@1: Ironically, pipelines tend to be the most environmentally friendly way to move oil around. The oil is getting pumped and moved regardless of if the Keystone line is built, it will just be transported by the much more dangerous routes of truck and train. Not that any transport/use of petroleum is great for the environment, but you know...
If Charles wants man-made disaster photos to be ugly and aesthetically offensive, he should just take them all.
@5: Basically...I have no problem if people want to protest oil sands extraction or other fossil fuel issues, but hacking away at a pipeline is the wrong way to do it. It is a detrimental confusion between cause and symptom.
Kind of like how people opposed to nuclear power protest new plants being built which are safer and cleaner than the old ones, which we are forced to utilize as long as new ones can not be built due to uneducated public uproar. Same thing with nuclear waste storage facilities.
@3&5 - Not building Keystone will slow down the development of tar sands because they'll use both rail and the pipeline to transport oil if it gets built. The pipeline would transport ~800,000 barrels per day versus 200,000 by rail today so there is a long way to go before having rail match the transport capacity of the pipeline, especially since safety regulations will make it harder to move the stuff by rail. I wouldn't be so sure that rail is environmentally worse since the size of spills is limited
Why should an opponent of nuclear want to commit to another 60-year nuclear plant life span when we haven't solved what makes nuclear unacceptable and we apparently don't have enough capital to invest in renewables?
Took a vacation from logic today or is that an everyday thing?
Tight oil development is expensive. If the political environment is seen to be favorable to oil transport infrastructure, then the investment environment is seen to be favorable. Would you invest millions in an explo/pump project if you thought regulators might put a green kibosh in its profitability? They wouldn't be interested in spending tens of millions to build this thing if it didn't improve the profitability of extracting and selling oil. The more profitable an activity is, the more that activity will be done
If Charles wants man-made disaster photos to be ugly and aesthetically offensive, he should just take them all.
Kind of like how people opposed to nuclear power protest new plants being built which are safer and cleaner than the old ones, which we are forced to utilize as long as new ones can not be built due to uneducated public uproar. Same thing with nuclear waste storage facilities.
Why should an opponent of nuclear want to commit to another 60-year nuclear plant life span when we haven't solved what makes nuclear unacceptable and we apparently don't have enough capital to invest in renewables?
Took a vacation from logic today or is that an everyday thing?
- real supply side economics