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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsConor Kennedy: Why It’s Worth Going to Jail to Stop Keystone XL
Why Its Worth Going to Jail to Stop Keystone XL
Conor Kennedy
On Monday, the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) told the State Department that the information in the State Departments Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) on the Keystone XL pipeline is insufficient. Among EPAs many concerns was the State Departments failure to adequately address the pipelines impacts on climate change. EPA raised a host of other issues. In fact, the State Departments EIS is not useful for answering some of the most basic questions about Keystone XL.
Ever since Feb. 13, when I chained myself to the White House fence with 47 other protestors urging President Obama to kill the Keystone pipeline, people have asked me why I felt strongly enough about the issue to endure arrest. Many of them have the same questions that should have been asked in the State Departments EIS. If we dont build the pipeline through the American prairie, wont the oil companies just route it through British Columbia by rail, tank trucks or pipelines and sell their oil to Asia? Wont the Keystone XL pipeline give America energy security and the U.S. jobs? Wont the pipeline lower the price of gasoline at the pump? Havent the oil industry and government regulators given us adequate assurances that Keystone is safe? Dont the oil and pipeline companies have their own incentives to make sure the Keystone pipeline doesnt leak?
Here are the answers:
1) Is the Keystone XL Pipeline safe? Anyone who watched the oil industry and its regulators scramble to point fingers and dodge responsibility during the BP oil spill should be skeptical about industry claims of pipeline safety. Tar sands oil, sometimes known as bitumen, is extraordinarily corrosive and the industry has not figured out how to stop it from bursting even the most fortified pipelines. On March 31, an Exxon pipe carrying 95,000 barrels per day of Alberta tar sands oil from Illinois to Texas refineries burst and flooded an upscale suburb in Mayflower, Arkansas beneath an ocean of toxic heavy bitumen and lighter dilutents, added by oil companies to help the gelatinous bitumen move through the pipe. Arkansas taxpayers were shocked to learn that thanks to a loophole artfully created by the industrys political allies, theynot the oil companieswill have to pay for the cleanup.
That same week a burst Minnesota pipeline vomited 15,000 gallons of Alberta crude. In 2010, an Exxon pipeline in Michigan spewed a million gallons of dilbit into the Kalamazoo River, causing the worst and most expensive pipeline-based oil spill in U.S. history. Experts are still scratching their heads trying to figure out how to clean up the Kalamazoo spill which received little coverage from the mainstream corporate media. Clean-up crews commonly collect aquatic oil spills using floatable booms. As it turns out, tar sands oil doesnt float. Instead, it tarred and coated the Kalamazoo River bottom, which is the foundation of the aquatic ecosystem. In fact, oil and gas companies even shipping conventional oil, experience thousands of oil spills each year. In June, an Exxon pipe that runs parallel to the proposed route of the Keystone XL pipeline burst, spilling between 750 and 1,000 barrels, at a crossing on the iconic Yellowstone River and killed life in that blue ribbon trout fishery and national treasure for 25 miles.
Given the industrys abysmal record, its safe to say that Keystone XL will experience a major spill and, due to its planned route, that spill will almost certainly contaminate the Ogallala aquifer, the sole water supply for millions of middle state Americans as well as the breadbasket of American agriculture and the ranching industries in seven states.
2) Keystone XL will not create significant American jobs. According to the State Departments study, Keystone will provide only 35 full time jobs following the construction period. We could more beneficially create permanent jobs by incentivizing solar and wind development which, even with the current anemic federal incentives, are creating each year, more new generation capacity than all the incumbents (oil, gas, coal and nuke) combined. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are already 93,000 jobs in solar and 85,000 in wind, and those numbers are growing exponentially.
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http://ecowatch.com/2013/why-its-worth-going-to-jail-to-stop-keystone-xl/
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