Conor Kennedy, ecowatch.com

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On Monday, the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) told the State Department that the information in the State Department’s Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) on the Keystone XL pipeline is “insufficient.” Among EPA’s many concerns was the State Department’s failure to adequately address the pipeline’s impacts on climate change. EPA raised a host of other issues. In fact, the State Department’s EIS is not useful for answering some of the most basic questions about Keystone XL.

Ever since Feb. 13, when I chained myself to the White House fence with 47 other protestors urging President Obama to kill the Keystone pipeline, people have asked me why I felt strongly enough about the issue to endure arrest. Many of them have the same questions that should have been asked in the State Department’s EIS. If we don’t build the pipeline through the American prairie, won’t the oil companies just route it through British Columbia by rail, tank trucks or pipelines and sell their oil to Asia? Won’t the Keystone XL pipeline give America energy security and the U.S. jobs? Won’t the pipeline lower the price of gasoline at the pump? Haven’t the oil industry and government regulators given us adequate assurances that Keystone is safe? Don’t the oil and pipeline companies have their own incentives to make sure the Keystone pipeline doesn’t leak?

Here are the answers:

1) Is the Keystone XL Pipeline safe? Anyone who watched the oil industry and its regulators scramble to point fingers and dodge responsibility during the BP oil spill should be skeptical about industry claims of pipeline safety. Tar sands oil, sometimes known as bitumen, is extraordinarily corrosive and the industry has not figured out how to stop it from bursting even the most fortified pipelines. On March 31, an Exxon pipe carrying 95,000 barrels per day of Alberta tar sands oil from Illinois to Texas refineries burst and flooded an upscale suburb in Mayflower, Arkansas beneath an ocean of toxic heavy bitumen and lighter dilutents, added by oil companies to help the gelatinous bitumen move through the pipe. Arkansas taxpayers were shocked to learn that thanks to a loophole artfully created by the industry’s political allies, they—not the oil companies—will have to pay for the cleanup.

That same week a burst Minnesota pipeline vomited 15,000 gallons of Alberta crude. In 2010, an Exxon pipeline in Michigan spewed a million gallons of dilbit into the Kalamazoo River, causing the worst and most expensive pipeline-based oil spill in U.S. history. Experts are still scratching their heads trying to figure out how to clean up the Kalamazoo spill which received little coverage from the mainstream corporate media. Clean-up crews commonly collect aquatic oil spills using floatable booms. As it turns out, tar sands oil doesn’t float. Instead, it tarred and coated the Kalamazoo River bottom, which is the foundation of the aquatic ecosystem. In fact, oil and gas companies even shipping conventional oil, experience thousands of oil spills each year. In June, an Exxon pipe that runs parallel to the proposed route of the Keystone XL pipeline burst, spilling between 750 and 1,000 barrels, at a crossing on the iconic Yellowstone River and killed life in that blue ribbon trout fishery and national treasure for 25 miles.

Given the industry’s abysmal record, it’s safe to say that Keystone XL will experience a major spill and, due to its planned route, that spill will almost certainly contaminate the Ogallala aquifer, the sole water supply for millions of middle state Americans as well as the breadbasket of American agriculture and the ranching industries in seven states.

[pullquote]We don’t need oil-based fossil fuels while we ramp up renewables like Solar and Wind. Renewables are proven and market-ready technologies. Their widespread deployment is only being impeded by multibillion dollar annual subsidies to oil and gas [and flaccid support by the government—Eds]. In any case, the Keystone XL Pipeline is not a stop gap measure. Instead the pipeline will entrench our use of fossil fuels[/pullquote]

2) Keystone XL will not create significant American jobs. According to the State Department’s study, Keystone will provide only 35 full time jobs following the construction period. We could more beneficially create permanent jobs by incentivizing solar and wind development which, even with the current anemic federal incentives, are creating each year, more new generation capacity than all the incumbents (oil, gas, coal and nuke) combined. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are already 93,000 jobs in solar and 85,000 in wind, and those numbers are growing exponentially.

3) Keystone XL will neither improve energy security nor lower gasoline prices. Virtually all of Keystone’s Alberta tar sands oil is destined for Asian markets. Canadian and mostly non-U.S. owned oil services companies, the Koch Brothers, and Asian plutocrats will profit from the pipeline but there will be little value to the U.S. in terms of security or lower oil prices. In fact, U.S. oil prices will actually increase as the result of Keystone because U.S. oil prices are dictated not by world market prices but by refinery capacity in this country. Since tar sands oil destined for Asian markets will first be refined in U.S. refineries, tar sands will compete for limited refinery space and therefore drive up the price of oil. The State Department estimates that the average cost of American gasoline will actually rise upward of 7¢ per gallon if Keystone is constructed. The Pipeline will hurt the U.S. economy, not help it.

