Post #390,406
6/6/14 11:36:04 PM
|
New State Department report released today.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/07/us/report-finds-higher-risks-if-oil-line-is-not-built.htmlWASHINGTON — If the Keystone XL pipeline is not built — and more oil from the Canadian oil sands is moved by rail — there could be hundreds more deaths and thousands more injuries than expected over the course of a decade, according to an updated State Department analysis of the contested project that was released Friday.
The report is the latest twist in the long fight over the proposed 1,700-mile pipeline, which would carry crude oil from Alberta to Gulf Coast refineries. The findings are significant: The State Department has the authority to approve the pipeline because it would cross international borders, although President Obama is expected to make the ultimate call.
The initial study noted that without the pipeline, companies would simply move the oil by rail, and an addendum concluded that the alternative could contribute to 700 injuries and 92 deaths over 10 years. Friday’s updated report raised those numbers more than fourfold, concluding that rail transport could lead to 2,947 injuries and 434 deaths over a decade.
The State Department said the initial report was based on an erroneous database search.
[...]
State Department officials said the updated information was not likely to influence any decision. Secretary of State John Kerry has sought opinions from several cabinet officials in his deliberations, and State Department officials say he will consider the pipeline’s impact on the environment, economy and national security, among other issues, before making a recommendation to Mr. Obama.
[...]
It is unlikely that the administration will reach a decision about the project until after the November election. In April, the State Department said it would delay its calls until it has a clearer idea of how legal challenges to the pipeline’s route would be settled. Those issues are not expected to be resolved before the end of this year.
The pipeline is shaping up as a major issue this fall — as it was in the 2012 presidential election — with supporters saying it is important to economic growth and opponents calling on Mr. Obama to reject the project as a symbol of his commitment to fighting climate change. At least they're trying to look at all the various issues... Cheers, Scott.
|
Post #390,408
6/7/14 6:50:01 AM
|
It is starting on a bad premise.
It is taking as a given that we are going to expend our finite resources, clean water, etc., and absorb the pollution and the cost of cleanup so the Big Oil moguls can sell fuel overseas (at record untaxed profits, of course.) We don't need to do this. At all.
We get nothing out of it. It puts us at risk. It raises the price of gas in the mid west. It uses a LOT of fresh water, which is becoming more scarce by the day. It will kill more people than it employs and cause permanent ecological damage. The only ones making out financially, are already ridiculously wealthy.
It's Canadian oil sand; let them do it in Canada. Let us not be the patsy for once. "Religion, n. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable."
~ AMBROSE BIERCE
(1842-1914)
|
Post #390,409
6/7/14 7:23:05 AM
|
Good points.
However, TransCanada and others are pushing ahead with additional routes. It's unlikely (it seems to me at the moment) that the Athabasca tar sands oil isn't going to be burned (at least in the near term). Enbridge's Northern Gateway approved by Canadian regulator in 2013 - http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/12/20/canada-regulatoroksoilpipelinetopacificcoastamidnativeopposition.htmlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enbridge_Northern_Gateway_PipelinesKinder Morgan wants to expand its existing Trans Mountain pipeline across BC - http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/12/16/3068391/trans-mountain-tar-sands-pipeline/The new pipeline would increase the capacity of the Trans Mountain pipeline system from 300,000 to 890,000 barrels per day — more than the 830,000 barrels that Keystone XL would carry to the Gulf Coast. TransCanada's Energy East pipeline would take 1.1 Mbbl/day of tar sands oil to Quebec - http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/03/07/3377161/two-more-pipelines/No doubt at least some of the push for these projects is to make things seem inevitable and try to lessen opposition to the Keystone XL. But it does seem unlikely to me that they are going to be totally stopped, especially while people like Harper are still in office. I continue to think that our best hope is for offsets. Let them build the Keystone XL pipeline (the various laws seem to be written in a presumption for approval, so it seems hard to veto it); but in return, demand substantial carbon offsets at the refineries and elsewhere. If we (as a species) are going to burn the stuff, or use the stuff for petrochemicals etc., then let's figure out the least damaging way to do it and share the technology with China, Venezuela, and elsewhere that have or will use heavy oil like this. My $0.02. Cheers, Scott.
|
Post #390,422
6/7/14 6:23:17 PM
|
Thanks for those informed perspectives (say us lazy-searchers.)
I for one, quite appreciate your equanimity within such Hair-on-Thermonuclear-Fire topics.
I admit to occasionally becoming fucking-LIVID that This Topic (like everything-else PLANETARY-Critical) MUST be er, misunder-represented?
