Grace Ross: Keystone XL Pipeline Provides Needed Gas, Jobs - Not!

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Grace Ross, GoLocalWorcester MINDSETTER™

A disturbing vote passed through Congress this past week. It unfortunately reflects the position of the President as well. They gave the go ahead for the Keystone XL pipeline planned to bring oil from Canadian tar sands to Texas.

Just this January 7th, the projected environmental harm from the Pipeline was so serious that for those most concerned, some of our young adults (who will inherit this future) right here in Massachusetts got arrested in protest at the Westborough headquarters of the company sponsoring the Pipeline. Right here in Worcester, the WPI chapter of Students for a Just and Stable Future has been in the forefront of local anti-Pipeline organizing.

There has been an ongoing debate about the use of tar sands to produce oil products. The debate has been fierce. At this point, it is leading to a movement of civil disobedience nationally to try to stop a pipeline that would bring gas extracted from tar sands to the US market.

In a few places in the world, tar sands occur. In these places sandy soil is mixed in with petroleum. So long as they stay in this natural configuration the oil in the sands is not unusually polluting of our environment. To extract oil from those sands, however, requires expending a great deal of energy. Although there is a net gain in the amount of energy after extraction, on balance a significant amount of fuel is used to create a little bit more fuel. It’s not an efficient way to get oil. It would not be under consideration, if we were not already approaching peak oil from standard oil extraction methods.

Regardless of the environmental side of this debate, there’s an assumption that we need the oil and that because building the pipeline to get the oil to the U.S. means construction infrastructure jobs that this will create much needed, good paying union jobs.

Neither of those assumptions should be allowed to go by without scrutiny. In fact, do we need oil or are their other solutions? Would those produce good jobs?

Folks have argued (and have done the research to show) that much of our Commonwealth’s carbon footprint would disappear if we simply put the political will and our economic shoulder to the loadstone to invest in the work necessary to properly weatherize all our homes and businesses. We burn tons of fuel not to heat our homes, but to heat the great outdoors through energy leaking from our homes, an incredible waste. The interior reconstruction and deep weatherization jobs if properly funded are good-paying, potentially union jobs. Weatherization creates lasting savings – benefiting the housing budgets of households across our state and in terms of long-term job creation.

It has an added benefit that we are not then drawing down fuel of various kinds for heating. Weatherization moves Massachusetts away from having to import fuel for heating. It helps us in terms of the environment, in terms of jobs, in terms of savings for regular people whose spending drives our economy and in terms of the import/export balance for our state.

In addition, policy choices have led to improperly regulating the gas pipes in our state. Gas leaked from pipes maybe having as much of an impact on our “burning” (or in this case allowing to escape into the atmosphere) an enormous amount of fuel that we should not be wasting but using and which homeowners are in charged for even if it is not making it to their house.

The impact of this leakage is noticeable and widespread enough that a fund was established to address the number of trees that have died because of gas fumes leaking into their soil or into their surrounding air.

Believe it or not, experts say that we lose so much fuel from leaky pipes that it may have worse environmental impact than the heat we lose from our homes because of leaky walls. The piping work necessary to seal these leaky underground pipes in also an investment in good paying jobs (presumably unionized jobs), more money in the pockets of regular workers usually spent locally. That spending will contribute to improving our local economies and there are savings to homeowners who are not charged for gas that they never receive.

Like weatherization, this good work protects our environment, providing good jobs, positive impact on the housing expenses of people across our state and not needing to import gas not now used productively just killing trees and harming our environment.
If we combine these two efforts, Massachusetts does not need the gas from the XL Pipeline. Massachusetts will do a better job improving its local economy with local, good-paying jobs. Both weatherization and redoing our gas pipes are win, win, win choices.

We will have health benefits I have not enumerated. Surely, we do not need more pipes blowing up our downtowns like Springfield experienced. We do not need more people suffering from hypothermia because we cannot get enough fuel assistance from the national government for fuel people need.

Let’s say no to a pipeline not just because it’s bad for the environment but because it’s not the best use of our dollars for jobs or decreasing our long-term dependence on oil. Even with the tar sands, petroleum is a time-limited energy option.