Getting away from the age-old environmentalism vs. jobs debate this week, some sources bring up the actual environmental impact of tar sands as opposed to petroleum or other fossil fuel sources. The lecture in ENST 100 this past Thursday cited the high environmental impact of tar sands, especially with processing. The article by the Financial Post stated quite the contrary, right in line with its conservative views on energy security. The tar sands would not provide energy security as the article said, it would only sustain a small fraction of America’s oil needs would be satisfied by the Keystone XL Pipeline. The other article was another typical rant against the analysis of the situation by “experts”.

There seem to be increasingly no coverage of the issue that is not slanted in a certain direction. The large corporations tend to lean towards the business side of the argument, for the pipeline, whereas most of the blogs (except for the very conservative ones) tend to be against the pipeline. So much of this debate is centered around politics when the focus really needs to be on the lasting environmental impact that this pipeline would have. The problem with how our society thinks is that it does not consider the long-term effects of its actions.

http://itsgettinghotinhere.org/2011/10/14/why-analysts-are-wrong-on-keystone-xl-strategy/

http://business.financialpost.com/2011/10/14/keystone-xl-terrific-for-u-s-energy-security-daniel-yergin/