With the economy in the dumps, there is an easy way to add 100,000 jobs and stick it to terrorists if, you know, the economy is as important as politicians claim it is.
It’s so easy it can be done with the stroke of a pen.
TransCanada has been waiting almost three years to be allowed to build a 1,700 Keystone XL mile pipeline from Alberta to the Gulf Coast. It will produce 700,000 barrels of oil a day and employ over 130,000 people in construction and management jobs – this is a shovel ready project that will not cost taxpayers $200,000 for each person put to work, like the stimulus plan did – it will cost nothing except the support of Club Sierra. I mean the Sierra Club. If you’ve ever been to their offices you know how easy it is to make that mistake.
What’s the problem with Keystone? Well, the EPA has taken over policy over things that might be related to climate change but, just as ridiculously as the IPCC letting Greenpeace write climate change reports, Friends of the Earth and Sierra Club are the only science sources the EPA uses and they seem to have control over the State Department because they say it is a global warming issue and will be triple the emissions of oil shipped in from mid-east dictatorships, so it is the domain of the EPA. State Dept. environmental impact reports have given Keystone XL an all-clear. How can they be so wildly difference? You have to understand proofiness.
The House of Representatives recently passed the North American-Made Energy Security Act which is just what it sounds like – a mandate to support non-OPEC oil efforts and employ people here, so Pres. Obama can no longer keep this on ice and has to make a decision one way or the other by November 1st.
If I were him, I would approve it and then secretly pass the word to environmentalists that the administration won’t put up a fight in the inevitable lawsuits they will engage in to block it. Oil today is basically lumber industry of the 1990s – no court Sierra Club picks for their lawsuit if Keystone XL is approved will decide in favor of an oil company, regardless of whether or not it would be better for the environment and jobs. So Pres. Obama would look more friendly to business while placating environmentalists.