CREDIT: AP PHOTO/MINDAUGAS KULBIS
As the 113th Congress ends and the 114th Congress begins, at least one thing remains the same: Supporters of the Keystone XL pipeline are still using the misleading claim that the controversial project will create 42,000 jobs.
Speaking on Meet the Press on Sunday, Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) told host Chuck Todd that a bill to approve Keystone XL — the pipeline proposal that would send up to 830,000 barrels of Canadian tar sands oil per day down to Gulf Coast refineries — would be the first legislation sent to President Obama’s desk in 2015. And Obama should sign it, Barrasso said, noting that the pipeline would mean 42,000 new jobs.
“[Obama’s] own State Department said it’s 42,000 new jobs,” Barrasso said. “He’s going to have to decide between jobs and the extreme supporters of not having the pipeline.”
Problem is, Barrasso left out all the caveats that the State Department laid out regarding how many jobs Keystone XL would create. The State Department did not say the Keystone XL pipeline would create 42,000 new jobs. Instead, it said the project would “support” 42,000 direct, indirect and induced jobs, 99 percent of which would be temporary, not lasting more than the two years it would take to construct. Once the project is completed, the State Department estimates that the pipeline would only create35 full-time jobs, and 15 temporary contractors.
The company behind the project, TransCanada, has a different estimate, which is still not much closer to the 42,000 figure. The company has estimated that the pipeline would create no more than 2,500 to 4,650 temporary direct construction jobs for two years.
Even if the 42,000 jobs figure did represent full-time, long-term jobs, it would not represent a big boost for the economy. As Philip Bump noted in the Washington Post last year, the U.S. economy adds about 50,000 jobs per week, and about 229,000 jobs per month on average.
Bump’s point? “Even if the 42,000 figure were hard, fast, and long-term, the effect on the national economy would still be modest,” he writes. “But that figure isn’t hard, fast, or long-term.”
The reality of the jobs estimate paints a different picture than the one Barrasso created on Sunday: that approving or rejecting Keystone XL is a simple decision between “jobs and the extreme supporters of not having the pipeline.” The pipeline would not create a significant enough number jobs to boost the economy, nor would many consider the anti-Keystone XL movement “extreme.” While most Americans support the project, 31 percent oppose it, according to a Pew Research Center poll.
Environmentalists’ oppose the Keystone XL pipeline mainly because of the type of oil it would carry. Canadian tar sands oil is more carbon intensive than other types of oil, andharder than conventional oil to clean up when it spills. The carbon intensity of the fuel is a problem for those concerned about climate change, who see the approval of Keystone XL as a sign that President Obama is not serious about transitioning to a low-emission energy system.
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A
new, much more anti-environment Congress convened yesterday, and as we warned
you last month, new Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has made approving
the climate-wrecking Keystone XL tar sands pipeline Congress’ first order of
business. Lawmakers are expected to vote on this disastrous bill any time.
NRDC
is moving swiftly to mobilize massive public opposition to this bill --
and we need your help to build a “No KXL” firewall and show the new Congress
that its Big Polluter Agenda won’t fly with the American people.
This
misguided bill would green-light the Keystone XL, dramatically increasing
production of Canadian tar sands oil -- one of the dirtiest fuels on the planet
-- and helping to drive more climate chaos for generations to come.
Make
no mistake: With a new Congress laden with even more climate deniers, it may be
nearly impossible for us to win a vote on the Keystone XL.
So
it’s absolutely crucial that we generate a massive public outcry against the
pipeline that is big enough to sustain a Presidential veto. That means
every single vote counts.
NRDC’s
rapid response team is springing into action on Capitol Hill, shoring up the
opposition to the bill, and focusing our advocacy on those crucial swing votes
that could determine whether Congress will be able to sustain the President’s
veto.
Please
do your part to help by telling your
U.S. Senators to vote against any attempt to approve the Keystone XL.
I’m
sure you agree: We cannot stand by while Senator McConnell and his oil industry
allies deepen our dependence on dirty fossil fuels and accelerate climate change
-- all while enriching a handful oil companies.
By
making your
voice heard right now, you’re also showing President Obama that, if the bill
passes, the American people demand a veto.
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This
is our first battle against the anti-environment leaders of the new Congress and
their polluter-sponsored assault on our environment. Let’s show them right out
of the gate that we’re ready to fight for our climate, our health and the future
of our planet.
When the news arrived from the White House yesterday that Barack Obama would veto the proposed Keystone pipeline bill, I thought back to a poll that the National Journal conducted of its “energy insiders” in the fall of 2011, just when then issue was heating up. Nearly 92% of those insiders thought Obama’s administration would approve the pipeline, and almost 71% said it would happen by the end of that year.
Keystone’s not dead yet -- feckless Democrats in the Congress could make some kind of deal, and the president could still yield down the road to the endlessly corrupt State Department bureaucracy that continues to push the pipeline -- but the President's veto threat shows what happens when people organize.
By pledging to veto the Keystone XL bill, President Obama took an important step towards backing up his climate talk yesterday, and we should applaud that. He showed the kind of courage that will be needed to stop this pipeline and begin to turn the tide against the fossil fuel industry.
If he can keep showing it, Keystone XL is on the way to the dustbin of history. Let's show him we're ready to push for more: act.350.org/sign/reject-keystone-xl-now/
Once the veto is issued, we'll have a little celebration at the White House, where we'll deliver these messages encouraging the President to finish the job.
