The oil companies are in charge. The problem with this pipeline is that
IT WILL HAVE ITS OWN DEMANDS ON OUR ECONOMY. Refineries are the infrastructure of the oil business...that calls itself the "energy sector." Look in any Economy 101 text and learn what OPPORTUNITY COST means. We are currently paying opportunity costs within our public transportation systems due to the devotion of a great chunk of our infrastructure investment in automobile transportation in the first place. Instead of upgrading our public mass transportation systems in the 60's forward, we built at public expense these huge rush hour idling parking lots called "freeways." At the same time the old red line systems were completely eliminated. Admittedly it was an old decrepit system, but the right-of-ways were all chopped to pieces and some of these rail corridors were actually converted to bikeways. I was around when these freeways were built and can tell you they were magnificent and you could breeze through town at incredible speeds when they first opened. It seemed the world was our petroleum powered personal transportation oyster.
Just like the field of dreams however, "build it and they will come,"
and they came and came and came, totally jamming up these modern wonders. When they were built and people were only learning how to access them, they seemed quite wonderful. But this wonderfulness lasted only a few short years...just long enough to sell everybody cars and the cities more and more GM busses. When the system was asked to accommodate the traffic of normal commerce, it quickly proved unwieldy. Even today, when traffic is light, there are times when they are not jammed and they seem to work well...after midnight on long holiday weekends. But the business of a city is done during business hours and commute. That is what this system was expected to support. This system, expected to wisk people to work and back home has become so overloaded and under maintained, during normal commute hours, it has become an actual obstacle between a person and his work often.
There have been a lot of modifications of this system in an attempt to make an undersized system serve a purpose it actually cannot serve without increased pollution and commuter frustration. People who live near these things are always fighting expansion plans for extra lanes, toll lanes, etc. etc. etc. and none of these things do anything but increase the width of the rush hour parking lot. There was a lot of lobbying to create these modern wonders, but they have actually worked out, while it sold a lot of cars and busses, they have proven themselves conceptually flawed.
Now we are talking about a pipeline and not a freeway here, but it is the same problem. Large infrastructure projects all carry with them their own special demands on society at large and on the environment. This Keystone pipeline is envisioned as something that will increase our access to energy even though it is dirty energy and even though it has increased refinery requirements. When our economy busies itself with meeting these needs, it will not have sufficient resources to also
build a parallel system...alternative energy system. In order for this pipeline to pay for itself, more petroleum products will have to be produced and most of it will be in the form of fuels....CO2 emissions.
If we assume that this pipeline is 100% safe and operates perfectly, the end product it delivers to the environment will still be excessive CO2 emissions. It will simply be another pathway and source of pollution added to the existing ones, and one that pollutes more per unit of product than existing ones. We need to take a humane world view and not feel free to flood oceanic societies and lowland seacoast cities out of existence.
There is a real desperation on the part of many including posters here to retain their current lifestyles.
I think we need to begin to consider reducing our per capita consumption of energy of all kinds and need to do so in a planned cooperative long term effort. Our economy needs to serve our entire society in the long term. We really do not need any more diversions from the changes we have to make.
I don't think our future should be placed in the hands of investment bankers and speculators and our infrastructure needs to serve societal needs, not the needs of greedy investors. To my thinking, Keystone is beyond the pale.
Instead of trillion dollar wars, let's see numerous hundred billion dollar projects in smart grids and alternative energy projects and conservation engineering and try to return to sanity from the Capitalistic nightmare.
Even here, amongst people who don't like what I am saying, I am seeing some of my opponents in this argument making baby steps in the right direction in my opinion. I don't post here with a lot a animus toward other posters. My posts reflect my personal thinking on these issues. I have seen remarks from Noble Savage and Derek that indicate they are thinking people and I really do not want to do anything to make them think I am attacking them. It is more a matter of policies that have consequences I think are unacceptable regarding this pipeline. I too am an avid bicyclist.
