It's not the route for this pipeline that's wrong- it's the whole g'damned concept of OIL SANDS!
I mean there is just way too much that is wrong, WRONG, WRONG, about this g'damned dirty stinking foul unconventional petroleum deposit technology to succinctly state here, but I can emphasize a key problem with just one snippet from the Greenpeace report of 2009:
6 - Due to their extreme energy intensity, the tar sands have a higher carbon
footprint than any other commercial oil product on the planet. The dirtiest projects burn extreme volumes of natural gas to create steam to melt oil out the ground
These in situ, or steam plants, now use four times more natural gas than mining
operations. Some projects are now 10 times dirtier than production of oil in the
North Sea.
But hey, don't take my word for it. Just look and weep....
and weep some more...
NOTE the previously dominant boreal forests in the foreground
more facts:
... bitumen makes a poor substitute for light oil. It also requires more energy and water (an average of four barrels of water per barrel of bitumen) to produce and upgrade than conventional oil. The project’s open-pit mines have created lakes of industrial mining waste (covering 130 sq. km) that are among the world’s largest. Tar sands air pollution has also created an acid rain problem in Western Canada, where none previously existed
Bottom line: It doesn't matter WHERE this pipeline runs- the cruelly violent and greedy, exploitive endeavor it is
supporting is a
planet killer on steroids.
UPDATE: I changed title from singling out Obama to including the Canadians as guilty parties in supporting this huge mistake.