Oil from tar sands
Is our gripe;
Hard to keep it
In the pipe.
Is our gripe;
Hard to keep it
In the pipe.
Poor TransCanada. Everything looked so promising.
The company had just finished drawing a line across Saskatchewan ,
North Dakota , South
Dakota , Kansas , and Oklahoma , with hardly a
peep of protest. The folks back in Alberta
were solidly behind turning their valued forests into moonscape to harvest all
those petrodollars and all those jobs. The provincial government, too, had
already dismissed the environment and embraced the delicious expected profits.
Further, Washington
seemed ready to play ball. Gas prices were soaring, Republicans were drooling,
and President Barack Obama needed to show action prior to the upcoming
election. Port Arthur , Texas
Well, dimwittedness for one. In constantly pressing
to cut costs, TransCanada proposed a shorter route for its planned $7-billion
Keystone XL oil wonderpipe. Imprudently, it was to cut across a large corner of
Nebraska ,
assaulting both the iconic and fragile Sand Hills and the sacred Ogallala
Aquifer. Bad move.
Cornhuskers may not be environmental frontrunners on
national issues, but they know which side their agricultural livelihood is
buttered on. It's the Ogallala, and anyone who risks spilling the world's
dirtiest oil into that revered reserve is in for trouble.
Not to say that Nebraskans themselves aren't known
to waste plenty of that precious aquifer. It's just that nobody else had better
try it.
So suddenly the traditional enemies of global
warming had an unexpected local and potent ally — Nebraskans — to help bolster
their more cosmic arguments about climate change. Yes, a pipeline leak can
cause some very nasty local damage, but Alberta 's
tar sands can threaten some of the nastiest damage in the entire world.
Of all
the noxious sources of oil, they are the worst. Simply extracting the product
produces more CO₂
than burning the oil itself. And the vast mileage of forest that is clear cut,
scraped, toxic pooled, and abandoned is no longer available to absorb CO₂ from
the air. A tour of the area could make one swear off SUVs.
This joint crusade was plainly a lot more than
TransCanada had bargained for. It had exulted in buying everybody off, but
suddenly there was civil disobedience in front of the White House and 1,252 environmental protesters were arrested.
By January, Obama had rejected plans to build the
pipeline, citing concerns about a rushed schedule forced by Congress that
wouldn't allow enough time for due environmental diligence. Big Oil needn't
really worry, however.
After all, the Republicans in Congress are still trying
to finagle the project into a crucial transportation bill, TransCanada is
reexamining an alternative route that traverses North
Dakota , and British Columbia is
considering a line across its mountains to the Pacific for shipping the oil
straight to China .
Even without that kind of re-routing, there had already been talk of exporting Port Arthur 's noxious
product.
Plainly this kind of corporate nonsense will
continue until Al Gore is released from wherever they are holding him and is
finally able to persuade us to forsake our suicidal addiction to oil. When
nations go to the length of mining tar sands to feed their habit they are sick
indeed.
Yes, the Keystone XL pipeline is a confusing mix of
political apples, oranges, and avocados. Just keep in mind, they're all rotten.
OtherWords columnist William A. Collins is
a former state representative, and a former mayor of Norwalk , Connecticut