For many months now, environmentalists have been fighting Big Oil over whether the Keystone XL Pipeline should be built in this country -- to transport oil from Canada to Texas. Republicans have been claiming the pipeline would create a huge number of new jobs and would help to lower our dependence on foreign oil (even though the oil comes from Canada). Those are lies. At best, the pipeline would create less than 200 permanent new jobs, and the oil was never meant for U.S. use -- but will be shipped overseas.
Those fighting the building of this pipeline noted that it cuts across the middle of this country, endangering much valuable farm and ranch land -- and was to be built over this nation's largest fresh-water aquifer (the Ogalalla Aquifer). Their argument was a valid one, and it never made much sense to put that much land and water in danger just to fill the pockets of some oil companies (with oil we were not even going to get to use).
I greatly admired those who were fighting against the building of the pipeline, but I have to admit that I thought they would probably lose in the end to the power of Big Oil and the federal government. It looks now like I was wrong about that. It seems that they have delayed the building of the pipeline long enough to kill it.
TransCanada, the company wanting the pipeline, has grown tired of waiting for the U.S. to make up its mind -- and they have requested an alternate route from the Canadian government. And the Canadian government, currently ruled by conservatives, has approved a pipeline route from Alberta ( the location of the tar sands oil) across eastern Canada to the Atlantic Ocean (see map above).
The question I have now is -- what is going to happen with the land stolen from landowners through the misuse of eminent domain (for the use of private corporations). Personally, I think that land should be immediately returned to the original owners.
