This week the GOP leadership, once again, has sided with Big Oil against the will of the American people. They are trying to circumvent President Obama's decision to further investigate the impacts of the controversial Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. GOP leadership is instead advocating for granting the permit now, or else they will hold up important legislation meant to benefit real people's real lives.
They want you to believe it's about jobs, but that's not what the facts bear out. Just take a look.
Unemployment has finally drifted below 9 percent, but it's still way too high, making it tough for working families to put food on the table and for a new generation of Americans to start their careers.
Is there anything more cynical, then, than Big Oil and its Washington allies playing on heartland hardship by pretending a dangerous tar sands pipeline can put folks back to work?
That's precisely what continues to happen over the proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. It would carry the dirtiest oil on the planet from the Canadian tar sands across our country to ports and refineries along the Texas Gulf coast. From there it could be exported anywhere in the world.
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) became the latest source of misinformation on this. He said Thursday that the Keystone XL "will put tens of thousands of Americans to work immediately."
That's just not true.
The project would provide, at most, 6,000 temporary construction jobs, very few of which would be local hires, according to an analysis performed by the U.S. State Department.
"The construction work force would consist of approximately 5,000 to 6,000 workers, including Keystone employees, contractor employees, and construction and environmental inspection staff," the State Department concluded in the executive summary of the final Environmental Impact Statement it published in August. Even that may be pushing it.
Cornell University's Global Labor Institute did its own evaluation, concluding that the project would employ between 2,500 and 4,650 construction workers. "Most jobs created will be temporary and non-local," the institute concluded in its report, appropriately titled, "Pipe Dreams?"
Local hires hover below 15 percent, the institute calculated, based on data provide by TransCanada, as much of this work requires special skills and the workers capable of performing sophisticated pipeline tasks would likely be brought in from outside the region.
"KXL will not be a major source of U.S. jobs, nor will it play any substantial role at all in putting Americans back to work," the Cornell report states.
Even TransCanada, the Canadian pipeline company that wants to build the pipeline, has said it would create "hundreds" of permanent jobs. That's what TransCanada's vice president for pipelines, Robert Jones, told CNN a few weeks ago.
Overall, Cornell economists found the project would be a job killer, because it would kick down the road the investment we need to drive renewable energy and efficiency gains. That's where the real jobs are: jobs for carpenters weatherizing homes in Ohio, steelworkers building wind turbines in Indiana, tool and die makers manufacturing parts for electric cars in Michigan, and on and on from coast to coast. And these are the careers of the future for the workers of tomorrow, in trades and professions that already employ some 2.7 million Americans.
The real jobs in the region come from the ranches and farms, more than a quarter of a million of them in the Great Plains states the pipeline would pass through.
Why would we put these fertile croplands, and the wheat, corn, and cattle they produce, at risk for the profits of the oil industry? It had, by the way, more than $100 billion in profits during just the first nine months of the year. Nothing wrong with profits, but let's not pretend this is about anything else.
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As for the EVIL OIL COMPANIES wanting to earn Billions more. Check your facts the Profit Margin for Exon - Mobil last year was 8.5% that means for ever dollar they invested they saw 8.5 cents back as profit, while compared to profit margin of Micro Soft which was 27%. But lets put that aside the EVIL OIL COMPANIES employ literally Millions of people within the Unites States giving them JOBS there by ensuring a higher standard of living to buy goods and services which will in turn drive the economy of this Country
RE: Pipeline to Death
If you want my vote:
Listen to your scientists; burn the oil delivered and life will perish as a consequence of its CO2.
Listen to your military; global warming is the greatest threat to the USA.
Listen to world-wide scientific consensus; anthropogenic global warming is a real immediate threat to all.
Listen to your heart; can you knowingly lead us to end life?
Gather your courage; rout Mammon’s demons speaking for the 0.01%.
End our downward spiral to a failed state of violence, ignorance, and poverty for the 99.9%.
Stop the pipeline; begin the journey, celebrate our biological roots.
Fail in this matter; no future, no consciousness, for there will be no one.
This is indeed the eminent political issue of all times; embrace it!
seems robert is still ironically supporting the right when he by default supports the fake left...
when is robert finally gonna denounce the two headed one party system of corruption?
and stop feeding us empty calorie corpirate distraction
i challege robert to say something with teeth - quit gumming it big boy.
