It's bad enough that President Obama dragged his feet for seven years before doing what everyone knew he was going to do. TransCanada, the Canadian government an awful lot of Americans who could have used the economic boost (including the folks in North Dakota and an awful lot of Obama's union supporters) were left to twist in the wind while Obama pretended he was "reviewing" the proposed Keystone XL pipeline.
Of course, he was doing no such thing. He knew on Day 1 he was going to reject it because that's what his extreme environnmentalist supporters demanded - and it's also what he personally believes in because he's one of those extreme environmentalists. He hates the oil industry and will never do anything to promote its success if he can help it. (Even his bragging about increased domestic oil production is nonsense because that's all happening on private lands. Obama stops it from happening on federal lands every chance he gets.)
So we all knew he was going to reject the Keystone XL pipeline, and the only question was when, and why he would choose that particular time. Apparently he decided to do it now because there are new talks coming up on an international "climate change" treaty and he wanted to prove to China and other nations that the U.S. is serious about the issue. Well. We can already tell he's more serious about the imagined threat of man-made global warming than he is about the U.S. economy or the attainment or real energy independence. But he decided he needed to prove it anyway.
So here we are, left to sift through his litany of excuses for this decision - and quite the litany it is. Let's go through them excuse-by-excuse:
It won't create jobs. Oh really? Tell that to the labor unions who were expecting at least 10,000 jobs to come from the pipeline and are now furious that the president they supported has once again stabbed them in the back. (I wonder how many more times they need to experience this before they start to figure things out.)
It's not really that important. This is interesting coming from a guy who constantly complains that we're not spending enough money on infrastructure. What does he think a pipeline is? It is (or would have been, and may still be if we elect a Republican president next year) a crucial piece of energy infrastructure that would make it easier and cheaper to get massive volumes of oil to market. When did Obama suddenly decide that infrastructure isn't important? Or is it because this particular piece of infrastructure would be built entirely by the private sector and thus would represent no expansion of government?
It would make global warming worse. OK, let's leave aside for the moment that the left's arguments about global warming are complete nonsense. They are, but let's leave that aside. As it stands right now, we transport oil via trucks that pump carbon into the air, and via trains that have been known to derail and cause massive oil spills. Moving oil through a pipeline reduces the need for both. If your concern is the environment, then a pipeline is the absolute best way to go.
We have to leave some fossil fuels in the ground. What? This doesn't even make any sense. Obama would have you believe that we're now in the process of rapidly yanking all fossil fuel reserves from the ground, and the building of energy infrastructure is the last piece of the puzzle that will soon leave the Earth bone-dry of any and all fossil reserves. This sounds like something an eighth-grader would say. The reserves we already know about will last for thousands of years. And our competitors in the Middle East and in Venezuela aren't too concerned about leaving fossil fuels in the ground, unless it's to manipulate prices upward to their benefit. This statement is the clearest evidence imaginable that Obama doesn't even take this issue seriously.
We have to show the rest of the world we're serious about climate change. No. We don't. We have to make energy independence a priority. And yes, I know we're talking about transporting Canadian oil, but if you don't think there's a difference between dealing with Canada and dealing with the emirs and potentates in the Middle East, or the communist strongman in Venezuela . . . then again, if we keep treating Canada this way, maybe they won't be our ally much longer either.
It all comes down to this: Obama took this action in the service of his left-wing, oil-hating ideology, and with complete disregard to the economic and energy needs of the United States. All you have to do to recognize this is analyze his excuses, as we've done here. And anyone who thinks otherwise is exactly the type of fool he has counted on to stay in office, and that someone even worse will soon be counting on as well.
It's bad enough that President Obama dragged his feet for seven years before doing what everyone knew he was going to do. TransCanada, the Canadian government an awful lot of Americans who could have used the economic boost (including the folks in North Dakota and an awful lot of Obama's union supporters) were left to twist in the wind while Obama pretended he was "reviewing" the proposed Keystone XL pipeline.
Of course, he was doing no such thing. He knew on Day 1 he was going to reject it because that's what his extreme environnmentalist supporters demanded - and it's also what he personally believes in because he's one of those extreme environmentalists. He hates the oil industry and will never do anything to promote its success if he can help it. (Even his bragging about increased domestic oil production is nonsense because that's all happening on private lands. Obama stops it from happening on federal lands every chance he gets.)
