I find it nothing short of disgusting that Jack Gerard, the president of the American Petroleum Institute, the oil businesses chief lobbying tool, has the gall to threaten the President of the United States if he doesn’t vote the right, and I mean the Far-Right way on the Trans-Canada’s Keystone XL pipeline.
Gerard, a lying slime who makes a living pushing the interests of an industry that is trying its best to poison the planet in the name greed, has come right out and said that a negative decision by the President on what is possibly the worst environment and jobs project so far contrived by the greedy barons of the oil industry, would have a destructive impact on Obama’s shot at a second term. What he’s talking about here is money but it’s an empty threat because all the oil money is going to be betting against Obama anyhow.
But Gerard isn’t satisfied to just threaten, he has, as they always do, to lie on top of it, because lying is the only way to sell this abomination that the oil money wants us to swallow. “…it’s about jobs and security,” oil’s rotten egg says with a straight face. Yeah, that’s right Jack, about losing jobs and weakening national security and here’s how that will work.
Building the pipeline will create a small number, estimated to be under 2000, short term jobs because most of the pipeline will be built by Canadians already working for Trans-Canada, but in truth any kind of construction creates some jobs, so yeah, about 2000 short term jobs for the time of construction. But what happens long term?
Well, Trans-Canada wants to build the pipeline to get to the Texas refineries and ports so it can open new markets in China and the Far East that it can’t currently service. What will happen when they open these markets? There will be competition for the same oil, for which, we are currently the only customer. That competition will drive up the cost of that oil, so we will be paying more, raising the cost of oil products to the US. When that happens small business and even some big ones will be effected, some going out of business because they can no longer pay the rising costs of transportation, others because they can no longer cover the energy costs of operation. Estimates by reliable sources run as high as 200,000 jobs lost over the first two years but the job loss is not even the most important problem with the pipeline.
The environmental costs will be staggering on both financial and a life altering levels.
If the oil industry has established one hard fact about itself in the last hundred years, besides its dishonesty, it is that the have no control over their product, how it is mined or how it is distributed. Their safety record would be a joke if it weren’t so horrendous. We, in this country are very aware of the Exxon spill and the BP spill but what we, for the most part are not aware of are the hundreds of other spills, many as large or larger that go on every day all over the world in places that no one seems to care much about but that are still adding to a massive poisoning of the planet.
In the last ten years millions and millions of gallons of oil have been spilled or dumped into our oceans, killing marine life, rotting our shores and poisoning the planet. Examples include, The Prestiue, a tanker with a damaged hull off the coast of Spain which was towed to sea and sunk with its cargo of over 20 million barrels of oil slowly seeping into the ocean or the Westchester, which dumped 567,000 gallons in the Mississippi River just south of New Orleans or how about the coastguard reports that hurricane Katrina caused more than 7 million gallons of oil to be spilled from various pipelines and storage facilities. I have pages and pages of this kind of documented evidence but why go on. You can look it up yourself on Infoplease.
The point is, that where there is oil there are oil spills. TransCanada is currently cleaning up a spill from one of their smaller pipelines even as they lie about the KeyystoneXL being safe. The fact of the matter is, that you cannot believe anything that an oil company or its lobbyists tell you. They lie because it makes them rich. To add to an already impossible problem, oil sands, the type of crude that will be traveling through this pipeline are actually full of sand, and therefore extremely abrasive. This will cause the pipes to rupture faster than normal, making a major spill inevitable.
When, not if, that rupture comes where will it take place? Only over the largest aquifer in the nation, one that provides water to a huge area that takes up most of the mid-west. A spill here would contaminate water for a huge portion of the country. But it’s okay, the greedy oil barons tell us. They claim they’ve got it under control. Sure like they’ve had anything but the ability to make money under control since some punk drilled the first well. Obama has to stop this environmental and economic disaster from happening. HHe has, so far, but the greedy bastards in the oil business haven’t given up.
The Republicans like to use Obama’s Chicago roots as a pejorative. Okay Barak, show them how a Chicago politician really works. You made a good start with the appointment of Richard Cordray as the new head of the Consumer Financial Protection Agency while congress was sleeping, and knocking out the ethanol/corn subsidy before they woke up. Now is the time to follow it up, by finally killing the pipeline and getting rid of all the oil subsidies. Contrary to Gerard’s empty threat, it won’t cost you a dime of oil money. They weren’t going to give you spit anyway. What it will do is gain you lots of votes from people who thought your Battlefield America vote and your okay of the southern pipeline were colossal cave ins and go a long way to restoring lost faith of many who voted for you last time but were faltering this time.