Now that Republicans have majorities in both houses of Congress, they’re planning to ramrod some extremist so-called-Conservative legislation that undermines all sorts of useful things, primarily in clean technology or environmental protection. A case in point is approval of the Keystone XL pipeline project that environmental groups like 350.org have said we must BLOCK in order to avoid a “carbon bomb” that will wreck the environment and climate system. They’ve held repeated protest rallies focusing on blocking Keystone XL, etc. It’s been demonstrated that opposition to this project is broad and deep.
On Tuesday, now that Pres. Obama has made it clear he plans to Veto the legislation going through Congress, Rep. John Boehner issued a press release
that’s just wrong.
“On a bipartisan basis, the American people overwhelmingly support building the Keystone XL pipeline. After years of manufacturing every possible excuse, today President Obama was finally straight with them about where he truly stands. His answer is no to more American infrastructure, no to more American energy, and no to more American jobs. Fringe extremists in the president’s party are the only ones who oppose Keystone, but the president has chosen to side with them instead of the American people and the government’s own scientific evidence that this project is safe for the environment. This is simply another sign that President Obama is hopelessly out of touch and has no plans to listen to the American people or champion their priorities.”
Bi-partisan support? Opposition is just “fringe extremists” in the Democratic Party? Yeah, right.
Over on the Switchboard blog they’ve put together a point-by-point rebuttal that’s pretty good.
Those pushing for Keystone XL like to say it’s good for jobs. But, so too is developing solar or wind power systems. There’s lots of jobs to be done in that work in both building and maintaining the systems. And, solar and wind power is something which OPEC can’t curtail, because it’s totally domestic energy that doesn’t have to be imported. Conservatives should be extremely interested in the real energy security that comes from an energy source not controlled by hostile foreign countries.
Before I close this I just want to reiterate something …
It’s well and good to oppose expanding the fossil fuel infrastructure. Why? Because it’s an investment in continuing the dependence on fossil fuels, which leads to a number of undesired effects one of which is the climate impact.
There is gobs of money held by people seeking to be invest in projects that will pay large dividends. Switching the focus from fossil fuels to renewable energy is simply a matter of redirecting those investments. Okay, it’s not quite simple, but that’s one aspect of the problem – where the dollars are being invested.
Earlier today I wrote a piece on examiner.com about the Cape Wind project off Nantucket Island. After years of legal and political fighting against that project, the Cape Wind team wasn’t able to raise enough money by the December 31 deadline imposed by contracts with the electrical utilities, and now it looks like the Cape Wind project is going to die.
A principle funder of the fight against Cape Wind is the Koch Brothers – though, famously, some environmentalists were also in opposition to the project. Generally the criticism came from the rich people with houses on Nantucket Island claiming the Cape Wind project would be environmentally harmful because the wind turbines would be (barely) visible from the Island. Sheesh.
To try and get to the point ..
It’s great to oppose fossil fuels, but we have to ALSO promote renewable energy projects. If our society is to abandon fossil fuels we MUST have energy resources to replace what fossil fuels do for us.
That means a heck of a lot of renewable energy projects – several hundred gigawatts worth spread across the U.S.A. alone. That means lots of business opportunity in building those renewable energy resources. That means wind turbines in every windy area, solar panels on every rooftop, grid scale energy storage systems, and on and on and on. Lots of stuff to build, hence lots of business transactions to conduct.
Offshore from Cape Cod it’s very windy. There is huge potential for some businesses to be making a a tidy profit by generating electricity there.
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- Update on Galena IL oil train – 21 cars involved, which were the supposedly safer CP1232 design - March 7, 2015
- Another oil bomb train – why are they shipping crude oil by train? – Symptoms of fossil fuel addiction - March 6, 2015
- Chevron relinquishes fracking in Romania, as part of broader pull-out from Eastern European fracking operations - February 22, 2015
- Answer anti- electric car articles with truth and pride – truth outshines all distortions - February 19, 2015
- Apple taking big risk on developing a car? Please, Apple, don’t go there! - February 16, 2015
- Toyota, Nissan, Honda working on Japanese fuel cell infrastructure for Japanese government - February 12, 2015
