Thelyniezian writes:
Exports make money and if nothing else, constructing a pipeline gives employment to construction workers?
Even so, the root of the problem is still demand for oil, be it on a national or world scale. And I suppose if it’s going to, say, China, it is probably fueling production/shipping of exports bought by Americans.
Either way, unless you can re-order global society to become genuinely socialist (and I think a majority of people have to want that), and looking out for the needs of society as a whole, that’s how it works- it’s only going to happen if someone makes a profit somewhere. No demand from somewhere, no profit.
The pipeline means “game over” for the world climate because tar sands oil is so dirty. It causes 3X as much global warming as regular oil due to the extraction process.
Furthermore the pipeline is going to leak all the time. Similar pipelines leak constantly. I do not know why, but the oil industry cannot seem to make pipelines that do not leak.
The few jobs created (1,500) are not worth blowing up the whole climate of the world, which is actually a total catastrophe if you are not aware.
They already export tar sands oil as it is. It is used in the US and Canada. But the pipeline will allow them to truly mass produce the stuff as they will be exporting it all over the world.
There are also proposals for a transporting the oil by pipeline to Vancouver, Canada. Obviously we cannot stop that, but the Canadians seem to have stopped it by now. They can already export the stuff by putting it on oil tankers and driving them to ports, but the pipeline will be much more efficient.
China doesn’t need tar sands oil to run factories to make crap to export to the US. There is plenty of oil for sale in the world. The Chinese already buy lots of oil that is far less dirty than tar sands oil.
There is no mandate that under a capitalist system, every crazy resource extraction industry project has to go through because the market demands it to be so. Democratic capitalist societies kill resource extraction projects all time, not caring about the lost jobs, just because the downside of the projects seem to far outweigh the upside. Believe it or not, under capitalism there is no rule or law that says that the capitalist always get their way. Many times they do not.
