"A government big enough to give you everything you want is strong enough to take away everything you have."

Thursday, November 17, 2011

Obama's Disastrous Keystone Pipeline Decision

Check out this excellent editorial by Dan Henninger of The Wall Street Journal regarding Obama's decision to delay building the Keystone pipeline. Apparently Obama is fine with unemployment in any industry relating to carbon production. This president's policies are job killers, pure and simple. As Henninger puts it, "Why should any blue-collar worker who isn't hooked for life to a public budget vote for Barack Obama next year?" Good question.

3 comments:

Black Gold said...

The article offered no mention of the environmental consequences of the pipeline. I've seen estimations of a 50% increase in carbon emissions.

On top of the issues surrounding the threat to the climate, the pipeline also presents environmental hazards such as spills. The pipeline would actually run right on top of the recent 5.6 earthquakes in Oklahoma.

Additionally, tar sands oil, which is considered an "unconventional" fossil fuel, is distinctly worse for the environment than regular oil. The problem is that it's very dirty and very hard to refine. It takes a lot more tar sand to produce the same amount of refined oil(and it takes a lot more energy to do so). So much so, in fact that you end up producing about twice as much CO2 per gallon of usable fuel than with regular oil.

I definitely see the point of people arguing that the pipeline will create jobs and help the economy, but in my mind, there is no healthy economy without a healthy environment. Any acknowledgement of the harmful consequences of the piepline would make it a fair article in my view.

Natedawg said...

Thanks for reading and commenting, Black Gold. While your name seems to change frequently, your comments always challenge me to do more research. However, I would disagree with your assessment that the pipeline is harmful to the environment for the following reasons:

1.The State Department spent three years exhaustively studying this proposed pipeline -- more so than any other pipeline in U.S history -- and issued a long report concluding that it would cause no significant damage to the environment.

2. Spills are a risk with any pipeline, but I would not characterize the Midwest as an area of significant seismic activity. A 5.6 level earthquake is quite minor and even that is a huge anomaly for the region. Another objection I've seen is that the pipeline goes over an important aquifer, but that aquifer is already criss-crossed by tens of thousands of miles of pipeline, so I fail to understand the panic over one more.

3. Even we accept your premise that carbon emissions in general and tar sands oil in particular pose an urgent danger to the environment (which I don't), failure to build this pipeline will have no impact on the overall health of the planet. Canada is already drilling for the oil, and if we don't allow the pipeline to go through the oil will simply be shipped to China and other countries around the world. There is a huge global demand for oil that is not going away anytime soon. There is no viable substitute for fossil fuels, and other countries are not going to give up the opportunity for economic development just to please environmentalists in rich Western countries. By rejecting this pipeline, we give up many thousands of American jobs and the opportunity to become less dependent on foreign oil while doing nothing for the environment.

4. Finally, I simply don't think the scientific evidence supports the notion of man-caused global warming. I don't have time to write on this extensively here, but I have posted on this issue in the past -- see "global warming" and "environment" labels. We are continuously finding ways to burn fossil fuels more cleanly, and vast supplies continue to be discovered all over the world, so I don't see any reason to panic over the imminent demise of the planet or to deprive ourselves of the oil & natural gas resources we need to keep our economy growing.

Natedawg said...

Just to clarify point 4 -- I'm not sure the links I referred can be readily found from what I wrote above. Here are two helpful links that question the conventional wisdom on the topic of "climate change":

1. Online "Global Warming Handbook" - http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/sh1/the_skeptics_handbook_2-3_lq.pdf

2. "Perry and Global Warming" by Jim Lacey of National Review Online - http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/275396/perry-and-global-warming-jim-lacey?pg=1