It appears that the interests behind the looming environmental disaster known as the Keystone XL pipeline are confident that they will be victorious in their continuing quest to have this pipeline built. Â No presidential order or trivial vote in Congress will deter them from exploiting the commons for still more profit and destruction.
Like so many bad ideas, this is being sold as a job creator. Â "America needs the construction jobs this pipeline will provide, dammit." Â It is being sold as a solution to energy problems. Â "Gas is almost five bucks a gallon! We need domestic oil production, dammit! Â Get out of the way, we're coming through with this thing and it's for your own good." But how does it really stack up in terms of job creation and easing pressure on gas prices?
Underlying this project are two facts: First, extracting the oil from tar sands in Canada will destroy vast, unspoiled regions and ecosystems. Â It cannot be credibly argued that this is the not the case, only that it is somehow worth it. Â Second, the greenhouse gas produced by exploiting one of the most dirty, polluting sources of energy available will essentially overwhelm any human efforts to mitigate climate change. Â Unless you are adept at ignoring science, these two facts are established. Because there are many here among us who are adept at ignoring science, or willing to be led away from considering consequences by greed or ideology, we are forced to address the two canards being used to advance this thing.
The jobs which will be created by the pipeline are few in number and temporary.  TransCanada, the company behind the pipeline, claims 20,000 jobs will be created.  Although that is a fairly humble number of jobs for which to sacrifice the future of the planet, it is greatly overstated.  The Chamber of Commerce advances the fanciful notion that the pipeline will create "250,000" permanent jobs.  Yee haw!  However the United States State Department sees things differently.  They project 5,000-6,000 jobs U.S. jobs.  But wait there's more!  An analysis by the Cornell University Global Labor Institute sites even lower projections.  They project only 500 to 1400 temporary construction jobs.  Their projections are burdened by rigorous research and analysis so they cannot be as optimistic as TransCanada who would make billions of dollars in revenue.
That's not to say that jobs won't be created. Â They just won't be created in the U.S. This leads us to the second point. Â The oil extracted at great cost to all of us will not be for the United States market. Â Most of this oil is being exported, along with the jobs they will create. Â The pipeline ends at a sea port city for a reason. Â The Keystone XL pipeline won't do a damn thing about gas prices, but there are those who find comfort in fantasy.
The pipeline is a project of a corporation, albeit one that would likely receive public subsidies.  That means a profit must be built into the project and anything that mitigates the scale of the profit, such as responsibility toward humankind, reduces that profit and interferes with progress toward the most important goal of the project.  Let's compare that with another gigantic construction project -- High Speed Rail.
By contrast, High Speed Rail is a government funded project, spurred by Recovery Act grants. Â The purpose of this project is to establish efficient alternatives to airplane and car travel, reducing greenhouse gases and lowering the cost and inconvenience of travel. Â There is no profit built into the model, it's designed to provide transportation. Â It will create construction jobs and permanent jobs operating the trains and systems, along with indirect jobs generated by business which provide service to the rail system and travelers.
As the network of High Speed Rail systems grows, so will the jobs and the reduction in carbon emissions. Â In theory, High Speed Rail has the potential to run on electricity that is generated entirely by alternative sources which do not contribute to global warming. Â In fact, there is substantial interest, enthusiasm and initiative to build the systems in just that manner. Â High Speed Rail creates jobs across the spectrum from blue collar construction to the cutting edge of high tech.
The job creation potential of High Speed Rail completely dwarfs even the most optimistic, and frankly, false projections of job creation from Keystone XL. Â In citing just one area of job creation, the American High Speed Rail Alliance sees enormous potential and serious obstacles to prosperity:
Talgo, a Spanish rolling stock manufacturer, is already manufacturing HSIPR train sets in the United States and purchases the majority of train parts from 250 separate American companies located in 30 states. The establishment of Talgo's new facility in Milwaukee created 125 direct manufacturing and maintenance jobs and 450 initial indirect manufacturing jobs. Talgo estimates that a $1 billion investment in passenger rail creates 30,000 jobs. However, amid Wisconsin's rejection of passenger rail funds and the overall setback in HSIPR funding, Talgo may be forced to shut down their manufacturing facility as early as fall 2012.
Ideological opposition to a government funded source of job creation and small business success has stifled the establishment of High Speed Rail projects in many places and slowed down progress in others.  However the massive public subsidy provided by the destruction of the commons through projects like Keystone XL on the thin premise that it is a job creating dynamo, is considered just dandy by the same ideologues.
An honest dialogue about energy, jobs, infrastructure and our common responsibility to protect global resources would result in a very different choice of which job creation project makes the most sense.
As the Senate gets ready to vote on yet another attempt to pass Keystone XL legislation, contact your Senator and ask they why they would sacrifice our future for Canadian billionaires instead of developing energy efficient transportation which will create many thousands of permanent jobs. Â They'll either tell you they get it or they will tell you a lie.
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High speed rail can save the American economy; they're the new freeways. Anyone who thinks otherwise is being misled by people WAY richer than they are.
Idea:
Maybe you can call back all your troops and put them to work on the tracks and stations! Comeon! save yourself a couple trillion, and just build some fast, cheap trains!
