The Economy vs the Enviroment

Yoveta Adams 12/14/12 English 1101 900 A. M. probe 6 The Economy vs. the Environment The unemployment rate is almost nine percent, the note value of the American dollar is steadily declining, and the housing market is far from stable. It is incontestable that the American plurality need jobs. TransCanada, a leader in mating American energy production (Canadian Business Resource) and its subsidiary, TransCanada Pipelines Limited has a cardinal billion dollar plan to hit jobs by extending the already actual samara Pipeline.The tonality pedigree harvests petroleum from the tar sands in Hardesty, Alberta then escapes the perfect(a) oil color to Patoka, Illinois. The plan is to extend the pipeline from Hardesty to run through Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma to finally end in mien Arthur, Texas where it can be refined. According to TransCanada, this can potentially create thousands of jobs including 13,000 Americans to lay down the pipeline-pipefitter s, welders, mechanics, electricians, heavy equipment operators, among other jobs-in addition to 7,000 manufacturing jobs.And additionally local businesses along the pipeline route forget benefit from the 118,000 spin off jobs cay XL will create through increased businesses for local goods and service providers. (TransCanada) Thats a lot of jobs. not only that, this can stand by to lower our dependency on outside sources to supply us with approximate oil, check to Chris Sorenson that this 36 inch diameter pipeline could Adams Page 2 potentially triple the existent pipeline capacity to 1. 3 one thousand million lay per day Thats greatNot only will this create over a hundred thousand jobs, it can also help lower the price of gas, considering it wont be coming from affection east, it will be coming from our neighbors to the north. So why has President Barack Obama, sinkd to push back the decision to approve or deny the supplement until after the 2012 election? Many republican s, including Speaker of the House, John Boehner deliberate this is deleterious to the American miserliness claiming, By punting this project, the president has made it sack that campaign politics are driving U. S. policy decisions at the address of American jobs. (Page 16) Maybe it has just aboutthing to do with the environment. Like the fact that the already existing Keystone pipeline has been ordered shut down by the unify States Department of Transportation, due to a series of leaks and spills. Elisabeth Rosenthal says that in May of 2011 alone, the Keystone 1 pipeline suffered two leaksone of which involved over 10,000 gallons of oil. (Page 1) In spite of this, TransCanada claims that pipelines are the safest, most reliable, economical and environmentally favorable trend to transport oil and petroleum products.Leaks are rare and tend to be small. I dont call ten thousand gallons small. Not only that, Rosenthal also states Environmental experts have raised concerns abou t the guess of leaks from Keystone XL, in part because TransCanada has been granted waivers that Adams Page 3 in effect allow it to use thinner steel that would normally be needful in the United States. They add that the companys pipelines are oddly vulnerable because the oil from tar sands is more corrosive than effected oil and is pumped under higher pressure and temperatures. Page 1) Still, oil corporations claim that this source of crude oil is ethical, even though the methods use to extract it is devastating to the environment and the ecosystems at heart. Environmental activist Bill McKibben declares The biggest machines in the world scrape away the woods and dig down to the oily sand beneath, and so far they got three percent of the oil, but theyve already moved more soil than the Great Wall of China, the Suez Canal, and the Aswan Dam and gain of Cheops combined (Page 40) And goes on to addRight now, the atmosphere holds 392 parts per million CO2 already dangerously abo ve the 350 ppm scientists say is the maximum level. If you could in some manner burn all the tar sands at once the atmospheric concentration would rise another 150 parts per million. (Page 40) Lee Terry, a republican representative from Nebraska, recently drafted a bill that would allow the federal Regulatory Commission to grant permits that would allow TransCanada to commence the project within thirty days of getting an application. I know we are terrible for Adams Page 4Jobs but, how far can this bill go if the decision to work out this pipeline was in Barak Obamas hands alone and he already made the decision to wait until after the next election to decide? As for the thousands of jobs TransCanada claim this will create, the U. S. Department of State predicts the number will be closer to between twenty-five hundred and four thousand. Thats a big difference. Maybe the difference will stem from people that TransCanada will hire to clean up the existing mess that Keystone 1 has already created, and the ones that will happen in the future if they go on to use substandard materials to build the pipeline.What about reducing our dependency on outside resources for crude oil? I mean that has to have some bearing in all of this. Alexander Cockburn suggests that from day one of the Keystone XL scheme the oil companies plan has been to take the heavy crude from Alberta, refine it in Texas and then ship it in the form of meat distillates-diesel, jet fuel and heating oil-primarily to Europe and Latin America. (Page 9) I think this could potentially raise the price of gas in the U. S. considering we will be the ones to ship it.One should also keep in mind that this is a pipeline, it takes oil from the earth and eventually, it will run out. It seems to me that this is just a short name solution. It certainly isnt going to get Americans away from using crude oil as a sustainable source of energy, regardless of the come up of jobs this will create. If the Republican Party and TransCanada truly cared about the American economy and job creation, they would come up with a cleaner, more efficient, and less denigratory way. The Keystone XL pipeline is a bad idea, and the way I see it the environment is more important than the economy.