Keystone XL Protest is Bone-Headed

I know I'm about to piss off some of my good friends with this.  I'm sorry.  I have to call them like I see them.

The facts:  The Keystone XL pipeline, when completed, will carry crude oil extracted from the Alberta tar sands to refineries in the U.S.  Pres. Obama has to sign off on the permit for the pipeline.  Congress is not directly in play on this one.  The protest effort, including a petition, protest, and civil disobedience at the White House, is underway this month.  Here are the details: http://www.tarsandsaction.org/

I think this protest effort is based on poor thinking, wrong conclusions, and generally dunder-headed analysis.  It's a misdirection of valuable energy and resources.  To wit:

We're stuck with a petroleum-fueled infrastructure and it's going to take time and a lot of fighting to change that. Canada and the U.S have been extracting crude from the Alberta deposits for years already.  That's not going to stop. If the US doesn't want the oil, the rest of the world, esp. Japan and China, will gladly buy it.  They already are.  But sure, let's dump the pipeline idea and buy more oil from Saudi Arabia...you know...that country that was complicit in the 9/11 attacks.  That's a really good idea, isn't it?  Why would we send our money to those pesky hockey-crazed Canadians when we can give it to a repressive monarchy that helped kill over 3,000 Americans and never stopped smiling?

Are you nuts?  Come on!  Get a grip, people!

It almost gags me to say this, but we need the oil industry.  They've murdered, robbed, and trashed the environment for almost 200 years.  They destroyed mass transit in America.   They need their fingers stomped on, and hard.  Better yet, let's nationalize them.  But we do need them.  There aren't any really good alternatives to petroleum fuels.  None. Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) is the best and closest technologically, but that comes with extraction problems and a carbon penalty, too. If you think electric cars are practical, you've never lived in snow country and you don't know anything about batteries.  I wish they were practical.  Maybe they will be. But they're not an answer now.  Not a practical, affordable one. You want to run cars on ethanol?  Check the grocery prices and think again.  Bio-diesel?  Any commercial drivers reading this?  I was until last year.  Put bio-diesel in a truck or bus that's been running the real stuff and let me know how that works for you.  And don't forget your cell phone or you'll be walking. 

Yes, we need to get rid of the oil-fueled infrastructure.  It's a save-the-planet issue, although I think it's already too late to save the climate.  If you want to protest something, work on that.  Or remember the war in Afghanistan?  Almost nobody gives a shit about that, and this fact alone convinces me that getting rid of the draft was a really bad idea.    Or work on getting our schizoid immigration non-system fixed.  Or figure out a solution to half our population being functionally illiterate. Spend your energy trying to stop the rapid slide of the US towards Third World Shithole status. 

I suggest that getting arrested in front of the White House over this issue has a lot more to do with Mr. McKidden's street cred as a protest organizer than it does with a pipeline that will get built anyway.