The U.S. Senate Debate on the Keystone Pipelines: Some Great Jabs by the Anti-Pipeline Senators
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (Democrat, Rhode Island) on the "red herring" jobs issue:
"If this were about jobs, bring up instead the Shaheen/Portman energy efficiency bill, the bipartisan bill that the Republicans spiked last year. That bill has been estimated to produce nearly 200,000 jobs, more than quadruple the 42,000 jobs supported by the construction of the pipeline. If this were about jobs, bring up the highway bill. That bill was estimated to support 3 million jobs a year, 70 times the number of jobs from Keystone. 42,000 is a pittance compared to that. Right now the economy is adding over 70,000 jobs every week. In the three weeks we’ll argue about this bill, we’ll add five times as many jobs as it provides. We match Keystone in just four average days of job growth and yet we’re going to spend three weeks on this. If this were really about jobs, bring up an infrastructure bill, the kind our Republican friends have relentlessly spiked when they were in the minority. We could do really big things on jobs. You get 13,000 jobs on average for every billion spent on infrastructure. And we need the infrastructure. But instead we’re going … this."
Senator Jeff Merkeley (Democrat, Oregon) on the tar sands goo and climate change issue:
"We’re debating whether or not the dirtiest oil in the world, the tar sands from Canada, are going to brought through the U.S. in a pipeline like a straw to Port Arthur, Texas to a tax-free export zone so it can be exported out of the U.S. What’s in it for our country? We’re going to take the environmental risks, but the benefits flow to the Canadian company. The key question is whether pipeline would contribute to global warming. Are there better ways to create jobs that would enhance rather than damage our economy? Building the Keystone pipeline would open the faucet to massive new reserves of tar sands that takes us in opposite direction of where we need to go. It takes us down the road to catastrophic climate change. Global warming is not some imaginary concept based on computer models of something that might happen 200 years from now. I have special interest: it’s called planet earth. It trumps the Koch brothers, it trumps the oil industry."
Senator Whitehouse on the sleeping arrangements between the fossil fuel industry and the Republican Party:
"The Republican party has become the political wing of the fossil fuel industry. There’s always been a trend to this within the Republican party. But since the Republican appointees on the Supreme Court gave the fossil fuel industry the great fat, juicy gift of its Citizens United decision, the fossil fuel industry control over Republicans in Congress has become near absolute. That premise clarifies what is happening here. The fossil fuel industry has a shiny new Republican majority and it wants to take it out for a spin. That is what this Keystone opening gambit is about. This is somewhere between performance art, a show of obedience and a show of force. Well, fine. Take us out for a spin. Have your fun. But the laws of nature that turn carbon pollution into climate change and into ocean acidification aren’t going away."
