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The Keystone XL Pipeline project, a controversial oil pipeline, enables the development of tar sands, “one of the dirtiest, costliest, and most destructive fuels in the world.”[1] With the intention to create jobs and increase our oil supply, TransCanada Corporation seeks the president’s approval for the 1,179 mile tar-sands pipeline. However, because the costs far outweigh the benefits, we cannot promote a pipeline project when the environment continues to suffer from the negative externalities accompanying our current energy sources. The Keystone pipeline proposal is not a step towards improving our economic situation, but rather a detriment to the environment, an enabler to our country’s addiction to oil, and a wrong turn on the road to a clean energy future.
The Keystone XL Pipeline project, is the proposed construction of a 1,179 mile-long tar sands oil pipeline by the Canadian oil and gas company, TransCanada Corporation. The pipeline will potentially transport 830,000 tar sands oil barrels per day from Alberta, Canada through Steele City, Nebraska, trekking across six states in between: Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas.[1] TransCanada Corporation argues that the pipeline will lead to positive tax revenues increases, a stable energy supplier for the U.S., and a significant increase in employment opportunities.[2] In contrast, the pipeline can potentially destroy ecosystems, pollute water sources, and raise public health concerns. Renouncing the negative externalities shadowing the project, President Obama initially rejected the TransCanada’s first pipeline proposal January 18th, 2012; however, after slightly altering the proposal, TransCanada submitted a revised re-application that only proposed to build the original project’s northern segment. TransCanada is currently anticipating the project’s approval and a presidential permit to begin construction, which they should receive during 2013’s first quarter.[3] Should the President Obama approve the project proposal regardless of the destructive externalities accompanying it?
Tar sands and their extraction processes are proven to be detrimental to the surrounding environment. The Keystone XL pipeline would carry tar sands oil from Hardisty, Alberta through Steele City, Nebraska: a 1,179 mile stretch of potential environmental destruction. Tar sands are either extracted through surface mining or an In-Situ drilling process, which both induce mass land destruction and water contamination.[4] The extraction processes of this crude oil source have high potentials to destroy surrounding ecosystems, produce toxic waste reservoirs, release toxic chemicals that pollute the air, and emit a higher amount of global warming pollutants than fuels produced with conventional oils.[1] Evidence regarding tar sand oil’s effects is illustrated through the mess created by the Kalamazoo River spill a few years ago, which resulted in mandatory evacuations, massacres of biodiversity, and environmental corrosion.[5] This spill created 800 million dollars of environmental damage that the US economy continues suffering to clean up. Aside from the monetary factors tar sand oil induces, health issue reports associated with air pollution and acid rain have been recorded in communities surrounding its usage.[6] Regarding the global warming influence, the greenhouse gas emission level from tar sands oil production is three times that of conventional oil production. Our country can not afford a further increase in our level of greenhouse gas emissions, environmentally or economically, which the Keystone pipeline’s construction will prove to do.[4]
Although argued that the pipeline project’s approval will create jobs and economic benefits for the US, this new project will solely increase our oil dependence and cause large-scaled future economic problems. Following the president’s first rejection of the project, the presidential administration concluded the estimated accumulation of U.S. jobs accompanying the pipeline’s approval, stemmed from false accusations. Obama’s rejection report explained that although the project would create an immense amount of temporary jobs regarding the pipeline’s construction, long-term employment rates would not increase. They calculated that the pipeline would result in solely “5,000 to 6,000 direct construction jobs in the United States that would last for the two years that it would take to build the pipeline.”[7] Aside from the false hope of decreasing unemployment, by acquiring an addition pipeline, the U.S. would increase our oil dependence. With our oil production at its highest rate in years, and constant research being conducted to decrease oil usage, the country is not in dire need of a new oil source. As we attempt to steer our consumers away from over-consumption of oil, creating an abundant supply that would be readily available at our fingertips, would simply enable addiction and foreshadow a future oil dependence with negative economic impacts.
The Keystone XL Pipeline project, is the proposed construction of a 1,179 mile-long tar sands oil pipeline by the Canadian oil and gas company, TransCanada Corporation. The pipeline will potentially transport 830,000 tar sands oil barrels per day from Alberta, Canada through Steele City, Nebraska, trekking across six states in between: Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas.[1] TransCanada Corporation argues that the pipeline will lead to positive tax revenues increases, a stable energy supplier for the U.S., and a significant increase in employment opportunities.[2] In contrast, the pipeline can potentially destroy ecosystems, pollute water sources, and raise public health concerns. Renouncing the negative externalities shadowing the project, President Obama initially rejected the TransCanada’s first pipeline proposal January 18th, 2012; however, after slightly altering the proposal, TransCanada submitted a revised re-application that only proposed to build the original project’s northern segment. TransCanada is currently anticipating the project’s approval and a presidential permit to begin construction, which they should receive during 2013’s first quarter.[3] Should the President Obama approve the project proposal regardless of the destructive externalities accompanying it?