4) Why are environmentalists mad at Obama? Why have they made this the political line in the sand for his carbon legacy? Because this issue is one of the few issues that is solely under Obama’s control. President Obama doesn’t need to go to a Congress awash in democracy-polluting oil money. He can pull the plug on Keystone XL while sitting alone in the Oval Office. If we cannot win this issue with Obama, what hope do we have with other environment issues where he has to work with Senate Republicans?

5) If we don’t build Keystone, the oil companies will just haul their tar sands out by rail and truck, generating more carbon and more spills. The $7 billion Keystone pipeline will transport 1.1 million barrels each day—far more than could be transported economically by rail and truck traffic. If we stop Keystone, we lock most of this carbon permanently underground.

6) If we kill Keystone, the oil companies will not build a pipeline elsewhere in Canada. The oil industry will not build an alternative pipeline elsewhere in Canada. Resistance among Canadians in British Columbia, especially salmon-dependent First Nations, is even greater than here in the United States.

7) We don’t need oil-based fossil fuels while we ramp up renewables like Solar and Wind. Renewables are proven and market-ready technologies. Their widespread deployment is only being impeded by multibillion dollar annual subsidies to oil and gas [and flaccid support by the government—Eds]. In any case, the Keystone XL Pipeline is not a stop gap measure. Instead the pipeline will entrench our use of fossil fuels.

8) Keystone XL will have a catastrophic impact on climate change. The amount of carbon in the tar sands is equivalent to all the carbon in all the oil ever removed from Saudi Arabia. Burning the vast oceans of oil beneath Saudi Arabia has gotten us where we are today; ice caps melting, glaciers retreating on every continent, water supplies drying up, continent wide droughts disrupting agriculture and global food supplies, acidified oceans and rising sea levels, and climate chaos flooding our greatest cities. According to a new study published last week by Oil Change International, “Cooking the Books: How the State Department Analysis Ignores the True Climate Impact of the Keystone XL Pipeline,” the pipeline will emit 181 methane tons of carbon every year—the equivalent of 37.7 million cars or 51 new coal plants. There are 561 tons of carbon locked in Alberta’s tar sands. More than twice the amount, according to former Goddard scientist James Hansen, then have been released by all the oil and combustion in the history of mankind. We can double that sum by burning Alberta’s tar sands, but what genocidal politician or oilman, would want to do that to future generations? We could better solve our energy problems by scuttling the pipeline, investing in renewables, and putting the greedy megalomaniacs from Koch oil and Exxon’s puppets in the U.S. Capitol in jail, where they belong.

Visit EcoWatch’s KEYSTONE XL page for more related news on this topic.

In watching the massive media coverage and the reaction to the brutal bombing at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, the wise poem “To A Louse…” composed in 1785 by the Scottish poet Robert Burns came to me:

“O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!”

English translation:

“And would some Power the small gift give us
To see ourselves as others see us!”

What must the “ithers” in the Middle East theatre of the American Empire think of a great city in total lockdown from an attack by primitive explosives when Iraqis, Afghans, Pakistanis and Yemenis experience far greater casualties and terror attacks several times a week? Including what they believe are terror attacks by U.S. drones, soldiers, aircraft and artillery that have directly killed many thousands of innocent children, women and men in their homes, during funeral processions and wedding parties, or while they’re working in their fields.

Here’s what they are thinking: that America is very vulnerable and ready to shake itself upside down to rid itself and protect itself from any terror attacks. The Bush regime, after 9/11, sacrificed U.S. soldiers and millions of innocents in the broader Middle East, drained our economy, so as to ignore the necessities of saving lives and health here at home, and metastasized al-Qaeda into numerous countries, spilling havoc into Iraq and now Syria. We have paid a tremendous price in blowback, because of Mr. Bush’s rush to war.

[pullquote]Every day in the U.S. there are preventable tragedies that receive no media coverage because they aren’t part of the “war on terror”, which has been crowding out stories that would have led to corrective actions to leave this country safer from the corporate predators within its borders.[/pullquote]

Why is the reaction to the events in Boston viewed by some as bizarre? Our president said “We will finish the race.” Do we really think that the attackers are doing this to disrupt our pleasure in foot racing?

