Keystone XL

[spectastic]

Out of curiosity, what are your guys' opinions on this?

[mandarin.orange]

Abysmally bad idea. 

 

My favorite article about it is here. 

 

The line that gets me most: "we are...being sold the lie that Alberta tar sands oil is conflict-free oil, gotten by scraping away the boreal forest of Canada - the great lungs of North America, one of our last hopes for temperance against rising CO2 levels."

 

I did fieldwork in the Ft. McMurray area about ten years ago, in winter. While I never care to repeat the experience of -38 ˚C on unnamed lakes, I've yet to see another landscape so pristine. 

[spectastic]

I think it's a noble crusade to fight for environmental conservation, but I think the keystone protests are more a symbolic gesture than anything else. Ultimately, preventing the keystone won't stop anything. Someone will still mine those reservoirs, and whoever ends up controlling that traffic would have a big influence over that market (and yea, make a lot of money too). I find a lof of the argument against the pipeline, such as tarsand requiring more process energy and emissions, potential pipe leaks, property rights, and Big Oil getting its way to be all valid arguments, but none of them are new to us. (I think the potential leak issue and irreversible environmental damage has the most people pissed off, but even so, keystone pipeline is a drop in the bucket compared to what's already out there) As offshore drilling migrates further away from the gulf coast, importing and processing tarsand becomes the more economical option. And whether they come from a pipeline, rail cars, or cargo ships is just a matter of time and cost. So from that perspective, it makes sense for America to capitalize on this opportunity, especially when Canada is already our largest exporter for oil. In the grand scheme of things, I think the bigger influence on reducing carbon emissions relies on the initiative on a global scale, which we're already starting to see with China starting to ban its coal fired power plants in some major cities. And because the of the public scrutiny of the Keystone XL, rejecting its completion may set a precedence and let other countries know that we're serious about this (probably won't happen). Like any other market, oil is driven by profit, whether that means trying to stay alive (eg. coal industry) or staying ahead of competitors. So that's why I think we should be more focused on enforcing environmental policies to not stop producing oil, but rather produce at a greater efficiency and still meet the increasing world demand. Until they figure out how to make clean energy cheaper than fossil fuels, this is the way it's going to be, Keystone or no Keystone