First off, thank you for actually using arguments and addressing my points, unlike some here, like *cough*laughing*cough*dog.
I don't oppose oil development in general. I oppose specific projects for specific reasons. And I don't limit my opposition to Big Oil and the Kochs. I also oppose strip mining and similar egregiously destructive methods of resource extraction.
So which oil developments do you support?
And how do you reconcile opposition to strip mining with our need for resources?
The problem with pipelines is that they leak.
Nothing we do is going to be perfect. But you have to compare this pipeline with alternatives. A new pipeline is going to be preferable to an older one. A pipeline is preferable to using rail, in terms of safety, cost as well as not tying up limited rail resources.
Grain Piles Up, Waiting for a Ride, as Trains Move North Dakota Oil
This is a common fallacy in environmental arguments. A negative side of some technology is identified and opposed as if it exists in a vacuum as opposed to comparing it to the alternatives. For example, nuclear power. Burning coal causes much more pollution, deaths and even more radiation released than nuclear power, yet that is ignored by anti-nukesters. Hence the German ridicule that they believe "their electricity comes out of the wall outlet".
Anyone who tells you their existing pipeline doesn't or their future pipeline won't is lying to you. They ALL leak. And sometimes those leaks are large and destructive to the environment. Heck,
pipelines can be destructive even when they aren't leaking.
Again, I am not looking for perfection, and neither should you or the TED talker. Although I will look at it later. A bit in a hurry now.
When an oil company draws up plans for routing their products they always choose the path that will cost the least amount of money to build and maintain. They only consider the impact it will have on residents and communities along the way when they're forced to, and they typically understate the impacts in order to cast their project in the most favorable light. Naturally, the residents in affected communities don't want something destructive, dangerous, or potentially disastrous nearby and/or poisoning their soil and water supplies. Hence the conflict.
It would be easier to take residents' legitimate concerns into account if they would not oppose the pipeline anyway. What concretely do you think the Dakota Access people should do?
Routing a pipeline is difficult. You have to take geology, geography, human habitation, all into account and keep the route as straight as possible. And when you are opposed/blocked even when you have done route modifications in question, that expense is for nothing.
Take Keystone XL. Transcanada made modifications to the route to avoid certain critical areas. Yet Obama rejected the permit anyway, for no reason other than partisan politics.
I realize that a sudden drop in oil production will likely result in a massive increase in the use of coal, so there's little to be gained carbon footprint-wise from cutting off oil development, but I am firmly on the side of the residents who don't want yet another source of pollution in their communities. I find conservation efforts infinitely preferable to more fracking, more pipeline construction, and more poisonous compounds being added to our already stressed and depleted water supplies.
That's just not realistic. And you can't give residents veto power over something that has to be continuous to work.
