My cousin Barry's pair grows larger!
Today, President Obama said no to the Keystone XL project, a Rube Goldberg concept straight from the energy industry fantasy wish-list -- a tar sands mine/processing facility in Alberta, Canada with a 1700-mile intercontinental above-ground pipeline bisecting the Ogalalla Aquifer and terminating in two refineries in Texas.
Good job, Cousin Barry! Keystone is the usual conservative hostage-taking hogwash, and we cannot succumb to this sort of "jobs at any cost" blackmail. If that's the only thing that counts, why don't we all rob banks for a living?
The petrochemical industry is in decline, and is thrashing about wildly in its death throes. It's the past, not the future. Better we should invest in emerging energy technologies than this old smokestack shit. There may yet be some net benefit in tar sands, fracking, and drilling in the Arctic, but we must slow down, study it carefully with with our best science, and ignore the industry propaganda until we know more. (The American Petroleum Institute swears it's all "safe and responsible", and if we do everything their way it means "one million new jobs." A million? Methinks they doth hyperbolize a touch-eth.)
There will be hell to pay for Obama, starting now. This will be a prime-time battle until November. The GOP will turn this into a contrived "Sophie's Choice": Jobs or tree-hugging -- either/or, no in between. Already, we have Romney: "Obama is just pandering to his political base." (Maybe. You're not?) And Boehner: "The president has chosen the environment over the economy." (That's not the true choice, but if it was, what's the point of an economy if we're all poisoned?) And Gingrich: "It's stupid." (No, you are! And I said it first, so there!)
Do you really trust oil/gas/coal companies to have your best interests in mind? Has industry ever really self-regulated in any meaningful way? Just one illustration: Cleveland, 1969, the Cuyahoga River in flames.
Did the river catch on fire because of big government and too damn many safety regulations? Did it ignite because of the EPA and the Clean Air Act?
Quite the opposite. This whole Keystone thing will be a bitch, but I believe Obama occupies the high ground and can make it work to his advantage.
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