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On November 07 2015 08:10 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On November 07 2015 06:58 zlefin wrote:
GH -> it's also more dangerous to transport by trucking/rail; more people dying in accidents is something I'd rather avoid.
I don't think either outcome would really be a victory. Exactly, oil spills and accidents on major road/railways get a lot more attention and are more expensive to clean up than pipeline spills. I think there is a reasonable amount of evidence that suggests we would plow ourselves into oblivion if not for being confronted with the horrors that is our addiction to O&G Pipelines allow us to push even more of the consequences on more marginalized people (indigenous people, rural farmers, etc...) Obviously actually addressing the underlying issue of our addiction to O&G is what sensible folks are after but you have to take the wins when they come. No doubt, no pipeline means specific groups who would of been directly effected definitely won (despite people claiming they were screaming in the wind), I think preventing making the tar sands oil more profitable by not planting a pipeline through our country is the better of the two possible outcomes. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________ What is Chris Matthews getting at by demanding people say "Bernie Sanders is a Democrat"?
Pipelines also mean fewer deaths. I'm in favor of fewer deaths. You seem to be in favor of more dead Americans. Why use a method which costs more and leads to more dead Americans? While this is an unfair question, it is important, do you dispute the assertion that a pipeline would yield fewer dead Americans?
There are times and places to address the addiction to O&G. Making random things worse due to bureaucratic methods doesn't seem to me to be a good way to address the addiction. As it doesn't address the underlying issues of a fungible good, but only affects one specific source, rather than fairly affecting all the sources.
For the record I base a lot of my opinions on this report (or a draft version of that that came out a year earlier or so iirc):
http://keystonepipeline-xl.state.gov/finalseis/index.htm
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How many more deaths? With what certainty?
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Yes pipelines mean fewer transportation deaths in the short term (specifically due to accidents), of course it also means more abuses in other ways, eminent domain, environmental hazards (pipelines tend to leak longer before noticed and have the potential to leak far more than a truck or train), among other impacts. It also doesn't account for how the profitability of tar sand and fracking results in many deaths (possibly more) just from the poorly/unregulated consequences of how they procure and store their products/byproducts.
What you seem to be missing is that without that "in your face" aspect of "more American deaths" we simply won't address the underlying issue. So long as the devastation can be swept under the rug, people (namely the Republican party and O&G Dem's) can make arguments like you're making and we continue to think that making O&G extraction and transportation cheaper is a good thing.
The larger point being, following the path of placing the pipeline leads us further down the trail of far, far, more deaths than if we moved it by rail/road for 500 years (for practical purposes we'll run out before that). So sure if you take a short term view it's "safer". That short term profitability perspective is a huge part of what's gotten us into many of the messes we're currently in.
I imagine many people here don't know about the rampant abuse, especially among indigenous people's lands.
Given the choice between directly addressing the underlying issue or using bureaucracy to shift the industry I'd pick directly addressing it every time. That's simply not the choice we are offered, without a massive political revolution stopping Keystone is the best we could hope for.
If the argument was that stopping keystone acted as a band-aid and by allowing keystone it would incite more fervent opposition you might convince me.
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igne -> I don't have reliable specific numbers.
gh -> pipeline overall leakage is less than the overall leakage that happens with truck/railroad. though the spills are smaller in size. the data is in that state dept report.
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Its already been established that blocking the xl will have zero impact on extraction rates in alberta. We can cut GHG emissions of transporting the shit by up to 43% by using the xl, but fuck that. We could reduce the amount of oil spilled on its way from the gulf, but fuck that. We can drastically reduce injury to human life, again fuck that. Gotta make the cost of transportation high to stick it to the man while having zero impact on the big picture. You gotta pick your battles.
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On November 07 2015 10:17 heliusx wrote:
Its already been established that blocking the xl will have zero impact on extraction rates in alberta. We can cut GHG emissions of transporting the shit by up to 43% by using the xl, but fuck that. We could reduce the amount of oil spilled on its way from the gulf, but fuck that. We can drastically reduce injury to human life, again fuck that. Gotta make the cost of transportation high to stick it to the man while having zero impart on the big picture. You gotta pick your battles.
Uhm no. There's no doubt if Obama approved the pipeline that they would of restarted the extraction expansion they had paused as a result of oil prices/expenses.
Canadian oil-sands producers such as Cenovus, Canadian Natural and Suncor all announced plans earlier this year to shelve—but not abandon—plans for new or expanded subsurface oil-sands projects until global oil prices rebound or costs can be reduced dramatically. That could curtail growth in Canada’s oil patch production in the next decade after projects already under construction come online.
Source
Do you really think pipeline leaks are being accurately reported? It's a lot harder to lie about trucks and trains.
Besides all of that, the people who would be directly impacted by it being in their "backyards" don't fit into your argument at all other than "fuck them"
Like I said I'd love to address the underlying issue (Bernie just made a direct plea toward that just fyi), but acting like building Keystone would be a positive is just silly.
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I picked all of my statements carefully after reading through some of the state dept PDFs zlefin provided, each one is a fact. Of course there's no point in a continuation of this if you're going to just say "they lie".
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On November 07 2015 10:48 heliusx wrote:
I picked all my statments carefully after reading through some of the state dept PDFs zfelin provided, each one is a fact. Of course there's no point in a continuation of this if you're going to just say "they lie".
lol reminds me of Police "justified homicides". Looking at the government numbers you get one thing, then journalists take a crack at tracking them and they instantly double.
Whether "they" lie or not isn't a question, we know everyone lies. That's why we come up with a bunch of the rules we do. If your position is "they don't lie" you're right, there is no point.
But the other points stand on their own anyway (specifically that it wouldn't change extraction rates of the tar sands), so for the sake of discussion I can concede to that part of your argument, beyond it's absurdity if you're not just using it as an easy out.
