Rational, Thinking Americans

"This debate is really misguided. There is literally two and a half million miles of pipeline traversing the ground (in the United States). You would think ... that this is the first pipeline that has ever been built.

"It seems to me right now what the United States needs in addition to energy security, it needs economic stimulus and jobs coming from the private sector ... I think rational, thinking Americans understand those kinds of facts." Russ Girling, president and CEO, TransCanada

Xenophobia and parochialism raises its ugly head now and again. No country seems to be exempt from the problem. Both conditions have no base in either reality or reason. Both result from a sense of aggravated resentment, that the world outside their own has hostile intentions toward their own. A kind of mass hysteria of gathering together in a compact to protect interior interests against the malign designs of an exterior force takes precedence over rational discussion.

Rationally, people would acknowledge that they have an economy that is based on the use of energy. Energy mostly derived from fossil fuels. The kind of energy that once was derived from other fossil fuels like mined coal turned out to be environmentally destructive. Water-driven energy is too dependent on availability of running water. Wind energy is proving to be problematical in the same NIMBY way as an oil pipeline cutting across national borders.

Nuclear energy has been dependable, clean and relatively problem-free but it is a source harnessing a potentially impressively destructive force that frightens people because it is inextricably linked with nuclear atomic devices, and the fall-out of radiation effects from a damaged nuclear reactor as the world witnessed to its horror with the Fukushima nuclear reactor debacle after a killer tsunami gave the world cold feet.

Geothermal and solar energy sources are feasible but not yet harnessed to complete satisfaction, and again geological and atmospheric resources must be fully and availably present for dependability. All of these resources as potentials for future energy sources are useful and may prove, among other yet-unnamed and unimagined sources, to be the answer to the dilemma facing the world community today; the search for a reliable, plentiful, safe energy source.

In the meanwhile, the country whose use of energy leads the world, continues to struggle with the reality that it is hugely dependent on a source of energy that emanates from that part of the world which has traditionally and continues to be a problem. Oil wealth has enabled Saudi Arabia, for example, to fund extremist fundamentalist madrasses all over the world. Schools of fanatic Islamic thought emphasizing the merits of violent jihad.

From which have come the world's new source of concerns; global terrorism whose adherents share none of the values that constrain most people from slaughtering innocents among them. Their mandate has come purportedly directly from God on High who, through the interpretation of Islam's sacred scriptures, instructs the faithful to aspire to martyrdom and on their way to Paradise where they will be amply rewarded, to take the lives of multitudes.

Another source of oil for the United States has been Venezuela whose president, Hugo Chavez deplores and degrades the United States as a monster of a country, whose values are inimical to decency and human rights. And Chavez has ever so kindly subsidized heating oil for the most desperately poor of Americans in 'solidarity' with their plight. Hugo Chavez is the great good friend and supporter of the Islamic Republic of Iran, a fundamentalist terror state whose proxies are the consummate jihadist militias, and which has dedicated itself to acquiring nuclear weaponry.

But Keystone XL foes in Nebraska speak with vehement anger over the concerns they have about their fear with relation to damage a major spill might have on the eco-sensitive Sand Hills and the Ogalala Aquifer, providing the state with 80% of its drinking water. Who, under those circumstances, wouldn't be concerned and fearful? Yet the U.S. Statement Department has given a green light to the Keystone XL on the basis of an environment report that the pipeline would have "no significant impact" on natural resources in the U.S.

The 830,000 barrel-a-day pipeline running from northern Alberta to the Gulf Coast of Texas is, without doubt, given all the concerns about energy sufficiency and the need to become less dependent on Middle East sources of energy, in the U.S.' best interests. Lobbying of the U.S. government by angry and concerned citizens is their prerogative and their right as citizens of the country. The rhetoric has become heated and pointed.

Three environmental reviews that followed TransCanada's first application for a presidential permit to build Keystone XL have given clearance to proceed. The valuable energy resources coming from Alberta have an enviable presence on the world market. If not the United States, whose environmental groups and concerned citizens would prefer to spurn 'dirty' Alberta oilsands crude, there are other countries who would be eager to take it.

"It is an all-out war to battle TransCanada and keep them off our property", scorned one farmer who has refused permission to have the pipeline transit his land. "It is not in the national best interest for anyone except the money hungry, greedy corporation of TransCanada". But is it not in the national best interest to access that philosophically clean energy source, in favour of spurning an oil source easier to extract and needing less refining that funds the very jihadist movement aspiring to destroy America?