,
cement and heavy equipment needed to build the pipeline; thousands more in
hotel, restaurant and other support industries; and still more in oil fields
whose output would be transported to refineries and petrochemical plants where
even more workers would be employed.
States along the pipeline route would receive $5 billion
in new property tax revenues, and still more in workers’ income tax payments.
Depleted federal coffers would also realize hefty gains.
The pipeline would ease railroad congestion all over the
central USA. The pipeline’s absence is forcing oil producers to move crude by
railroad tanker car. That certainly improves the bottom line for RR companies
and folks like Warren Buffet who
have big-time investments in tankers.
But it causes train
logjams and delays that are creating backlogs in getting fertilizer and other
supplies to farmers, who have already been hard-hit by a long winter and now
may not be able to plant on schedule. Come fall, their efforts to ship corn,
wheat and other crops to market will also be stymied.
By reducing the
need for RR tankers, KXL would also reduce oil spills and improve safety. A
2013 derailment in Quebec killed 47 people; 2014 rail accidents in Colorado and
Virginia resulted in significant oil spills but fortunately no deaths. The Bakken Field’s
light crude contains more dissolved gases and thus is more flammable than
heavier crudes (like Canadian oil sands output), but both tanker cars and the
Keystone pipeline would carry a variety of crude products.
Improved track
maintenance, train scheduling and other safety practices would reduce rail
accidents and spills. However, as US State Department studies point out, the
Keystone pipeline is inherently safer than RR alternatives – and would likely
result in fewer than 520 barrels of crude being spilled annually, compared to
32,000 barrels in the three rail spills just noted.
KXL will make North
America more energy independent, further improve US balance of trade, reduce
global supply and demand imbalances, augment America’s national security, and
aid our European allies in their quest to counter Vladimir Putin’s energy
blackmail.
The hydrocarbon
wealth the pipeline would transport will help ensure improved human health,
welfare, living standards and other many other benefits,
in a more stable world that has more sources of jobs, wealth and income
equality. Approval would improve relations with
our ally and trading partner Canada. Not tapping and safely transporting all
these oil, natural gas and propane resources makes no sense.
But despite all
these solid reasons for building the pipeline President Obama refuses to
approve it, even to protect vulnerable Democrat politicians, for fear of
offending ultra Keystone hater Tom Steyer or losing his hardcore eco-base. Senator Harry
Reid can hardly bring himself to allow even votes on nonbinding resolutions in
support of KXL. And rabid environmentalists say they’re prepared to go to
jail over it.
What in blazes is
going on here?
Keystone is symbolic!
In fact, it has become the symbol of Big Green environmentalism’s immutable
opposition to … and hatred of … anything hydrocarbon. KXL is fracking,
oil sands, onshore and offshore drilling and, above all, “catastrophic manmade
climate disruption” (the latest nom de guerre, since the global warming
and climate change monikers and models have abjectly failed to reflect climate
reality).
KXL represents
their determination to de-develop the United States, control our lives and
livelihoods, reduce our energy use and living standards, redistribute wealth –
and permit Third World development only in accordance with their supposed
“sustainable development” and “renewable” energy “principles.”
Anti-Keystone XL
arguments are as phony as a $3 bill. Blocking its construction will have about as
much effect on Earth’s climate as a hand grenade would in stopping a hurricane,
even if carbon dioxide does influence weather and climate change far more than
thousands of scientists say it does.
(More than 1,000 climate scientists,
31,000 American
scientists and 48% of US meteorologists say there is no
evidence that humans are causing dangerous warming or climate change. And it is
increasingly obvious that much of the remaining “consensus” is obtained by
harassing, intimidating and blacklisting
any scientists who might be tempted to stray from the alarmist party line.)
China, India, Indonesia, Brazil and dozens of other countries
are burning coal, driving cars, modernizing their hydrocarbon-based economies
and emitting CO2 at a fevered pace. Further delaying or ultimately blocking
Keystone will have no effect, especially if the oil simply goes to Asia,
instead of the USA.
However, Big Green
has staked its power and reputation on Keystone – and it will not back down.
This $13.4-billion-per-year
US eco industry is determined to block the Keystone pipeline. As Washington
Examiner columnist Ron Arnold revealed,
the $789-million Rockefeller Brothers Fund launched its “tar sands” and
pipeline campaigns in 2008. It funded a dozen attack groups, told them what the
Fund wanted done, and presented the strategy and tactics for mobilizing the
troops, inventing and spotlighting the pipeline’s alleged dangers, recruiting
always-helpful media allies, and slowing and stopping KXL.
The campaigns are
backed up by other wealthy liberal foundations that collectively have more than
$100 billion in assets! As Arnold pointed out, they gave more than $80
billion to some 16,000 American environmental activist groups
between 2000 and 2012 – and those groups were also supported by over $100
million in grants from US government agencies!
Hedge fund
billionaire Tom Steyer
has promised to give $100 million to anti-Keystone Democrats. Law firms are
making serious money filing lawsuits against KXL. And of course Hollywood elites
can always be counted on to lend their support and innate grasp of energy and
economic issues to pipeline opponents.
This is a force to
be reckoned with, a force that has helped inflict nearly $1.9 trillion
in regulatory compliance costs on United States businesses and families. That’s
one-eighth of the entire US economy. It’s no wonder job, economic and
investment growth rates are so miserably low.
President Obama and
other Democrats, environmentalists and liberals love to expound on how
compassionate and socially responsible they are. How devoted to justice,
workers, middle class families, jobs, and human health, safety and welfare. How
honest, transparent, respectful of others’ opinions and needs, and accountable
for their mistakes and failures.
Am I the only one
who sees pitifully little evidence for any of these self-proclaimed saintly
attributes?
Keystone epitomizes
how callous, arrogant, hypocritical and destructive the Big Green
authoritarians have become. It’s high time the rights and needs of poor and
middle class families got some recognition.
Paul Driessen is senior
policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org)
and author of Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death.
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