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gh -> I find your attitude here a bit rude and unjustified, considering these are the state dept analyses, hence they were done BY the Obama administration.
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On November 07 2015 11:10 zlefin wrote:
gh -> I find your attitude here a bit rude and unjustified, considering these are the state dept analyses, hence they were done BY the Obama administration.
I suppose we're too far apart on where we're starting from if you think suggesting that it being a product of the Obama administration's state dept is as significant as your statement implies.
I mean sure, it's not what a Bush or Trump administration analysis would look like, but it's not some ultimate vindication as it seems you're suggesting.
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2nd Worst City in CA8938 Posts
Man, I felt the Bern tonight.
Hillary, walk away. Please.
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"I went to NASDAQ in December of 2007 and told them to cut it out!"
Well Hillary, what happened next? Guess that's a failure in your leadership. God damn she's so weak on money in politics. I missed Bernie's portion but I heard he performed very well.
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Biggest points against the pipeline personally: eminent domain sucks and should be avoided, Kelo decision be damned, and the BP spill has me very wary of trusting giant corps to quickly or efficiently clean up their spills. There were significant extra engineering challenges for the underwater spill than a land spill, I get that, but I have a hard time walking away from that recent and devastating event and saying "I"m sure this one will be fine." I wouldn't lose sleep over it if it ruled the other way though.
I don't get how Hillary can claim any credibility standing next to Bernie. She talks like a leftist (usually), but doesn't come close to his voting record to back it up. Even Bernie's his pro-gun stance, while I don't like it, reveals a level of integrity to core beliefs that she can't match.
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2nd Worst City in CA8938 Posts
Bernie's not quite "pro-gun." That sounds like something you'd call someone more conservative. He's just not as liberal about it as most other Democrats.
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You're right, my b. I'd heard the checked guns on trains bit + the immunity from lawsuits bit and didn't do much more digging. He pulls the "state's rights" line on a lot of it though, which I think is a cop out and a terrible policy on weapons. The state's rights argument bothers me after seeing it used as more savory way of opposing LGBT rights, I thought it was a weak excuse there and still is here. He's def left of center though and not quite pro-gun, oops on that.
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The symbolism was everything. Standing before a portrait of Teddy Roosevelt, the conservationist president who 104 years ago busted the Standard Oil monopoly, Barack Obama made his own tilt at an environmental legacy.
The proposed 1,179-mile Keystone XL pipeline, which Obama rejected on Friday, would have borne more than 800,000 barrels of exceptionally high-carbon oil from Canada’s tar sands fields in Alberta to refineries on the US gulf coast each day.
It should have been a shoo-in for presidential approval. Conservatives and many labour unions loved it. According to a State Department report in 2014, environmentalists’ claims that it would reduce emissions from tar sands were unfounded. Keystone XL is just one of many pipelines being built across North America. If it was not built, the Canadians would simply ship it from elsewhere.
So how did Obama come down on the side of a coalition of students environmentalists, farmers and indigenous nations who admit that when they started this fight seven years ago, they had no hope of winning?
“America is now a global leader when it comes to taking serious action to fight climate change. And frankly, approving this project would have undercut that global leadership,” said the president on Friday in an address to the nation.
It is here that the iconoclasm of Obama’s decision reveals itself. Climate change has become such an overwhelmingly mainstream political and diplomatic imperative that it overrides traditionally unbeatable domestic interests.
The president said he had weighed the familiar arguments – jobs, gas prices, energy security – and had been swayed by none.
Building the pipeline would have done little to benefit the US, he said. More oil from Canada was not going to make pump prices cheaper or help the US cut its reliance on foreign oil. That has already happened thanks to the fracking boom. Since 2008, the US has increased the yield of its domestic oil fields by a massive 173%.
“There’s no shortage of oil and gas here, so it seems particularly crazy to be importing crap when we have lots of our own fossil fuels,” said professor Daniel Kammen, co-director of the Berkeley Institute of the Environment.
Source
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I mean, Sanders sounds like the most sane US politician I've seen since...forever I guess? (Except for the pro gun non sense).
But isn't he a bit old for the presidency? He is 74 - not to be rude, and he looks healthy and all, but that's an age where anyone has to expect that something might happen, no? By the end of his presidency he would be 82 (I think anyone should try for a second term to really change stuff, and he certainly sounds like he wants to change things for the better). So the VP choice certainly would be very, very important in his case.
Nonetheless, I'd be positively impressed if the US elected him. Go for it 
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Wow Ben Carson seems to be losing it. He is snapping at the Press for questioning what he wrote in his book etc.
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On November 08 2015 01:48 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
Wow Ben Carson seems to be losing it. He is snapping at the Press for questioning what he wrote in his book etc.
Wouldn't be the first person to crack under the public scrutiny.
Was he a public figure at all prior to running?
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On November 08 2015 01:45 ACrow wrote:I mean, Sanders sounds like the most sane US politician I've seen since...forever I guess? (Except for the pro gun non sense). But isn't he a bit old for the presidency? He is 74 - not to be rude, and he looks healthy and all, but that's an age where anyone has to expect that something might happen, no? By the end of his presidency he would be 82 (I think anyone should try for a second term to really change stuff, and he certainly sounds like he wants to change things for the better). So the VP choice certainly would be very, very important in his case. Nonetheless, I'd be positively impressed if the US elected him. Go for it
Age isn't really an issue, Reagan came in office during his 70s and handled it fine. As for the pro-gun nonsense, Sanders is neutral in the situation in which he prefers to leave it up to state laws, addressing other issues that cause gun crime (i.e. mental health issues, poverty, and other societal hostilities) Implementing laws into federal legislation right away has a lot of consequences, it's better to leave it to the states.
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EPT
