Oh, DUDE. Bro.
"Earlier today, Barack Obama wrapped up his first trip to Oklahoma as President. He arrived just after a week of floods, capping off a winter that never came, which followed the hottest and driest summer Oklahoma had seen in thousands of years, perhaps ever.
"But he wasn’t in Oklahoma to talk about these climate disasters. He was there to laud his administration’s fast-tracking of the southern leg of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.
"in his speech today, President Obama didn't connect the dots between fossil fuel extraction, climate change, and the extreme weather that has reshaped so much of the American landscape this past year. " - Appeal, 350.org
I suspect, that unless our technological civilization's insatiable hunger for energy eases, we shall drill every drop of oil, suck every wisp of natural gas, scrape every crumb of coal, at ever escalating environmental and financial cost. This is not an American issue, it's a Global issue.
I am not the only one disappointed in our President, again. This diary arose out of a gripe I posted on Facebook... and my F-list weighed in.
My friend and ceremony brother Rob AmericanHorse is a full blood Lakota living on the reservation in South Dakota. His people have been opposed to the Pipeline for the devastating effects it would have on the people who live there. He was very to the point in a FaceBook comment.
"XL Pipeline is gonna be bad for the lakota people cuz it could affect the water on the rez."
Tar Sands Bitumen is just NASTY stuff. There was last year a very ugly spill in the Kalamazoo River area that may be literally forever trying to clean up.
Meteor Blades has already taken on this topic in some depth with a very good diary.
"In transport, tar-sands oil is actually diluted bitumen, viscous and highly corrosive. When it is spilled, it behaves differently than does crude oil. In water, it sinks rather than floats, making skimmers useless for cleanup. In 2010, pipelines were already transporting 600,000 barrels of tar-sands oil in the United States. Spills are not as rare as TransCanada, Keystone's builder, would have everyone believe. The worst so far, and the first tar-sands spill into a major American waterway, occurred on the Kalamazoo River in 2010..."
- Pipeline spills of tar-sands oil three times as frequent as that of crude oil, and nastier
A story in Mother Jones points out the continuing difficulty with the sort of environmental damage that the communities along both existing and proposed pipelines face.
"This week, as Senate Democrats narrowly defeated a renewed—and some say misguided—call to rush construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline, residents and officials at the site of the country's largest-ever tar sands oil spill are still reeling nearly two years after the fact. A look at the fallout from that incident in Michigan reveals that a spill of diluted bitumen, the kind from Alberta's tar sands that Keystone would carry, is a far nastier beast than your typical spill of conventional crude. It also shows that cleaning it up can be just as damaging to the environment as the spill itself.
A story this week in the Canadian online magazine The Tyee outlines how, 20 months after a pipe carrying tar sands "dil-bit" burst on the Kalamazoo River near Marshall, residents and local Environmental Protection Agency officials are still struggling to clean up the river. It was the first-ever major spill of this type of heavy oil, and it blindsided EPA cleanup crews: recovering the 1.2 million gallons of oil that have been cleaned up so far has cost the pipe's owner, Enbridge Energy Partners, roughly $725 million—10 times as much, per liter, as the average spill of conventional crude. Ralph Dollhopf, who led the EPA's response to the incident, told local media that the agency had to "write the book" on dealing with a cleanup of tar sands bitumen."
Two Years On, Tar Sands Spill Casts Long Shadow
When the President put the permitting process for the Keystone XL pipeline on hold, it was hailed as a mild victory for the Green side of the debate. But apparently, facing what most observers would consider mild criticism from the Republican side over spiking gas prices, we have a swift and rapid cave to election year politics. It's been widely explained that the recent dip in gasoline prices had more to do with a massive dip in American Demand at the height of the Recession, than any action of White House policy.
In the long term, the curve of petroleum prices is only going ONE direction. UP. Any brief tick downward is just a hiccup in the general trend, typically local, and usually short term. The days when you could punch a straw into any piece of stinking desert in west Texas and have black stuff come bubbling up are well and truly past. It is much more difficult, complex, and expensive to exploit remaining reserves. Deep Water Drilling, drilling above the Arctic Circle, and in the case of Alberta Tar Sands, tearing up thousands of acres of Canadian Tundra, blowing millions of gallons of steam through it to get a barrel of nasty black sludge that has the barest resemblance to a barrel of Texas No.2 Sweet, its orders of magnitude more expensive.
There are of course a legion of geologists, energy scientists and even Oil Industry beginners well aware of the global realities of Peal Oil. We're using the stuff up and we're going to, in the long run, likely go after every bit of it.
The President is professing to have an "all of the above" energy policy compared to the Republicans' abolish the EPA and Energy Departments, and "Drill Drill Drill".
Out East we're trying to resist the push for Facking for Natural Gas. ONE bad well, and you've contaminated an entire local aquifer. In the south and central midwest, there are folks who can light their well water on FIRE. It occured to me that the Natural Gas industry managed to secure under the Bush Administation a complete exemption from the Safe Drinking Water Act and Clean Water Act. Companies that engage in fracking are not even required to disclose the nature and quantity of the more than 900 different chemicals used in the process. My first thought is, "why the heck do they NEED them?"
"And the sad thing is that it's all a complete lie, this complete dependence upon oil products and other nonsustainable, dirty fuels. There are places where they have completely done away with it, use solar, wind, water energy, biofuels, etc, producing so much excess fuel that they make money selling it back to the electric companies. I posted a link yesterday about an entire town that switched over and are a real inspiration."
- Richard J Treitner, via Facebook
One of the more disappointing aspects is that despite such sterling examples, due to the ever rising demands of technological civilization, despite steady advances,
alternative energy is barely displacing fossil fuels. It might be an uncomfortable blessing if the costs of petroleum rose even more rapidly. It would give the alternative energy industry more incentive and make alternative energy more attractive to investors.
But in an election year, the disappointing part is that neither the President or the electorate is willing to look past the election at the long view or the big picture, in fact doesn't seem capable of it. And don't seem very tolerant of those who are trying to think down the road a bit.
“We can’t stop global warming with more fossil fuel pipelines. The people who voted for this President did so believing he would help us address the global environmental catastrophe that our pollution is creating. He said he would free us from ‘the tyranny of oil.’ Today that campaign promise is being trampled to boost the President’s poll numbers.”
- RoseMary Crawford, Project Manager of the Center for Energy Matters
Native American’s Protest Keystone XL From A Cage
"I agree with this diarist's sentiments, but do not see how the President, as a player on the political field of 2012, could have done more for the environment. He has to probe the Oilpatch for votes, & he's got to ride in there in a way that stresses its importance. Since the Oilpatch is certain to remain important for US energy for a generation, this is not a dishonest kiss he is blowing. Those who wish to defeat Romney in November need Obama to be blowing this kiss right now."
- Anthony West, Via Facebook
I follow a Native spirituality that encourages us to consider that the consequences of our words and actions will be felt and manifest seven generations into the future. It depresses me that the (likely fatal) weakness of our so-called democratic system, is that immediate political expediency will almost always trump the long-term good of the Nation, or the Planet.
Mr President, some of us expected better of you.