Keystone Pipeline Will Create Only 35 Permanent Jobs, Emit 51 Coal Plants Worth Of Carbon

[Triana]

On Wednesday, Secretary of State John Kerry told the House Foreign Affairs Committee that he wasn’t touching the Keystone pipeline decision with a ten-foot pole:

“I am staying as far away from that as I can now so that when the appropriate time comes to me, I am not getting information from any place I shouldn’t be, and I am not getting engaged in the debate at a time that I shouldn’t be,” Kerry told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday.

Right now, Kerry has the State Department’s Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement, but if that is all he information he relies on, he won’t get the full picture. While he will see that the project will only bring 35 permanent jobs, which is true, he would also see almost no discussion of the pipeline’s impact on the climate. (Oddly, he will be able to read an extended discussion of climate change’s projected impacts on the construction and maintenance of the proposed pipeline.)

So where is a Secretary of State sincerely concerned about climate change to go to find the climate consequences of approving the Keystone XL pipeline? He could peruse a new report out yesterday from Oil Change International called: “Cooking the Books: How The State Department Analysis Ignores The True Climate Impact of the Keystone XL Pipeline.”

The rest:

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/04/17/1885621/keystone-pipeline-will-create-only-35-permanent-jobs-emit-51-coal-plants-worth-of-carbon/

[byeya]

1. Very informative post. I had no idea the stats were so awful.

So, we're about to let a foreign country throw people off their land(or degrade it) to ship a nasty goo to Louisiana and Texas for refining to then export it all the while encouraging more C02 to be dumped into our atmosphere while taking the risks of more petro spills.
Doesn't sound like a good deal for the USA & its people to me.

[Triana]

2. It's only a good deal for oil companies & the Koch brothers...

...who also have interest in Canadian tar sands.