Several times over the last few years we've kept you up to date with the skirmish over installing the Keystone XL pipeline through Nebraska - and over the world's largest underground freshwater body of water, the Ogallala Aquifer. Polls have proven what we already knew - a majority of Nebraskans do NOT want the pipeline where the oil company wants it to be. TransCanada, the company trying to drive the pipeline through Nebraskans seems confident that they'll succeed in jamming the pipeline through. There are even indications some State Department personnel may have acted as internal lobbyists - and may have possibly been bought off.
In theory, the State Department is supposed to be listening to what Nebraskans want or don't want from the pipeline, at two hearings scheduled this week in Lincoln and Atkinson.
Many don't believe the State Department is listening at all. Contrary to the rosy picture some media outlets are attempting to propagandize with, the pipeline won't create very many jobs for Nebraska workers. Labor unions have been duped into thinking Nebraskans will get long-term stable, good paying jobs from this project. Most welders and installers will be brought in by the TransCanda corporation from outside the state, just as they've done elsewhere. Even IF the pipeline is allowed to be built, once the initial construction is completed - in little more than two years - those jobs will all go away.
Any claims that the Keystone XL pipeline will generate energy for the U.S. for years to come are also a load of bull. When oil is sold on the world market, it isn't labeled 'American' or 'Saudi'. Companies like Exxon Mobil and Chevron sell any oil pumped in America at the going global rate - a rate determined mostly overseas by OPEC - and America doesn't get a discount because it's buying oil that was pumped here.
Further, as we already noted earlier this year, if there is an oil spill that gets into the Ogallala Aquifer we could be making the Great Plains an uninhabitable wasteland. Farmers, ranchers, and everyone else living in an area from North Dakota to Texas, and from the Rockies to the Missouri River could be forced to find a different source for drinking water and agricultural irrigation if tar sands oil leaks into the aquifer.
If you go to the meetings this week, we don't recommend trusting TransCanada's assurances about how safe they can be. TransCanada's rival, Enbridge, still hasn't cleaned up their "small" oil spill in Michigan from last year - the same kind of incredibly toxic tar sands oil TransCanada wants to pump across the Ogallala Aquifer. Formerly pristine Michigan wetlands that were perfect for hunting and fishing are still damaged, and don't look to be cleaned up in the forseeable future.
The disaster on the Yellowstone River in Montana that TransCanada promised would be safe is even more serious. That oil pipeline has now been turned back on after being reburied deep enough so that when it leaks, no one downstream is likely to know for years. Folks in every state along the Missouri and lower Mississippi would be wise to test their water quality far more often than they do now.
All of this unnecessary risk over an energy source that won't do anything to curb America's addiction to oil, makes little sense.
Meanwhile, the Chinese expect to grow their solar power use by over ONE THOUSAND PERCENT in the next four years. Chinese government officials are literally laughing at America's failure to jump on board the green energy technology explosion. Back at home, right-wing extremists continue desperately trying to claim Solyndra was a failure of the Obama Administration, even though much of its support and loan money was authorized under the Bush regime.
Regardless of what the paranoid idiots claim, the mathematical facts regarding the U.S. energy situation haven't changed.
Solyndra was only ONE of forty alternative energy companies our government supported - and the others have all succeeded to various degrees. The green economy will easily overcome Solyndra's bankruptcy. Meanwhile, an oil company responsible for both major and minor oil disasters in the last few years is supposed to be given a hands-off approach to endangering the primary water supply for millions of Americans living in the center third of the country? That doesn't compute.
When you add up the risks of endangering the food and water security of America for generations while possibly depopulating the entire central United States, against a few hundred short-term jobs that might not even go to Americans who live in the area where the work is planned, we just can't see the benefits.
Do the math, folks. Kill the pipeline, before it kills us.
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