What happens the day the world markets change and oil is not available. We take too much for granted and are not looking at possible realities that would collapse our economy in one enormous jolt. Here is an alternate reality for consideration http://mywtfblog.com/2011/12/pipeline-to-security/
President Obama's former National Security Adviser just made the same comment this weekend explaining how lowering our reliance on foreign sources should be one of our country's top priorities.
Secondly, you contradict yourself when you say:
"House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) became the latest source of misinformation on this. He said Thursday that the Keystone XL "will put tens of thousands of Americans to work immediately."
That's just not true."; and then you say:
"The construction work force would consist of approximately 5,000 to 6,000 workers, including Keystone employees, contractor employees, and construction and environmental inspection staff," the State Department concluded in the executive summary of the final Environmental Impact Statement it published in August."
Have you not heard of down stream job creation?
Do you seriously think that an additional 5,000 workers in a community won't stimulate additional jobs?
Bottom line, if this was such a bad idea, then Obama would have already killed it;
instead of kicking the can down the road till after the next election, once again.
What we need now are jobs and more source of energy; that includes oil, until alternative can be practical.
Yes, misrepresenting the facts.
Generally Robert, like you I'm in favor of conservation efforts, clean air and water; not to mention clean energy alternatives to oil. But your opposition to all oil projects seem reflexively negative, slanting your presentation; perhaps due to your own growing cynicism.
I'm suspicious of Big Oil as well, but why should Keystone and the other job creating efforts you mention be mutually exclusive? I'm now also suspicious of your Cornell source.
"Cornell economists found the project would be a job killer, because it would kick down the road the investment we need to drive renewable energy and efficiency gains."
Since the pipeline doesn't involve any public funding, how is that true? The GOP legislation only approves construction, with environmental safeguards; it doesn't provide any tax payer funding.
Someone will need to make the case for a conflict.
Continued in Part Two
It is not about jobs.
There is nothing patriotic about this pipeline.
He forgets that the ''sophistication'' in laying down pipe sections and welding is an expert American job skill. Tens of thousands of oil workers ranging from Houston to Mobile Bay share these skills and like the massive EL PASO gas pipeline project, would be easily used for this and other pipeline branch jobs which do not take into consideration refinery employment increases as the result of this pipeline being constructed at that end. The emphasis on such jobs was never ''local''. It is rather, ''American''. Obviously, ''studies'' from green think-tanks at Ivy League colleges in the east can be tinkered with in order to produce a desired result.
However, and this is important in the extreme, they [and Redford] have jobs where many Americans trained in these skills do not. Further, as we saw from the tens of thousands who worked on the Alaskan and El Paso projects, many times more than a few thousand would be employed. Lastly, Bob can afford gas that heads north of four and five a gallon.[ with a sizable ratio of this coming with an OPEC stamp]. Too many Americans cannot.
The Laborers International Union of North America [LIUNA]
The TEAMSTERS
AFL-CIO
Plumbers and Pipefitters Union
www.transcanada.com/keystone.html '' Economic Benefits''. [ accessed on the opening page to the left, highlighted in blue].
If you are a progressive, like me, you will support the pipeline. Progressives build things...like the Hoover Dam and the TVA....neither of these was exactly perfect...lot's of people died on the projects. And the TVA polluted a LOT of rivers and lakes with PCB's.....The tar sands has been studied for a long time...
Exxon Mobil and the Koch brothers are not exactly thrilled with the tar sands, either...They have to admit that the days of cheap and easy oil are over...Put a algal plant right next to the pipeline and let's see which one is cheaper.....
The implied admission from Exxon Mobil, the Kochs, and the Republicans is that the days of cheap and easy oil are over..!!! That is the real story....
Why won't the pipeline opponents just admit that this is their true objection?
Because all of the other arguments made against it strain the limits of intellectual honesty and integrity and that the last thing an already unpopular movement needs.
And they expose their lack of understanding of economics....Canada will sell that oil to someone. That much is certain.
Thus Redford would be presented with an even greater nightmare than the one he is presently advancing. The pipeline would simply turn west towards British Columbia, through the Rockies and arboreal forests , to the sea, where it will be transported on Chinese freighters that can sink or leak.[ leaving out of this scenario Chinese carriers burning Canadian oil throwing their weight around in the Indian and Pacific Oceans].
Meanwhile, they strain the credibility we need to fight things like fracking water poisoning our drinking water, etc.