Tar sands and their extraction processes are proven to be detrimental to the surrounding environment. The Keystone XL pipeline would carry tar sands oil from Hardisty, Alberta through Steele City, Nebraska: a 1,179 mile stretch of potential environmental destruction. Tar sands are either extracted through surface mining or an In-Situ drilling process, which both induce mass land destruction and water contamination.[4] The extraction processes of this crude oil source have high potentials to destroy surrounding ecosystems, produce toxic waste reservoirs, release toxic chemicals that pollute the air, and emit a higher amount of global warming pollutants than fuels produced with conventional oils.[1] Evidence regarding tar sand oil’s effects is illustrated through the mess created by the Kalamazoo River spill a few years ago, which resulted in mandatory evacuations, massacres of biodiversity, and environmental corrosion.[5] This spill created 800 million dollars of environmental damage that the US economy continues suffering to clean up. Aside from the monetary factors tar sand oil induces, health issue reports associated with air pollution and acid rain have been recorded in communities surrounding its usage.[6] Regarding the global warming influence, the greenhouse gas emission level from tar sands oil production is three times that of conventional oil production. Our country can not afford a further increase in our level of greenhouse gas emissions, environmentally or economically, which the Keystone pipeline’s construction will prove to do.[4]
Although argued that the pipeline project’s approval will create jobs and economic benefits for the US, this new project will solely increase our oil dependence and cause large-scaled future economic problems. Following the president’s first rejection of the project, the presidential administration concluded the estimated accumulation of U.S. jobs accompanying the pipeline’s approval, stemmed from false accusations. Obama’s rejection report explained that although the project would create an immense amount of temporary jobs regarding the pipeline’s construction, long-term employment rates would not increase. They calculated that the pipeline would result in solely “5,000 to 6,000 direct construction jobs in the United States that would last for the two years that it would take to build the pipeline.”[7] Aside from the false hope of decreasing unemployment, by acquiring an addition pipeline, the U.S. would increase our oil dependence. With our oil production at its highest rate in years, and constant research being conducted to decrease oil usage, the country is not in dire need of a new oil source. As we attempt to steer our consumers away from over-consumption of oil, creating an abundant supply that would be readily available at our fingertips, would simply enable addiction and foreshadow a future oil dependence with negative economic impacts.
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| Image by tarsandsaction http://www.flickr.com/photos/tarsandsaction/6320923978/ |
President Obama addresses our country’s road to a clean energy future by acknowledging, “We can’t have an energy strategy for the last century that traps us in the past. We need an energy strategy for the future – an all-of-the-above strategy for the 21st century that develops every source of American-made energy.”[8] How would approving the Keystone pipeline assist this goal when it will only increase our oil dependence and stir up existing climate problems? Approving the proposal will send us away from improvement and down the wrong road towards a clean energy world. The U.S., already criticized for our excessive consumption of oil, consumes approximately a quarter of the world’s supply, in comparison with the global community. By approving the pipeline project and increasing our domestic oil supply, our dependence will worsen, and steering the country towards a cleaner energy future appears as a less appealing aspiration. When President Obama took oath in 2012, he promised the country that we would strive to lead the global community in creating a clean energy environment and improving the current climate situation. The tar sands oil extracted for use in the pipeline does not only contradict this goal, but will worsen our climate situation and cause a backtrack in the promising improvements we have already made regarding cleaner energy.
Alternative solutions concerning our country’s energy crisis emerge through research daily, so why should we put more money towards a solution that will only cause more detriment than we are already facing? Rather than aspiring to obtain an abundant oil supply, we should be looking for ways to reduce our dependence and lead us towards a cleaner energy future. Through discovery of efficient energy policies and the introduction of alternate solutions for the crisis at hand, our country will start heading towards the right direction. To put the U.S. back on the right track, President Obama must reject the Keystone XL pipeline proposal and begin searching for “ a long game that will help to get the United States, and hopefully the world, to where it wants to be several decades from now.”[9]
1. http://www.nwf.org/What-We-Do/Energy-and-Climate/Drilling-and-Mining/Tar-Sands.aspx
2. http://www.transcanada.com/keystone.html
3. http://www.foe.org/projects/climate-and-energy/tar-sands/keystone-xl-pipeline
4. http://dirtyoilsands.org/tarsands
5. http://www.onearth.org/article/tar-sands-oil-plagues-a-michigan-community
6. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443995604578001901362643448.html
7.http://stateimpact.npr.org/texas/2012/01/18/why-obama-decided-against-the-keystone-xl-pipeline/
8. http://www.whitehouse.gov/energy
9. http://www.nature.com/news/change-for-good-1.12312
Alternative solutions concerning our country’s energy crisis emerge through research daily, so why should we put more money towards a solution that will only cause more detriment than we are already facing? Rather than aspiring to obtain an abundant oil supply, we should be looking for ways to reduce our dependence and lead us towards a cleaner energy future. Through discovery of efficient energy policies and the introduction of alternate solutions for the crisis at hand, our country will start heading towards the right direction. To put the U.S. back on the right track, President Obama must reject the Keystone XL pipeline proposal and begin searching for “ a long game that will help to get the United States, and hopefully the world, to where it wants to be several decades from now.”[9]
1. http://www.nwf.org/What-We-Do/Energy-and-Climate/Drilling-and-Mining/Tar-Sands.aspx
2. http://www.transcanada.com/keystone.html
3. http://www.foe.org/projects/climate-and-energy/tar-sands/keystone-xl-pipeline
4. http://dirtyoilsands.org/tarsands
5. http://www.onearth.org/article/tar-sands-oil-plagues-a-michigan-community
6. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443995604578001901362643448.html
7.http://stateimpact.npr.org/texas/2012/01/18/why-obama-decided-against-the-keystone-xl-pipeline/
8. http://www.whitehouse.gov/energy
9. http://www.nature.com/news/change-for-good-1.12312
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