Midwest ecosystems threatened by pipeline
Casey Goodyear - May 1st, 2008You would think the construction of a two thousand mile long, two foot diameter crude oil vein running through the heart of Midwestern America should be a newsworthy story.
Maybe news teams simply did not hear about the mid-March approval of the TransCanada Keystone Pipeline, which would carry heavy crude oil from Alberta to refineries in Illinois and Oklahoma.
I find it easier to believe, though, that our leaders pulled another fast one on us and our environment so they can profit from our oil dependency.
The pipeline was approved to help meet surging production capacity in the oil sands region of Alberta. By 2020, the region is expected to double its oil output, and Canada cannot build refineries fast enough to keep up.
Even if Canada built more refineries, some speculate that this could seriously jeopardize the nation’s Kyoto Treaty pledge.
Aside from destroying pristine landscapes just to get the oil out of the ground, it takes two tons of dirt rich in sand, clay, water and oil, several barrels of water and one thousand cubic feet of natural gas to produce one barrel of oil.
In fact, fish and wildlife in some nature preserves downstream of these operations are not even safe to eat anymore.
Given that this ecologically perilous, greenhouse-gas-producing process is quite profitable, I’m not surprised that American government officials and oil company executives were willing to take it up within our own country.
I’m also not surprised that the government has glossed over meetings with Native American tribes and landowners who would be affected by the pipeline.
Some of these groups stand to have their drinking water, which comes from very shallow aquifers, permanently polluted by potential leaks.
While the rest of the world tries to move on to clean, renewable energy, why are we investing so much time, money and potential devastation into dirty, old oil? Even if oil production in Alberta picks up in the future, we are quickly passing the peak of the global oil curve.
America is positioning itself to be one of the last developed nations running on fossil fuel, and we still have the arrogance to think of ourselves as world role models.
Under the guise of keeping energy prices low, profiteering politicians and corporate robber-barons are setting us all up for economic and environmental collapse.
If built, this pipeline will serve as little more than a monument to what a short-sighted oligarchy our nation has become.