Not true! Sourcing more oil from Canada will not increase our overall consumption, all it will do is reduce our dependence on the Middle East (where they hate us, remember?) It's simply changing the source of crude.
I would love to source all our crude oil from North America and make the Middle East irrelevant. I would love to see alternative technologies developed concurrently.
Obviously the anti-Keystone is pushed by eviro-wackos and their gullible followers which you seem to see eye to eye on with most related issues. It seems your question is created from your frustration with your realization of some of the wacko ideas from your fellow alarmists.
Canada is the biggest importer of oil to the US. The pipeline will be used by the US to provide petroleum to the US in spite of the propaganda believed by Bacheous and Steve. Of course petroleum is a world commodity and nothing prevents them from exporting it to whoever offers the most. Since the anti-corporation types have been at war with energy (every type that works anyway from hydroelectric, nuclear, coal, oil, gas, etc), they try to find reasons to ban whatever source is available from ANWR, to the high grade coal in Utah, to fracking, to Keystone etc. In spite of evidence to the contrary, they keep falling for the charade time after time. It is due to their world view which is dominated by guilt and their underlying dislike for humanity IMO.
Edit: No C it isn't greed against the environment. It is free markets vs Marxism. For the simple minded, greed can be construed to be just about anything. Humans are greedy. Do you see my point about their dislike for humanity and their guilt?
The US state department doesn't say that the pipeline has no climate impact. What it says is that if they first assume that Canada will just as fully exploit their tar sands and find other transportation methods if the pipeline isn't available, and then restrict themselves to comparing the pipeline to other alternative methods, they find that the pipeline is the better alternative.
I won't even bother in a debate about which transportation method is best because it accepts the underlying assumption that the tar sands are going to be exploited in the first place. The climate impacts of exploiting the Canadian tar sands is terrible to even consider. I personally don't care about debating which transportation method is better than another. I care about the simple fact of exploiting the tar sands, at all. Their fossil fuels should stay in the ground. End of story.
Of course, the anti-Keystone movement has almost nothing to do with denial of climate science. (Pro-Keystone arguments are a different matter). McKibben who has led the anti-Keystone movement, wrote (in 1990) the first book that really made the intelligent world aware of global warming. (Of course, "intelligent world" excludes the many nitwit deniers on YA who only heard of the subject decades later from 4th stage fossil fuel industry myth recyclers such as Wattsup). McKibben's book came out even before Gore's (and is a much better book, by the way).
Of course, Keystone will not stop development of non-carbon energies, but it amounts to a further tilt of the already unlevel playing field towards fossil fuels. The effect will be small, and probably more symbolic than real, but it is in the direction AWAY from economic efficiency and away from a common sense approach to climate policy.
Ultimately, as others have already noted, when and how to develop the Alberta tar sands is a Canadian issue. Western Canada isn't particularly happy about a new pipeline to the Pacific. The U.S. is under NO obligation to help oil companies in Canada export a pipeline which Canadians themselves don't want at home.
The Keystone debate is mainly a political one in the U.S. The impact, either way, on climate change is probably small, unless stopping Keystone means stopping Canadian tar sands development altogether (and that would be a doubtful assumption).
It also will not reduce the cost of gas in the U.S. The cost to build it is about $2B MORE than building refinery in the Great Lakes area or in Canada from where oil products could be easily transported throughout North America. The purpose of the pipeline is to transport Canadian oil through the U.S. Midwest to the refineries near ports from where the oil can easily be transported overseas.
I think most Americans are not aware of what the pipeline does; many think it is to get American oil to Americans. But what it will do is get Canadian oil to other parts of the world where it can be sold for much higher prices.
The pipeline will leak like a colander, and be an environmental disaster waiting to happen. It won't make a dent in the already falling unemployment rate. It will probably increase the price of gasoline at the pumps. And it will only benefit the existing multinational petrochemical corporations. If the oil wasn't all going to be exported, which it is; and if they weren't trying to pipe the oil to the refineries in Texas, universally regarded is the worst in the world, I might be less against it.
No, the anti-Keystone XL movement is part of the green religion that says fossil fuels should not be used, and overall conservation is the answer. Plus hedge fund billionaire Tom Steyer is spending $100 million on this election, and approving the Keystone XL pipeline would make him very unhappy.
My reasons for opposing Keystone XL are that the pipeline will not add to US supplies of energy. Its purpose is to enable Canada to export its oil from the US Gulf coast. To get to the coast it has to pass thru the entire US north to south endangering crops, buildings and especially water supplies.
The number of short term jobs created to build it are not worth the environmental risks.
Keystone is simply greed vs environment
Building Keystone XL will not stop
- solar power
- wind power
- geothermal power
- hydroelectric power
- nuclear power
- people walking
- people using public transit
- people driving small cars
Building Keystone XL will not force people to buy big gas guzzlers and will not force utilities to build coal plants.
The only scenario in which stopping Keystone XL might reduce emissions would be if not building it were to cause a shortage. But, if that happened, the resulting backlash would set the fight against global warming back by decades.