The attackers, be they suicide bombers over there or domestic bombers here, are motivated by their hatred of our invasions, our daily bombings, our occupations, our immersion in tribal preferences leading to divide-and-rule sectarian wars. Studies, such as those by the University of Chicago Professor Robert Pape, and former adviser to Barack Obama and Ron Paul during the 2008 presidential campaign, conclude that entry into paradise is not the motivation for these suicide bombers. What drives them is their despair and their desire to expel the foreign invaders from their homeland.

Another “ithers’ – admittedly a smaller number – must see a giant country going berserk with media, speculation, rumors, accusations, and random mobilizations of military equipment. There are enough of these younger people who must say to themselves, maybe it is worth giving up their lives for a place in history – to make a nation be fearful because of their rulers’ staggering overreaction.

Why give these contorted young minds, frustrated by what they perceive as U.S. attacks on their religion or their ethnic group in their home countries, such incentives?

Massive overreactions by the mass media (have you seen CNN’s frenzied, nonstop quest for every bit of trivia and speculation hour after hour?) crowds out coverage of far greater preventable loss of life and safety in our country. Other commentators have covered the lesser-known yet huge explosion at the West, Texas fertilizer factory that destroyed far more property and took more human lives than the Boston Marathon assault. But, the dangerous fertilizer plant was corporate criminal negligence, or worse.

Every day in the U.S. there are preventable tragedies that receive no media coverage because they aren’t part of the “war on terror”, which has been crowding out stories that would have led to corrective actions to leave this country safer from the corporate predators within its borders.

Individually, many Americans intuitively understand the consequences of neglecting problems in our own country to engage in lawless wars and military adventures. Unfortunately, Americans collectively sing the song “que será, será” or “whatever will be, will be” because the big boys in Washington and Wall Street will always make the decisions. Be assured that they will often be stupidly harmful in the long-run to our country, and not just to millions of defenseless people abroad who have become victims of the collective punishment or random ravages of our massive push-button weapon systems.

In an impressive collection of excerpts titled Against the Beast, a Documentary History of American Opposition to Empire edited by John Nichols; the eminent historian Chalmers Johnson had this to say:

“. . .where U.S.-supported repression has created hopeless conditions, to U.S.-supported economic policies that have led to unimaginable misery, blowback reintroduces us to a world of cause and effect.”

At a first-ever Senate hearing earlier this week on the use of armed drones away from battlefields, initiated by Senator Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) and arrogantly boycotted by the imperial Obama Administration, Farea al-Muslimi, a young Yemeni from a village just attacked by a U.S. drone strike, gave witness.

Al-Muslimi said, “When they think of America, they think of the terror they feel from the drones that hover over their heads, ready to fire missiles at any time. What radicals had previously failed to achieve in my village, one drone strike accomplished in an instant: there is now an intense anger and growing hatred of America.”

As President Obama told the Israelis about the Palestinians, “Put yourselves in their shoes.”

In country after country, the terrifying whine of 24/7 hovering drones and the knowledge that special U.S. killing teams can drop from the skies at any time, creates a state of terror.

A brute-force foreign policy [of] waging war can never effectively wage peace or sensibly engage in early conflict prevention or resolution. An illegal brute-force policy aligns itself with repressive regimes that crush their own people with American weapons and American political/diplomatic cover.

Jeremy Scahill, author of the new book Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield, who has been in these countries and spoken with these villagers, says that our government has created unnecessary enemies and banked lots of revenge among these people over the past ten years. “This is going to boomerang back around to us,” he fears, adding that we’re creating “a whole new generation of enemies that have an actual grievance against us…have an actual score to settle.” Killing innocent men, women and children creates blowback that lasts for generations.

From these overseas regions, the message from the bombing at the Boston Marathon is that, until now, the high-tech buttons were only being pushed by the drone operators against them. After Boston they can see that other low-tech buttons can now be pushed inside the U.S. against defenseless gatherings of innocent people.

For our national security, the American people must recover control of our runaway, unilateral presidency that has torn itself away from constitutional accountabilities and continues to be hijacked by ideologues who ignore our Founding Fathers’ wisdom regarding the separation of powers and avoiding foreign entanglements that become costly, deadly and endless quagmires.

Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer and author of Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us! He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, published by AK Press. Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition.