Keystone XL - To Build or Not

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Friday May 31, 2013 · 3:06 PM PDT

2013/05/31 · 15:06

James Hansen, the former NASA climatologist, who left NASA recently to actively advocate for climate change remedies, one of the first scientists to alert us to climate change/global warming back in the 1980s, and Bill McKibben, the founder of 350.org (named for the ideal maximum allowable 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere), both claim (backed by scientific evidence) that the Keystone XL pipeline is the 'tipping point' for anthropogenic (man made) climate change, and if built, will drive us past the point where we can hope to control global warming. Since we currently have no economical method for removing large amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, to alleviate the negative effects of climate change, ideally, all the remaining fossil fuels should be left in the ground, but with our current addiction to fossil fuels, leaving all the oil in the ground is probably not feasible. In an ideal world the fossil fuel industry would not be actively blocking our transition to renewable energy simply to make more money, and we would have already made the transition to renewable energy, but this is not an ideal world. So, we must use our (global) oil reserves wisely and make the price of that oil reflect the actual cost of refining and burning it. The true price would reflect the additional environmental and health costs. The true price would also reflect that tar sands oil is three to four times dirtier than regular crude and will release three to four times more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere when refined and burned. Just as the true price of 'fracking' (hydraulic fracturing) the oil shales (using the current, inadequately regulated, unsafe methods that contaminate our ground water) will include the costs of the additional pollution and the destruction of our limited fresh water supplies. If the current unsafe methods for extracting and transporting fossil fuels continue to be used without modification, then, in the not too distant future, clean drinking water could be worth more than gold. Do we want to take the risk that millions more folks will die from thirst just so big oil can make a profit?

The argument that the Keystone XL pipeline will create 'thousands' of permanent jobs has been thoroughly debunked. While the pipeline will create some temporary jobs (4500 to 6000) as it is being built, most of those jobs will go to oil company employees who are already currently employed, and the total number of permanent jobs has been shown to be a grand total of fifty. Only fifty permanent jobs! Other arguments promoted by the pro-pipeline folks are that the Keystone XL pipeline will make America 'energy independent', and that its construction will decrease the price of gasoline. Both these statements are also false. First, the only U.S. citizens, who will benefit from this increase in dirty tar sands oil being pumped across our heartland are folks, like Charles and David Koch, who own the oil refineries at the end of the pipeline in Texas. The refined oil will be shipped abroad. We are, in fact, using more tar sands oil now than we will after the pipeline is built because it is incredibly inefficient (read expensive) to ship the unrefined tar sands oil by rail, truck, or tanker over extended distances. The tar sands oil that is currently being transported by these methods is only shipped over short hauls, and we have the use of it in some of our Canadian border states like North Dakota which has a small refinery to convert the dirty tar sands oil to gasoline. Once the pipeline is built these 'sources' of tar sands crude will literally dry up as all of the tar sands oil will be pumped to Gulf refineries. Did you know that tar sands oil is one of the dirtiest fuels on the planet, and that it is extremely difficult to clean up after pipeline spills because tar sands oil sinks in water? Second, the world price of oil is set by the oil cartels. The big oil companies sell gasoline at market rates, and they will not decrease their profits by selling it at a lower rate. The big oil companies have even routinely kept loaded tankers offshore, waiting for the price of oil to rise before they dock. Do you think that they will act any differently once the pipeline is built? American taxpayers are absorbing all the risks (tar sands pipeline spills, water and soil contamination, and increased global warming) while reaping none of the rewards. Big oil gets the money, and we, the people get the shaft.

As the (tar sands pipeline spills) Buzzfeed/Truthout article reports:

Enbridge is responsible for 804 pipeline spills totaling 6.8 million gallons of oil since 1999, according to the Polaris Institute. That includes the Kalamazoo spill, where 800,000 barrels of oil gushed for l7 days and where cleanup costs were $800 million — so far; cleanup isn’t done. The ecological impact, health impact, and insurance economic impact, in terms of lost property values and rising insurance costs, have never been calculated.

Apparently OFA (Organizing for America), the Obama grassroots political action group, while advocating for climate change remedies and 'getting after' climate change deniers, is distancing itself from the presidential decision on whether to build the Keystone XL pipeline. CREDO, another progressive political action group, is opposed to the pipeline being built because (they rightly believe as do the reputable climate scientists) Keystone is the lynchpin, the tipping point that will drive us into irreparable climate change disaster if it is built. Make no mistake. If the pipeline is not built, the big oil companies will lose billions of (US) dollars, and if it is built, then we all will lose, our health, our clean air and water, and our (habitable) planet. If the current pace of global warming is not slowed significantly or halted entirely, eighty percent of the species currently living on our planet will become extinct due to therapidity (in geological time) of the temperature changes and the resulting extreme climates that will be generated by these rapid changes.

The effects of global warming will not be a regular, steady drip like the melting of an ice cube in your kitchen sink. More heat in the atmosphere and oceans will cause catastrophic surges in climate and ocean rise as huge events that cannot be predicted by the current climate models happen sporadically (i.e. great glacial or polar ice shelf chunks fall into the ocean or the jet streams go wild), dumping huge amounts of wind, precipitation, and sea level rise in unexpected places. A good analogy is the process of a dam bursting. Water pressure builds up behind the dam as the water rises. When the water undercuts the dam and/or the structural capacity of the dam to hold back the weight/pressure of the water is exceeded, a tipping point is reached, the water weight causes a structural collapse, the dam bursts, and water comes rushing through. Another good analogy is the process of water boiling. Not much happens at first except an increasing temperature until the water nears its boiling point. Then, suddenly, gas bubbles erupt and the water becomes turbulent as the additional heat wreaks havoc with the water, a tipping point is reached, and the water begins to boil. We are very close to that tipping point with global warming.

The Obama administration's rationale for deciding whether or not to build the Keystone XL pipeline is currently based upon the State Department's environmental impact study, and the reason that the State Department is even involved at all in the decision is that the pipeline will cross our northern border with Canada, involving national security. Two aspects of the State Department study, however, are flawed. The first, is that the study is authored by the oil consulting firm, Environmental Resources Management (ERM - whose ties to TransCanada are conveniently redacted by the State Department in the study). ERM is a TransCanada contractor known to be sympathetic to Enbridge, the pipeline builder and to the conservative Canadian government, who are also pushing to get the pipeline built, commissioning a $16 million, taxpayer funded, public relations campaign that studiously ignores the facts and the environmental impacts of constructing and operating the pipeline. Canadian officials have also traveled to the United States, visiting the House and the Senate and even the President to promote the Keystone XL pipeline. The result of those visits (and of the fossil fuel industry flexing its political muscle) has been a nonbinding amendment to the budget voted on by the U.S. Senate 62-37 in favor of building the pipeline, and the U.S. House also voted 241-175 in favor of HR-3 a similar bill. However, the decision whether to build the Keystone XL pipeline rests entirely with President Barack Obama. Over one million public comments were filed with the State Department during its public comment period (and, incidentally, hidden from the public's view in an unprecedented manner by the oil company consultant, ERM, who is handling the review for the State Department) with the majority, including a response from the EPA, disputing the alleged 'facts' in the State Department environmental study. The main thrust of the State Department environmental impact study is to conclude that if the Keystone XL pipeline is not built, the tar sands oil will still find its way to market. The study fails to account for the Canadian environmental groups and native American tribes who strenuously oppose the pipeline being built upon their tribal lands in Canada, thereby blocking any alternate pipeline routes built to Canada's west coast for transporting the tar sands oil ultimately for sale to China. The study also erroneously concludes that sans the Keystone XL pipeline, the oil companies will ship the tar sands oil by rail, truck, or tanker to reach its ultimate destination, but if that fact were true, then they would already be shipping the tar sands oil on a much larger scale to the Texas refineries since the pipeline has been delayed for more than three years.

So, now we get to the point where the 'rubber meets the road'. The decision whether to build the Keystone XL pipeline to carry the dirty tars sands oil across the American heartland rests solely with President Obama, who has repeatedly stated in public during his second inaugral speech that he believes in global warming and the science behind it, and that he will follow the science to halt and/or reverse global warming.

“We, the people, still believe that our obligations as Americans are not just to ourselves, but to all posterity. We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations. Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms. The path towards sustainable energy sources will be long and sometimes difficult. But America cannot resist this transition; we must lead it. We cannot cede to other nations the technology that will power new jobs and new industries – we must claim its promise. That is how
we will maintain our economic vitality and our national treasure – our forests and waterways; our croplands and snowcapped peaks. That is how we will preserve our planet, commanded to our care by God. That’s what will lend meaning to the creed our fathers once declared.” ~ President Barack Obama

If, as he states, his goal is to use science (not money or politics) to influence his decision regarding Keystone and global warming, then President Obama's choice is clear: He must reject the Keystone XL pipeline because, according to science, the Keystone XL pipeline should not be built, and the dirty tar sands oil should remain unburned, in the ground.

However, if our President decides to build the Keystone XL pipeline, siding with big oil, their money and political influence, while rejecting science, then Barack Obama can no
longer claim that he is anything more than a 'corporate' politician, who works with/for the fossil fuel industry to the detriment of everyone else. The Keystone XL pipeline is the cornerstone issue regarding climate change to a large part of his political base, and he will lose popular support and GOTV (Get Out The Vote) political activism, weakening OFA, just before the 2014 midterms (similar to 2010 with its lackluster base support that gave the GOP the House and a number of Republican governorships), not a pleasant scenario if the Democrats plan to take back the House and hold onto the Senate...

90 Million Voters Will Not Vote: 18 Reasons They Should

cwsmoke

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Wednesday August 22, 2012 · 5:29 AM PDT

2012/08/22 · 05:29

There are 90 million voters, who are not going to vote in this November's national elections for one reason or another. Some are fed up with the current two party system. Some think that politics has become too dirty, and they don't want to be involved. Some say that all the candidates are the same, some say that their vote doesn't mean anything, and some think that politics doesn't concern or affect them. This diary is for all of you because your vote does count, and the political party that gains power in this, perhaps the most important election in your lifetimes, will influence YOUR life for decades to come. The list that I compiled demonstrates in detail exactly how each of your lives will be changed if the Republicans, and Willard Romney gain power.

But first a bit of background.

For those of you who think that politics doesn't matter in your lives I have one point to make. We all get old. There is currently no way around it. If you live in America, and you get old, there are two government programs that will affect your life in ways that you can't yet imagine, particularly if you are under 40, unless, of course, you have relatives who are getting old. The first program is Medicare, and this program is currently fiscally sound until 2024 thanks in large part to the recent passage of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). By implementing about $716 billion in cost savings (over a ten year period) and redistributing the money to cover free preventive care and to close the donut hole, where seniors paid premium prices out of pocket for their prescriptions, the Obama administration has extended the solvency of Medicare until the year 2024. Without the Affordable Care Act Medicare will be insolvent by 2016 during Romney's first term. Both political parties agree that Medicare needs to be 'strengthened', but the method of 'strengthening' the program is in dispute (quotes for 'strengthening' because the Republican idea of 'strengthening' is synonymous with 'destroying.').

The second large government program that will affect your lives is Social Security, a contract between the people and their government whereby you pay into your retirement account (with your employer matching your contribution), and the government guarantees that your retirement income is secure (with interest). Social Security is the most successful government program ever, and it does not contribute one penny to the national debt. In fact, the Social Security Trust Fund currently has a surplus of $2.7 trillion. The program just celebrated its 77th anniversary, and with very minor tweaking (raising the salary cap from $106,000 to $250,000) will be solvent for another 75 years.

When I was thirty years old, I simply knew that I would make so much money that Social Security wouldn't affect my life, one way or the other. Well, I did make a ton of money, and I also lost a ton of money. And guess what!?! That Social Security check every month like clockwork makes a much bigger difference than I ever thought it would. As for Medicare, I am extremely healthy. I eat super foods and avoid processed foods and refined sugar. I surf and mountain trail run every day, weather permitting, and the weather generally does cooperate here in sunny Hawaii. I haven't been sick one day since I began the alkaline diet six year ago (crosses fingers), so I haven't had to utilize my Medicare, yet. Social Security makes an automatic deduction each month to cover my Medicare insurance, so I am covered if I ever need it, and I know that I will at some point because I have watched my family age, some gracefully, some not. The point that I am making is that my healthcare is assured for the rest of my life without my doing anything except to (attempt to) stay healthy.

Which brings me to why your vote this November is the most important vote in your life...Republicans since Ronald Reagan have been pushing the country to the right, and now the party of Eisenhower serves the rich and powerful exclusively, leaving the poor and middle class to fend for themselves. That's their philosophy. They're proud of it. And this election cycle they are attempting to consolidate the impressive gains that they made under G.W. Bush, making America a corporatocracy, a functioning oligarchy, where the rich rule to the detriment of everyone else.

Disclaimer: Romney has said that he and Ryan agree nearly 100% on their respective budgets, but the Romney/Ryan budget intentionally lacks specifics, so I have extrapolated the findings of reputable, mostly non-partisan organizations to compose this list. If we wait for Romney to 'explain' or fill out the details of his budget plan, it will be November, and we, the voters will still be waiting...

Most of the time the damage done by Republicans isn't readily apparent, but this election is different. Republican policies will change your life dramatically. Your vote does count. Please use it, so that the following does NOT happen:

Some unpleasant things to contemplate if Romney/Ryan win in November:

1. If you are currently under 55, when you apply for Medicare, you will be given a voucher that will be insufficient to cover YOUR health insurance costs. YOUR out of pocket expenses for health insurance will cost up to an additional $6400 in your first year (as opposed to the roughly $1200 paid by current seniors). YOU will also be shopping for health insurance in the private insurance market each and every year until the year that you die. How many octagenarians (80 year olds) and older do you know who can handle everyday finances?

2. When the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) is repealed, you will be subject to the whims and avarice of the health insurance industry when you encounter pre-existing conditions, lifetime coverage caps, and unwarranted price increases. Your children over 18 will no longer be covered on your health insurance. If you are currently on Medicare, the donut hole for prescription drugs will return, and your free preventive care (colonoscopies, mamograms, and annual checkups) will be discontinued, causing more expense for seniors already on Medicare. In addition, Federal Medicaid funds will be cut by 40% (or more), when the Romney/Ryan budget is enacted, curtailing care to the poor AND seniors, who are receiving hospice care. (MEDICARE DOES NOT PAY FOR NURSING HOME CARE, except as applied to your annual deductible.). Did you know that good nursing home care costs roughly $15,000 per month?

3. Roe v Wade will be overturned by an ultra-conservative Supreme Court, outlawing abortions and most likely also contraception because Romney/Ryan and the Republicans will continue moving our courts further to the right, and the current Republican controlled House has passed numerous bills to that effect. The religious right (an integral part of the Republican base) will emerge (with government sanction, wink, wink) to (attempt to) force their brand of pseudo-Christianity on the rest of us, including our military where they are already firmly entrenched. Our children's textbooks will be rewritten to revise history and demonize science, substituting creationism for Darwin's theory of evolution. (See the Texas textbook controversy where the religious right took over the school boards.) Also thanks to blue aardvark for this excellent diary further expanding our knowledge of the anti-abortion sentiment demonstrated by Paul Ryan and the 112th Congress.

4. The Supreme Court will almost assuredly become ultra-conservative for the forseeable future, inevitably granting corporations more rights (Citizens United v FEC) while they take away YOURS. (Did you know that on the political spectrum, there is Communism on the far left and fascism on the far right, where corporations become the government and run the show? - The definition of fascism.) Visualize a horizontal line with Communism at the far left and fascism at the far right. In the current political climate what we currently call liberal and progressive is at the center of the line, while Democrats and 'moderates' are right of center about one quarter of the way toward fascism. The current Republican Party leadership is right of center about three quarters of the way toward fascism with the radical fringe already well entrenched at the right end of the line in fascism. During the 1950s and 1960s, on a similar horizontal line Democrats, liberals and progressives were left of center about one quarter to one third toward Communism, moderates from both parties were at the center, and Republicans like Barry Goldwater were right of center about one quarter to one third toward fascism with the discredited ultra right wing John Birch Society at the far right end of the line, seeing Communist conspiracies behind every door while straddling fascism. With the current horizontal line today there is no balance. Everyone is either at the center or to the right of center. The American people rejected The John Birch Society in the sixties, partly because the last war against fascism was still visible in our rearview mirror, and partly because the J.B.S. were bat shit crazy, but now the J.B.S. is in charge of the Republican Party. Consider which direction the country will move if these people take control.

5. If you earn less than $200,000 annually, your Federal taxes will inevitably increase between $1000-2000 when the Romney/Ryan budget is implemented.

