Doing The Right Thing

"We are telling the president, and have been telling the president, that a thorough review was appropriate, that following the proper protocols needed to be done to make sure that this was going to be a secure, safe pipeline...that it's going to be constructed with the most highly skilled people in the world...all those reviews completed and the reroute around the aquifer in Nebraska done, the time is now to issue the permit."
"We believe our closest ally is Canada. Canada has resources that we are currently importing from around the world, and we are spending huge amounts of blood and treasure for those imports. If we can save money, lives and blood by working with our closest ally on their natural resources that we desperately need, that is what we should do."
Sean McGarvey, president, building and construction trades unit, AFL-CIO

President Barack Obama's state of the union address formalizing his investiture for his second term as chief executive and commander in chief of the United States made many allusions to the country's middle class, their problems and aspirations and the need for an improved economy and more job creation. Mr. McGarvey has those same concerns and feels that settling the controversy around the Keystone XL pipeline will solve at least some of those problems to a good degree.

And he is not alone. The American Federation of Labour and Congress of Industrial Organizations representing the country's largest union federations aided the re-election of Mr. Obama. Just as, indeed the environmental movement, faith in their president intact, also helped in Mr. Obama's re-election to a second term, hoping that their support of the president would result in his support of their environmental concerns.

And Keystone XL is a primary concern of U.S. environmental groups.

In the American construction industry there is a downturn reflecting a struggling economy that has impacted on other sectors as well. For the construction industry unemployment is at 16%, and Mr. McGarvey believes that 20,000 construction jobs could result out of the TransCanada Corp. project in his country if the pipeline were to be given the go-ahead. So far no one in the administration has given any indication which way the decision will go.

Organized labour is with the pipeline as well as large manufacturers and small businessmen, willing to support the project because they seek energy security with the knowledge that a strong energy partnership with Canada is in their best interests, just as it is in Canada's. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the American Petroleum Institute, the National Association of Manufacturers and the Business Roundtable are all lined up in support of Keystone XL.

A bipartisan letter to the president with the signatures of over 145 congressmen urging approval of the pipeline went out last month. Similarly a letter from the Senate also was sent to the president.  "If [Canada's oil] doesn't come to the U.S. it will go to the Far East, and I know that we can refine it cleaner globally than most of the refineries in the Far East.  The U.S. doesn't have a closer friend than Canada", said U.S. Congressman Gene Green, a Democrat, who led the effort that resulted in the congressional letter.

"Every barrel of oil we can buy from Canada, a friend, is one less barrel that we have to buy from the Mideast where we have a lot of enemies. The additional carbon content is far less of a concern to me than being dependent on Mideast oil and sending money overseas to people who hate us", added Republican Senator Lindsey Graham. "For the Chinese to be able to successfully lock down the oil sands supply would require us to do something incredibly short-sighted and ill-advised."

Canada is the only country that has regulations on greenhouse gases among the top five suppliers of oil to the United States; Canada, Mexico, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria. Cindy Schild, senior manager of refining and oil sands at API, who leads the Keystone XL campaign said: "StatsCanada, as well as our Census Bureau, have analyses that show that for every dollar that the U.S. spends in Canada, $0.89 is returned to the U.S. economy. You don't see that with our other trading partners."

Those are the voices of the pro-pipeline activists. Then there are the voices of the anti-pipeline activists. And their voices are many, from the Sierra Club to the Natural Resources Defense Council, and high-profile activists like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and actress Daryl Hannah, two among the 48 protesters that were arrested in yesterday's protest at the White House. They insist bitumen carried from Alberta's oilsands to the U.S. Gulf Coast would be environmentally disastrous.


Screenshot from Twitter.com user @thinkprogress

"The science is clear. Climate change is not just an economic issue, it is a moral issue. I do not believe that Keystone XL will happen. I believe that President Obama and Secretary Kerry will do the right thing. And we need to show our support." Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.