At least make a middle-class or something.
Tar sands and oil shales are inferior hydrocarbon deposits that are much more costly to convert to usable fuel than traditional petroleum resources.
Yes, there are legitimate environmental issues to be considered. But the global supply of "Easy Oil" is diminishing. As part of our National Energy and Economic Policy, we should be reducing our dependence on these declining and inferior energy resources anyway.
1. Should we spend money for oil in the Middle East or in North America? It should be obvious to anyone and everyone that money spend in Canada and the USA is much better for us.
2. The tax payers are NOT financing the XL Pipeline, private investors are investing their money. High Speed Rail is a taxpayer investment that will never pay off. I resent the government spending my taxes for this project. If California wants it, they should pay for it.
3. Is the environment safer with Oil on ships on the ocean or in a pipeline? A spill on the ocean is a lot worse for the environment and significantly more risky. Remember Exxon Valdez and the BP Gulf disasters. There are already 1000's of pipelines in the regions where the XL is planned, and they do not pose a risk as great as oil on the ocean.
American's wake up, your government is planning to enslave you and punish you for being an American. We must stop the Federal Government from creating the next Greece.
This system will not only do the things we GUARANTEE IT WILL, but will produce 100+ jobs per plant, whether it be for steel, glass, coal generation plants, or cement, we capture all NOxs, SOxs, PMs, and all toxic matter. Some folks need to wake up and see what the rest of the world is doing with us!
Plus, it prevents the loss of all those coal jobs that would go with the closing of those plants! Why do we need to close them if we capture all of the Carbon Emissions... correct?
MP BioMass
So again, high speed rail is the wave of the future ONLY if they are well planned. California's high speed rail project is the wrong way to go.
Google already operates driver-less cars in California, and Bill Ford (Ford Motors) has joined the push for automating cars. Within a decade, we can have communicating cars driving themselves in self assembling packs (auto-trains). This already existing technology will eliminate congestion, double efficiency and triple highway capacity, all the while providing point to point service which fixed rail can never do. Driverless cars will essentially provide private limo drivers to drop you off where you want to go, then park themselves until you are ready to leave.
The cost of automating cars is subject to Moore's law which halves cost/performance every two years. The added cost per car will be insignificant. Automation of driving will also save 30,000 lives and 300,000 serious injuries per year (10 times the numbers killed in 9/11).
There are many impediments to implementing this technological breakthrough. One inhibiting factor is our political/legal class with their limo drivers. They won't get any advantages. No surprise that they more eagerly embrace bloated billions of patronage potential in the feel-good mass transit moneypit.
1) Tar sands oil is going to get produced Keystone XL or not. Anyone who disputes that is retarded, period. The amount of capital invested up there has guaranteed it. It simply means they may have to find another way to transport it which will likely entail an even greater environmental risk (albeit to Canada and the Pacific Ocean).
2) It is extremely difficult to predict the jobs this sort of project would truly generate. It depends where the material is sourced, it depends on the refineries it goes to feed.
So, be real in your criticisms. Here's the real fact. There is no good answer. Pick your poison. You can have natural gas, but it can only be produced in quantity via fracking. You can have your oil, but it is either fracked or tar sands. You can have your coal, but you get the emissions and mining that comes with that too. You can have your nuclear, but that has radioactive waste and a higher upfront price tag. You can have your windmills, but only in some places where they don't spoil the view, kill the birds, or have people who are price conscious. You can have your chinese solar panels, but they too are more expensive and weather dependent.
So, what's it going to be.
Contruction of the pipeline is also about jobs as mentioned in this article. That jobs can be had with alternate forms of energy production and contruction of rail.
This is how it can be if mankind demands it not just the greenies.
Celebrate the demise of big oil, like it or not.
Don't even get me started with rail. Rail systems will not work in the United States, period. They are too expensive, the population density is not there, and they are terribly run.
So, please, continue running around thinking mass transit is the solution.
HSR....public
Keystone XL.....wanted
HSR....boondoggle.
Keystone doesn't make sense becaue tar sands oil is not sustainable to mine, the EROI is horrible ... therefore we will be building a pipeline for no reason when the tar sands can nis no longer financially viable.
High Speed rail likewise is wasted money that could be going into more sustainable transit projects like a network of regular speed rail (network being the key word), regional rail and intercity light rail and bus transit ... all of it forming a NETWORK (as opposed to point A to point B) of transit. Point A to Point B is more efficiently handled by air travel or even bus travel. Air travel we've already sunk enormous resources into creating. Ditto highways and roads, so it would be wise to use those that we have for more efficient forms of mass long distance travel.
What we do need is a working network of regular speed rail to connect with other transit networks that already exist and that we have already spent trillions on. Not a completely new high maintenance system that competes with already existing systems for long distance travel.
The reason why high speed rail works well in Europe and Japan is that they already had developed a NETWORK of regular speed rail, intercity rail etc. This makes sense.
Now I will leave it to the liberals to ensure that the money collected will never go to any other purpose. Polticians would never dare take money from one program and use it to study the mating habits of ants in Antarctica, right?