Update: On November 18th 2014, the U.S. Senate rejected a bill to speed approval of the Keystone XL pipeline. The bill was rejected by one vote. So it’s stalled, but the fight is not over.

 

Dolphins are mammals! Oil is gold! This is satire! ~ ed.

Update: please ignore this: “A Forest Threatened by Keystone XL.”

“The Senate is expected to vote today on the long-delayed Keystone pipeline. The House approved it last Friday! President Obama has signaled that he may veto it, after having already delayed it once. But even if he does, with Republicans set to take control of Congress in January and only two years left in the president’s term…we the people are all that really stands in the way.”

Hi! You might know us as two bugaboos liberal parents use to scare their hippie children at night. But we’re just like you, only $90 billion richer, smarter, and more powerful–after all, we funded the Tea Party movement. What motivates us? Love of God, country, our environment, and…hah, just kidding. Seriously, we’re not bad people: we just have an honest disagreement with you all. So here’s 10 Reasons why we think the Keystone Pipeline is a good idea.

For you hippies out there, this might read like a laundry list of reasons not to support our, ahem, the Keystone Pipeline. But open your minds: you know how you all talk about how judgement is such a bad thing? Well, don’t judge us for wanting to make money off the simple sweet fact that we’re the largest lease holders in Canada’s oil sands.

10 Reasons I support the Keystone Pipeline, & you should too!

1. If you’re a treehugger, kids, you should be focusing your painting-colorful-protest-sign energies on carbon tax, higher energy efficiency standards/retrofitting and climate change mitigation research. Your Obama’s been big on that stuff, yet you give him no credit. You liberals couldn’t save the planet if getting along with your rival NGO depended on it.

2. The pipeline will help keep fossil fuels viable for longer, hindering the efforts of more green power options to gain traction. Green power does a multitude of things we can’t make money off of: clean air, stable domestic jobs.

3. The Keystone Pipeline is backed by Canadian companies, most prominently the TransCanada Corporation, which sounds like a gay love thing. It won’t benefit you all much. In fact, it’s estimated to create only 50 permanent jobs. Hah! It is estimated to create 42,100 temporary jobs. It’s estimated to create $2 billion in earnings in the United States, with the project taking 1-2 years to complete. Investing in solar or wind, on the other hand, would create longterm jobs, foster American independence and entrepreneurship. Read on for why that’s not a good thing. 

4. Solar and wind jobs would be longterm, shoring up America’s severely-weakened middle class. A newly-strengthened middle class would undermine the recent success of extremist partisans (our Tea Party on one side, your anti-fracking anti-GMO anti-Obama liberals on the other side). We would then need to invest even more money in our, you know, grassroots Tea Party.

5. We would be using some of the dirtiest oil in the world. And that’s a good thing. You know that NASA climate scientist? James Hansen? Who said that if all the oil was extracted from the oil sands it would be “game over” when it came to climate change? He says that like it’s a bad thing. Well, my short-sighted friends, crisis is opportunity—business opportunity. Climate Change is real and a big deal—and we plan to make money off of it. Averting such a crisis would be silly.

6. A pipeline leak may contaminate the people’s groundwater…

“building a massive pipeline over the Ogallala Aquifer, which is one of the world’s largest aquifers and basically how everyone in the Midwest gets their fresh water. If it ever were contaminated, it would be a major issue…”

….but we don’t know people. Besides, we have our water shipped in from Fiji.

Keystone XL would have to be spilling more than 12,000 barrels a day, or 1.5 percent of its 830,000 barrel capacity, before its currently planned internal spill-detection systems would trigger an alarm, according to the U.S. State Department, which is reviewing the proposal. In comparison, BP Plc (BP/)’s Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico was leaking at an estimated rate of about 53,000 barrels a day, according to a U.S. Interior Department report.

Meaning 10,000 barrels per day could be leaking, and not trip any auto-detection/shutdown systems.

A little risk, anyways, keeps things exciting. Otherwise, we might get bored with our lives as friendless, wealthy old men without any challenge.

So a spill could destroy the entire agriculture industry in America’s bread basket? I’m sure you’ll still be able to buy your overpriced quinoa at Whole Foods, hippies. 

7. The Keystone pipeline will not drive gas prices down, unfortunately.

“Transcanada is experiencing a bottleneck that has been producing a surplus in the American midwest, pushing prices down, as they do not have an easy route to international markets. This pipeline aims to solve that problem for Transcanada, enabling them to pipe their oil through our backyard to Port Arthur, where they can then sell to a broader market, effectively driving US prices up. This makes any claim of Keystone providing cheaper fuel to Americans at least somewhat disingenuous.

(Source: Bloomberg)

That said, we’re not worrying about the public, here. We’re worrying about our bottom line.

8. Farmers and ranchers and Native Americans oppose the pipeline? Cry me a river. A river…of oil. We heavily funded Republicans in the last round of elections, and they’ll pass a bill to force Obama to approve the project. Sorry about that veto, Hussein!

9. “Under trying circumstances and against entrenched opposition, [President Obama has] led America toward a clean energy future by improving fuel efficiency standards, extending clean energy production tax credits, and asserting EPA authority to regulate coal-fired power plants.” I love being called “entrenched!” But God damnit do I hate that socialist.

10. Finally, the most important reason: we stand to make $100 billion if the Keystone Pipeline gets approved. Think of all the grassroots organizations we could start!

Leave a comment why else we should support the Keystone Pipeline!

~

Yours Sincerely,

Charles G. Koch and David H. Koch

 

“…the Keystone XL pipeline is not actually needed to bring all that new Canadian oil to the US – a flow now projected to rise to 1.7 million barrels per day by 2030, according to the same DOE study. Often characterized by proponents as validating the need for the pipeline, that study actually found that Canadian oil import growth will go on at “almost identical” levels through 2030 using existing and new pipeline capacity as well as rail shipments – whether or not Keystone XL is built.” Source: Christian Science Monitor.

Photo: Flickr

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Relephant Read: 

The Dalai Lama doesn’t want the Keystone XL Pipeline to be built, and neither do I.