A pipeline that provides more jobs and lower gas prices sounds like a miracle. Unfortunately, the Keystone pipeline has many drawbacks that overshadow its advantages.
The Keystone pipeline would have determined what direction we, as a country, would want to take on energy. The United States could have expended millions of dollars on the pipeline to keep crude oil a viable domestic energy, or it could work for more environmentally aware alternatives.
Fortunately, the bill was dismissed in the Senate.
According to the Washington Post, the Keystone pipeline could have contaminated our water supply. The Ogallala Aquifer, which supplies drinking water for 2 million people and irrigates 13 million acres of land for 8 states, lies less than 10 feet above the pipeline that would transport 830,000 barrels of crude tar sand every day. The fact that the pipeline spilled over 30 times in its first year of partial operation shows that this project is too dangerous to advance construction. Lower gas prices and temporary jobs are tempting, but are not worth putting our largest aquifer in danger.
In addition, the extraction process the Keystone would have used is extremely wasteful. Oil in the Alberta sands would be literally dug out of the ground, vastly damaging the terrain. Further, digging requires vast amounts of energy and water and releases 14 to 20% more greenhouse gases than conventional oil drilling.
The 17,000 mile proposed pipeline would have stretched from Canada to Texas. As part of this path, it would have cut across the Sioux Nation’s Black Hills reservation, violating the 1868 treaty of Fort Laramie which promised the Sioux their ancestral lands in perpetuity. If the bill to pass the pipeline succeeded, we would have violated our treaty with the Sioux. This would have been a blatant disregard for Native American rights for resource expansion.
It’s hard not to see the political cynicism seeping into these pipeline proceedings. According to the LA Times, big oil corporations such as Koch Industry and Exxon Mobil stand to benefit from the pipeline and former senators like Mary Landrieu of Louisiana were trying to use the vote to save their seats with local jobs at the expense of the taxpayer.
If we needed a jobs program and a more thorough implementation of sustainable energy, we could work on repairing our aging infrastructure and developing a greener energy system. This would create many more jobs than the pipeline and also make America less reliant on fossil fuels.
The bill to construct the pipeline did not pass, being defeated with 59 votes in favor of the pipeline when it needed 60 votes to proceed to the executive branch. However, the vote occurred when the Senate was Democrat-controlled. After the midterms, both houses of Congress are Republican-controlled. If another pipeline bill were proposed, it would likely pass through both the Senate and the House and would need to be vetoed by President Obama.
The vote may have lost, but the political and private sector desire for ecological devastation is still present.