The fight against the XL pipeline began with indigenous people in Canada, and spread to ranchers along the pipeline route in places like Nebraska. And then, in the spring of 2011, when the climate scientist Jim Hansen pointed out the huge pool of carbon in the Canadian tar sands, the fight spread to those of us in the climate movement. We had no real hope of stopping Keystone -- as the National Journal poll indicated, this seemed the most done of deals -- but we also had no real choice but to try.
And so people went to jail in larger numbers than they had for many years, and wrote millions of emails to the Senate, and made more public comments to the government than on any infrastructure project in history. And all that effort didn’t just tie up this one pipeline in knots. It also scared investors enough that they shut down three huge planned new tar-sands mines, taking $17 billion in capital and millions of tons of potential emissions off the table.
And it helped embolden people to fight every other pipeline, and coal port, and frack field, and coal mine. The Keystone fights helped spur a full-on fossil-fuel resistance that now mounts a powerful challenge to the entire fossil-fuel industry at every single turn.
It’s not as if we’re exactly winning the climate fight -- the planet’s temperature keeps rising. But we’re not losing it the way we used to. If the president sticks to his word, this will be the first major fossil-fuel project ever shut down because of its effect on the climate. The IOU that the president and the Chinese wrote in November about future carbon emissions is a nice piece of paper -- but the Keystone denial is cash on the barrelhead. It’s actually keeping some carbon in the ground.
And with the President's veto threat, he has shown that he's willing to take some heat for standing up to the industry. In fact, when he's talked about Keystone XL lately, he's started to sound a little like we did way back when we began this fight. His courage echoes the courage shown by thousands of people in the streets to stop this pipeline, and I hope he follows this up by putting an end to it for good.
The fossil-fuel industry’s aura of invincibility is gone. They’ve got all the money on the planet, but they no longer have unencumbered political power. Science counts, too, and so do the passion, spirit and creativity of an awakened movement from the outside, from the ground-up.
Now the “energy insiders” of Washington are going to have to recalculate the odds. Because no one’s going to believe that any of these fights are impossible any more.
So many thanks for your courage, your commitment and all of your contributions to this movement.
When the news arrived from the White House yesterday that Barack Obama would veto the proposed Keystone pipeline bill, I thought back to a poll that the National Journal conducted of its “energy insiders” in the fall of 2011, just when then issue was heating up. Nearly 92% of those insiders thought Obama’s administration would approve the pipeline, and almost 71% said it would happen by the end of that year.
Keystone’s not dead yet -- feckless Democrats in the Congress could make some kind of deal, and the president could still yield down the road to the endlessly corrupt State Department bureaucracy that continues to push the pipeline -- but the President's veto threat shows what happens when people organize.
By pledging to veto the Keystone XL bill, President Obama took an important step towards backing up his climate talk yesterday, and we should applaud that. He showed the kind of courage that will be needed to stop this pipeline and begin to turn the tide against the fossil fuel industry.
If he can keep showing it, Keystone XL is on the way to the dustbin of history. Let's show him we're ready to push for more: act.350.org/sign/reject-keystone-xl-now/
Once the veto is issued, we'll have a little celebration at the White House, where we'll deliver these messages encouraging the President to finish the job.
The fight against the XL pipeline began with indigenous people in Canada, and spread to ranchers along the pipeline route in places like Nebraska. And then, in the spring of 2011, when the climate scientist Jim Hansen pointed out the huge pool of carbon in the Canadian tar sands, the fight spread to those of us in the climate movement. We had no real hope of stopping Keystone -- as the National Journal poll indicated, this seemed the most done of deals -- but we also had no real choice but to try.
And so people went to jail in larger numbers than they had for many years, and wrote millions of emails to the Senate, and made more public comments to the government than on any infrastructure project in history. And all that effort didn’t just tie up this one pipeline in knots. It also scared investors enough that they shut down three huge planned new tar-sands mines, taking $17 billion in capital and millions of tons of potential emissions off the table.
And it helped embolden people to fight every other pipeline, and coal port, and frack field, and coal mine. The Keystone fights helped spur a full-on fossil-fuel resistance that now mounts a powerful challenge to the entire fossil-fuel industry at every single turn.
It’s not as if we’re exactly winning the climate fight -- the planet’s temperature keeps rising. But we’re not losing it the way we used to. If the president sticks to his word, this will be the first major fossil-fuel project ever shut down because of its effect on the climate. The IOU that the president and the Chinese wrote in November about future carbon emissions is a nice piece of paper -- but the Keystone denial is cash on the barrelhead. It’s actually keeping some carbon in the ground.
And with the President's veto threat, he has shown that he's willing to take some heat for standing up to the industry. In fact, when he's talked about Keystone XL lately, he's started to sound a little like we did way back when we began this fight. His courage echoes the courage shown by thousands of people in the streets to stop this pipeline, and I hope he follows this up by putting an end to it for good.
The fossil-fuel industry’s aura of invincibility is gone. They’ve got all the money on the planet, but they no longer have unencumbered political power. Science counts, too, and so do the passion, spirit and creativity of an awakened movement from the outside, from the ground-up.
Now the “energy insiders” of Washington are going to have to recalculate the odds. Because no one’s going to believe that any of these fights are impossible any more.
So many thanks for your courage, your commitment and all of your contributions to this movement.
