I was on my way down to Zucotti Park on Thursday evening and ran into a march against the Keystone Pipeline. Okay, I thought, that’s a specific that needs addressing. Good for them.
There’s been a lot of noise lately about the Keystone Pipeline that will run from Canada to Texas. Canadian Oil companies are advertising the value of such a pipeline like crazy but the ads are lies. The reality of the keystone pipeline is that aside from the temporary benefit of a few jobs everything else about it is bad.
First it will carry what is probably the most ecologically poisonous material in the oil business. So just for openers the Canadians shouldn’t be drilling this slop nor should we be using it. But even if using it wasn’t an environmental disaster, which it is, just transporting it through our country is an even bigger one.
The Canadian oil companies want to build the pipeline through one of the most ecologically sensitive areas of this country, the Ogallala Aquifer, the most important source of groundwater in the country, which provides drinking water for millions of Americans. A pipeline rupture could spill 7.9 million gallons of toxic crude into the aquifer contaminating up to 4.9 billion gallons of water in a plume 15 miles long. No other oil pipelines have been allowed to cross this sensitive area. Why are we now allowing a Canadian Pipeline that will be both ecologically and economically bad for this country to do so?
There are two arguments for the pipeline and neither holds up. The first is jobs and yes a certain number of short-term construction jobs will be created but when measured against the damage to both our ecology and our economy neither stand up. The oil will be drilled in Canada so we are talking about Canadian not American jobs. The stuff will be shipped mostly to China to fuel their industries so we are talking about Chinese jobs not American jobs. There will be a few long-term jobs in maintenance and at the container ports n Port Arthur and Houston but nothing to off set the other economic ill the pipeline will create.
As already mentioned oil tar sands produce the dirtiest and most carbon filled oil on the planet emitting 17% more carbon and emissions that any other oil and are always a last choice even when almost nothing else is available. Then there is the danger of a spill. Oil sands are incredibly abrasive and always a danger to erode the pipelines that carry them. 14 leaks have plagued a smaller Keystone pipeline over its first year of operation. It’s first year. What will happen after 10 or 15 years? The whole damn thing will probably disintegrate and turn the Ogallala Aquifer into the biggest oil spill in history.
Then there is the economic problem. Canada is a big supplier of oil to the United States. The oil business like other businesses runs on the premise of supply and demand. Right now for Canada, the supply is high and the demand is low as we are practically their only customer. That keeps our price low. The Canadian’s problem is that they are severely limited by an inability to get the oil to market. A pipeline, south through our country, all the way to port and refining facilities in Texas would open many other markets, mostly in China. That would increase their demand and allow them to raise prices because their supply will not only have to satisfy us but also all their new customers. So basically by allowing them to run a dangerous pipeline through our water supply we will be raising the cost what we pay for their oil. How dumb can we get?
Recently the State Department picked a consulting firm to look at the pipeline project and create a report. Transcanada, the Canadian company that is putting the pipeline project together wanted to show that it is safe and economically feasible. The company chosen by the State Department was Cardno Entrix, a company that regularly does business with Transcanada. They decided that there would be “no significant impact,” on the nearby land and water supply. REALLY? Quel surprise. Why didn’t the morons at State just ask Transcanada to do the report, themselves?
This is easily the worst project proposed by anyone since some grafting senator got us to build the Bridge to Nowhere.
On the same concept, Robert C. McFarland and R. James Woolsey have written a New York Times article dealing with the fact that, Transcanada aside, we must get off the oil tit. I agree with the concept but their solution isn’t really a solution. They think that ethanol and methanol are the, at least, temporary solutions and that government mandating of how many flex fuel cars the major manufacturers make, is a viable strategy. This is not a viable or any other kind of solution. We just dragged the majors back from dissolution and now we want to force them to make vehicles that that no one wants to buy? Brain dead.
Only demand should guide production. I am as against fossil fuels as anyone alive but you can’t force companies to make cars no one wants to buy. You have to create the demand in the consumer. This can only be done by research and development creating a product, the combination of fuel & car, that is at least as inexpensive as current oil based technology and attractive enough for people to want to be seen driving it. Create the product and then market it.
Despite years of lip service, the scale of innovation carried on by the affected industries has, until recently been miniscule. Now there seems to be a flood of activity and that flood needs to be encouraged by government grants that will enlarge its scope. The major auto manufacturers seem to be willing to experiment with the new fuels and new auto designs to accommodate the new fuels but so far, those experiments have resulted in cars that look like Frankenstein rejects.
The unfortunate reality of the American motor scene is that cars have become extensions of our personalities and as such we demand a certain style plateau in our automotive choices. What does that mean? It means that in order for people to want to buy a car it has to be cool and so far the designs for the new fuel cars coming out of Europe, Japan and Detroit are boring and nerdy.
I’m one of those weirdoes who consider a car a tool, not a status symbol, but even I like to drive something that has some flair in its design, I mean I do have to look at it.
Along with style we must come up with new fuel technology. That’s happening slowly, I saw recently that they have come up with a car in India that runs on air. Can’t beat that, but they still have to prove it’s a workable idea. We are told that the car will sell for about $8,500, which is a great price but it looks like it was designed to be a packing crate.
Most important is that we don’t get caught up in wasting a lot of time and energy on transitional technologies like ethanol. It’s better that we continue to use our existing oil technology and concentrate all our energies on something that will at least lead to the final solution, than to fritter away time and resources on transitional technologies that will slow our rush to eliminating oil from the transportation picture entirely. If we had taken the time to work through transitional technologies with the atomic bomb, Hiroshima and Nagasaki would still be standing and we would have lost another hundred thousand American kids. What this country needs to solve the fossil fuel problem is a new Manhattan Project where the government spends billions, maybe trillions and solves the damn problem quickly and positively.
Nor should the reader think that removing oil from the transportation equation is the same as removing it from American life. There are countless other uses for oil. The goal isn’t to remove oil from American industry; the goal is to reduce its usage to a point where all its users can be supplied by US or at least continental American production only. We need to eliminate the Middle East oil and to limit our production to sweet oil, ending the drilling, transporting and refining processes needed to turn tar-sands oil into a useable product.
There is a place for oil in our industrial blueprint but it should be reduced to a size that does not dwarf all the other resources. It should be reduced in volume to a point were its environmental impact is no longer negative or relevant. American oil companies must realize this and refocus their R&D into products that will replace oil with as much profit and far less environmental impact then that created by their current product.
If they don’t, someone else will. If that someone doesn’t, we’re looking at the end of the planet.