Shootout at the XL pipeline

Mitch McConnell rarely makes any major announcements, but when he does, you know his heart is in it. Arguably his most ambitious proclamation was the one he made in 2009 when he said "The single most important thing we (The Grand Old Tea Party) want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president."

Fast forward to 2011 and we discover the Mitch has decided to endorse a bill from the Grand Old Tea Party (GOTP) that would force a quick decision on the Keystone XL pipeline. What is the Keystone XL pipeline, you ask, innocently? That, my friend, is a proposed monstrosity that a Canadian company, called, oddly enough, TransCanada, wants to build all the way from the Canadian border to the Texas Coast that would, if approved, carry the dirtiest oil from the dirtiest source of oil on Earth to a Texas refinery.

And what does the U. S. stand to gain from allowing TransCanada to build a pipeline over and through major rivers and aquifers? And I mean other than assurances that the pipeline won’t leak, because that’s about all TransCanada can offer when they build a pipeline.

Don’t believe me? Google TransCanada and leaky pipelines, and you’ll find a veritable treasure trove of stories about their little mishaps with the pipelines they’ve already built. Of course, that’d be cold comfort if the pipeline holds course and is built through the Oglala aquifer, then spills into and contaminates it. Google Oglala aquifer for more info on this major source of water.

No, the U. S doesn’t get much from this pipeline. Yes, Senator McConnell mentions the chance to limit oil imports from the Middle East, but this oil will become diesel in that Texas refinery, then exported to South America and Europe because most of their cars run on that.

This proposal, by the way, has generated a firestorm of opposition in the U. S., from the Oglala Lakota, whose territory the pipeline would cross, to any number of conservation groups that oppose everything about the pipeline, from the tar sands the oil would come from to the very idea that it would cross the U. S. at all.

First to the source of the oil, it comes from tar sands that require strip mining the Canadian boreal forests to get to its bitumen. These forests just happen to be the nesting grounds of over half the bird species in America. To fully understand the implications of losing large areas of these forests, google Canadian boreal forests and bird populations.

Next comes the work of liberating the oil from the tar sands. This is far more complex than can be described in a few sentences, but it is a very dirty process and releases far more greenhouse gases than extracting and refining oil from conventional sources. For more information, google extracting oil from tarsands.

Barring any intervention from Congress, the President will have to okay the pipeline. The President has already nixed the proposed route of the pipeline, and that means the whole process has to start over.

And that is what has the GOTP irked. They’re not concerned with mundane stuff like clean water, just worried a corporation will have to respect the rights of others, and we can’t set precedents like that, now, can we?