6. Corporate welfare (currently at $92 billion annually) will increase while the social safety net (currently at $59 billion annually) will be demolished to pay for the additional tax breaks for the rich. Food stamps that currently support 47 million Americans, federal aid to education, and food programs to feed poor children will be severely cut (if not eliminated altogether). Imagine what it would be like if government used tax revenue to benefit the people, not the corporations.

7. There will be another war, probably in the Middle East and probably with Iran (because Romney's neocon foreign policy advisors like John Bolton, who was the U.N. Ambassador during the G.W. Bush administration, are pressing for action in support of Israel as this is being written).

8. The Defense Budget that is already larger than the next seventeen countries combined will be increased to support Defense Contractors and war profiteers like Halliburton and Xe.

9. You will commute and travel on crumbling highways and unsafe bridges because infrastructure expenditures have been cut to the bone so that millionaires and billionaires (like Romney, Ryan, members of Congress, and their billionaire 'dark money' contributors) can have more tax cuts.

10. The EPA will be disabled, removing carbon dioxide from its regulatory purview, effectively crippling the agency to regulate the root cause of global warming, and the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts will be undone so that Romney and Ryan's big parasitic corporate contributors will get what they paid for to extract fossil fuels at the expense of everyone's health. The government, through the EPA has done numerous studies, reflecting the added health costs related to relaxing and/or eliminating the clean air and water restrictions which is probably the main reason that the big polluters (i.e. Koch Industries, one of the top ten polluters in the country) want to dismantle it.

11. Greenhouse gases pumped into the atmosphere will increase, not decrease, causing global warming to reach an irreversible tipping point. The Keystone X/L pipeline will be built, causing what leading climate scientist, James Hansen calls, 'game over' with regard to man's efforts to halt or ameliorate climate change due to the negative effects of developing, transporting, and refining the tar sands oil.

12. Wall Street 'too large to fail' banks will be completely deregulated (Dodd - Frank repealed - Glass - Stegall only a distant memory), opening the 'grand casino' to use investors' money (i.e. ultimately taxpayers money) for gambling on derivatives and other contrived investment instruments that will inevitably cause the economy to fail as it did in 2007-09.

13. Unemployment will increase by roughly 4.1 million Americans in the first two years that the Romney/Ryan budget is implemented, according to Ethan Pollack at The Economic Policy Institute. Romney's claim that his budget will provide 12 million new jobs and cut the unemployment rate to 6.2% have been labelled “a fantasy” and “a mathematical impossibility” by Nobel Prize winning economist, Paul Krugman and Ezra Klein (with similar comments regarding Paul Ryan's budget).

14. Social Security will be privatized, implementing David Koch's plan when he ran for Vice President in 1980 of which Willard Romney and Paul Ryan are major proponents (as was G.W. Bush in 2005), giving the Wall Street casino control of YOUR retirement savings. Hat tip to cc ( previous link) for his excellent diary.

15. More minorities, poor people and undocumented immigrants will be locked up, as they currently are in many red states, using the phony war on drugs as a Republican rationalization to support their 'prisons for profit' agenda.

16. Groups like ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) will be reinvigorated, writing legislation without transparency, in secret, directly by corporations for corporations, circumventing the democratic, legislative process.

17. Everything that isn't nailed down (and many things that are) will be 'profitized/privatized.' What many people don't understand is that, in general, public work projects cost more and are of higher quality than private sector projects due to higher construction standards. So, when special interests 'privatize' public projects, they are buying 'on the cheap.' In Wisconsin, for example, the Koch brothers with Governor Walker's help are taking advantage of a bad economy to line their own pockets.

18. Voter suppression and new Jim Crow laws will be passed to keep minorities from voting and thereby 'threatening' white folks.

If even half of the 90 million recalcitrant voters simply vote, there will be an end to ALL this Republican BS. Your vote DOES count because the Republicans are counting on you not to vote. I have intentionally left off comparisons between the parties, focusing instead on Republican policies because I consider them the most aggregious (my personal bias). These are just a few of the negative consequences of electing Romney and Ryan. Feel free to add your own in the comments...

I live in Hawaii, and I'm six hours behind EDT. I'll be available to respond after 1:00PM EST

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