Perhaps you missed it, but dirty oil money backed a (serious) play to brand heavily polluting tar sands as "ethical oil". After all, Canadians don't chop people's hands off and Canadian oil barons don't speak Arabic. As with all such propaganda efforts, this (un)ethical campaign built on kernals of truth but was / is not truthful.
This, in many ways, is my reaction what might be referred to as the 'throw up the hands in surrender' approach that underpins the State Department's (horribly) inadequate environmental impact statement as to the Keystone XL pipeline.
In essence, we could summarize a core to the State Department's "work" as:
If we don't do it, someone else will ...
The unbelievable thing about the State review is what it says about ethical behavior standards. In essence, 'it doesn't really matter that this is a bad thing because we conclude someone else will do it if we don't so we might as well do the bad thing'.
Put this into any number of other life situations as to 'other people do it' or 'other people would do it':
- Somebody left their wallet on the park bench. If I don't steal the money from it, someone else will.
- In the face of the hurricane coming in, I should charge 10x price for my plywood because I don't gauge people, others will.
- Of course I should cheat on the test because other people will and if I don't cheat then the cheaters will win.
- Etc ...
I work hard to instill in my children and to follow, myself, a standard of ethics higher than the ignoble version that the State review implies.
And, to top it all off, they are wrong in the 'if we don't others will ...' The industry, itself, highlights how hard it would be to export the gunk without Keystone XL -- there aren't 'easy' options to Keystone, which is why the industry is fighting so hard to make it go forward.
There are a myriad of answers when it comes to "Why Not Keystone?" Answers that the State Department blew off in an poorly executed review.
Please make sure to add your voice in speaking in opposition to Keystone XL.
Here is a note that I added this afternoon:
Very simply, The Keystone XL Pipeline is not in the U.S. national interest.
1. It would increase gasoline prices for much of the nation, hurting our economic performance.
2. It would foster growth in tar sands production, which is the most dangerous, dirty, and destructive oil we can be going after.
3. It will worsen climate change when we should be fighting to reduce emissions, Keystone opens the door for a not negligible increase in emissions.
The Department of State fails in its responsibilities to the American people by conducting an inadequate Environmental Impact Statement that was both inaccurate and incomplete.
When reporters win the Pulitzer for reporting on Dilbit spills, the DOS' EIS ignores the pipeline's significant risk for toxic spills. It ignores KXL's catastrophic impacts on our climate. And, it ignores the clear consensus among financial analysts and oil executives who agree Keystone XL will make the difference in tar sands development.
And, the core conclusion seems the saddest -- no matter how bad the tar sands, we might as well do the pipeline because if 'we don't do it, someone else will'. We should expect more from our government than 'we'll do unethical and incorrect things because others might do them in our stead'.
For the National Interest and the future of our country and our planet, I urge you to reject this pipeline.
Take two minutes out of your life to
express yourself to your government about the insanity of Keystone XL -- something that President Obama can stop with a stroke of a pen. Rather than asking John Boehner 'Mother may I', perhaps he should ask Mother Earth: "Should I?" And, the answer to that question is a resounding NO!