Thread: Here's The Real Reason Obama Killed The Keystone XL Pipeline

Topic - The President
Here's The Real Reason Obama Killed The Keystone XL Pipeline

191 Comments

11/06/2015


President Obama pauses while making a statement on the Keystone Pipeline in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on Friday. AP View Enlarged Image

Energy: President Obama has junked the Keystone XL pipeline. His stated reason: The U.S. needs to lead the "serious action to fight climate change." His real reason is different.

'America," Obama said, is "now a global leader" in the climate war, "and frankly, approving this project would have undercut that global leadership."

He insists now is the time to "protect the one planet we've got while we still can." Though his rhetoric will resonate with those who want to hear that sort of bunkum, the rest of us recognize its vast emptiness.

Obama's decision Friday was based on nothing more than political opportunity. The announcement was timed to coincide with the United Nations climate talks, which begin in Paris at the end of the month, and shaped to make him look like a strong leader.

As usual, it was all about Obama, who craves the international approval and domestic back-pats he will get for being such a forward thinker.

But here's what we have learned through almost seven years of his presidency — when it's all about Obama, the rest of us generally get a boot to the head. In the instance of his Keystone decision, we're talking lost jobs and energy prices that will be higher than they should be.

Let's start with jobs. TransCanada, the company that was to build the Keystone XL pipeline connecting the oil fields of Alberta, Canada, with the crude refineries on our Gulf coast, says "the $8 billion project will create 9,000 well-paying construction jobs."

If that estimate seems too self-serving, consider that in its Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement, the State Department said in March that more than 40,000 jobs would be spun off from the project during construction.
Would some — maybe even many — of the jobs be temporary? Yes, that's the nature of construction jobs. But two points on this:

One, temporary work is better than no work. And two, the president and his party have been screaming now for some time about the country's need to "invest" in more infrastructure projects because of the jobs they provide. Evidently infrastructure that carries a commodity that the political left detests doesn't count.

Now we move on to energy prices. Can anyone honestly say that more crude pouring into the country won't push down our gasoline prices? Robert Bradley, CEO of the Institute for Energy Research, assured us four years ago in Forbes that "a new influx of up to 700,000" barrels per day "from Canada will dramatically increase U.S. supplies, and in turn drive gas prices down."

Of course, lower gasoline prices are not what the environmentalists that support Obama and the Democrats want. They want high gasoline prices so less is burned.They have a long history of pointing to the high prices in Europe and saying that Americans should be dealing with the same pain.

And it's not just gasoline prices. Obama made it a goal to push the cost of burning coal in power plants so high that they will go bankrupt.

America is now a global leader, all right — in a costly fight against an imaginary enemy.

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You can never believe any set of words from this person mouth, he lies all the time. His motives are never sincere, we need him out of office as soon as possible and put someone in the White House who actually loves our nation and its public. Impeach Obama for his lawlessness !!!

I don't care what his reasons are, I'm just glad it's dead for now. I'm what most would call a hard-line conservative on most issues, but I tend to lean to the left when it comes to protecting our environment.