Read: umm.. querulous-ever-to-Speak-out Directly about impending-Doom? (say)
(Please to call that: Damocles' Sword?--we so adore our far-enough-distanced legends)
The *disUSA seems to be bounded utterly by the faux-News mantra of that infamous Murdoch-codger, whereby, in the scripted-'debate': Idiocy is deemed
fairn'balanced representation of an issue -vs- the collected data, methodical presentation and opinions of the certifiably-sane.
[* Add Canada: so close to us.. the disease metastasized?]:
Under these Rulez.. we get the smoke-screen of 'implied respectability' which here you have cannily limned:
~See!? if'n you Yank-blokes don't play along with our Armageddon-fuel scam, we gots Other routes for a lateral-$$arabesque == Fuck You, scaredy-cat Yanks!!
Methinks that Hugh's distillation is the non-tl;dr al Punte version of exposition/freed of euphemisms and patently-false semantic tricks:
a mode which is veritably Illegal at most levels, in the dis-USA ... which we have allowed to 'happen' in our Own back-yards.
Muricans are dedicated nay, obsessed with following that $carrot-on-a-stick, even when it clearly leads to (on the largest scale imaginable) ... the next FAIL.
(Say good-bye, once the Frackers frack Everywhere: to any semblance of 'potable' WATER), and welcome the New-diseases from those unTested secret™ compounds,
as will bring even more riches to Big-pharma; well.. until many white-coated ones join the in-patients?
(May Cthulhu put us out of our misery. Often, disinfection stings, at first.) But then the wounded carcass Can rehabilitate itself. Failing that, it also can provide chewable
Carrion
|
Post #390,432
6/8/14 7:18:44 AM
|
A bad premise? I hardly think so.
It is taking as a given that we are going to expend our finite resources, clean water, etc., and absorb the pollution and the cost of cleanup so the Big Oil moguls can sell fuel overseas (at record untaxed profits, of course.) You just described one of a very small number of reasons the federal government exists. If the Fed ever asked, "Is you is, or is you ain't my constituency?" the only affirmative answers should come from Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Insurance, members of the MIC and, of course, the largest constituency in terms of money, Wall Street. It isn't surprising in the least that the State Department (and true-believers in "Change We Can ...") are building the case for the inevitability of Big Oil making even more money, just as they hand-waved away a Single Payer plan because, well, "Big, Wall Street backed health insurance companies are here to stay and are going to make even more money anyway. To all but the most glassy-eyed "change believers" the motive for reports like this one are self-evident. I can already hear the "it was the best we could do" arguments coming from Bam-Bam's useful idiots.
|
Post #390,463
6/8/14 9:01:57 PM
|
It could be almost that simple
but also too: those separate Hives you delineate contain n% of bipeds with decent jelloware, most (I'd bet) even better informed about each's place/power? within the maze.
In past (as with the AG et al threatening mass-Resignations over one of Decider-Shrub's wild-ass directives) sub-groups have demonstrated both their existence and their power.
(While we'd be gullible to count-on such counters to the general direction towards wholesale discorporation, just this one facet.. may have more leverage than most suspect.)
OTOH, my little-grey-cells find a dearth of material on which to chew, within the daily newsfotainment; within the surreal there's little point in spinning the cylinders
of one's personal Enigma Decoder in foolish attempt to find any plain-text whatsoever: it is bogus-by-design.
Even simpler than your summary: Corruption is so rampant that, it is impossible to find any message which isn't compromised-by-design.
Thus the grey-cells punt. As do I; 'they' and I can.. do triage on, say, how much to spend (?) on a vet for some critter [with even less-Representation than mine.]
Since I can't have the grey-cells eating-each-other like a Repo at NRA HQ, shall eschew any Pol-donations whatsoever, to keep those cells purring,
(ever-reinforced when one supposed to die.. didn't, and the purring in each: synchronize.)
Screw the perpetual appeals to send-$$ to Neutralize! [is that not a Hah!! ?] the rich+brain-dead yada yada. Karma will have to/will do that sort-out. Not moi.
The cognizant minority Must preserve their equanimity; RAGE, on the Scale of This-much corruption..? simply wastes energy and can turn one as psychotic as the lumpenproletariat. No?
We Built It; They Came and polluted it All. Now it;'s Clean-the-Augean Stables time: (it worked for a demi-god.)
First: we socially-Kill most-all the bIllionaires extant, expend that sequestered wealth on n not-Insane things.
Second we re-define Money, Wealth, Justice, decimate Guns ...
Third: settle for Seconds, in the nonce. (Authentic thought will be demanded ergo, triage on 'voting', too.)
Talk aboutcher Pipe-dreams.. ...
|
