The Keystone XL pipeline is the perfect symbol of our disastrous energy policies and broken political system. Now that $100 a barrel is the new floor for oil prices, the oil industry can finally turn a large profit from the tar sands in western Canada. Tar sands expansion requires moving the diluted bitumen as rapidly and cheaply as possible to heavy oil refineries, most of which are in Texas and Louisiana.
Oil companies do not care about the carbon footprint of the tar sands. Nor are they concerned about the environmental consequences of a pipeline spill or refinery emissions. They do not have to lose sleep about the external costs because they know they can buy off politicians.
There is no need to bore you with a long list of politicians betraying the public to serve the oil industry. We only need look at a few specifics for TransCanada's Keystone XL pipeline. Throughout the approval process, the Obama State Department has hired consultants with close ties to oil industry, including TransCanada, to dismiss concerns about climate change, pipeline spills, refinery emissions, and land rights. In case you are wondering, giving the State Department the authority to approve energy trade agreements was a gift of George W. Bush.
The pipeline is a very high priority for the oil industry and the American Legislative Exchange Council. Even though the decision rests with executive branch, Congress has been clamoring to get on the record to pledge allegiance to Keystone XL. Here is Exxon's smarmy response to the Senate's recent vote demanding approval of the pipeline.
Indeed, what makes Friday’s vote so important is the degree to which it represents strong and growing support for the project among elected Democrats – 17 of whom voted for the measure – as well as Republicans.
We cannot get these idiots in the Senate to vote on anything substantive because of the 60 vote threshold to bring any measure to the floor, but 67 votes on a symbolic measure to please the oil industry was easy as pie.
Three days after celebrating spinelessness in the U.S. Senate, Exxon was struggling to contain a river of diluted bitumen running through Mayflower, Arkansas after a 22-foot long rupture opened up in its Pegasus pipeline. Major spills like this one were discounted as highly unlikely by the State Department for the Keystone XL pipeline.
Our democracy is broken. As a private citizen, one of the few options left to register your opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline is to comment on the State Department's draft supplemental environmental impact statement (SEIS).
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