KEYSTONE XL PIPELINE

You might be interested in what Fareed Zakaria has to say about the Keystone XL Pipeline: http://swampland.time.com/2013/03/07/build-that-pipeline/

He is getting a lot of flack on it.  Here is just one: http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Fareed-Zakarias-Unconvincing-Arguments-to-Build-the-Keystone-XL-Pipeline.html  I don't find the objections to the pipeline to be very convincing.  Following are some excerpts from the Zakaria piece.

The U.S. Department of State released an extremely thorough report that tries to answer this question [What if the pipeline isn't built?]. It concludes, basically, that the oil derived from Canadian tar sands will be developed at about the same pace whether or not there is a pipeline to the U.S. In other words, stopping Keystone might make us feel good, but it wouldn’t really do anything about climate change.

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Rail traffic in this corridor [Keystone XL pipeline route] is already exploding: the number of carloads of crude oil doubled from 2010 to 2011, then tripled from 2011 to 2012. And remember, moving oil by train produces much higher emissions of CO[subscript 2] (from diesel locomotives) than flowing it through a pipeline.

I can attest that Canadian businesspeople and officials are planning seriously for Asian markets–especially since they have come to regard U.S. energy policy as politicized, hostile and mercurial. Whoever uses the oil, the CO[subscript 2] will be released into the atmosphere just the same.

I believe the pipeline would also carry fracking oil from North Dakota and Montana.  Though I am all for increasing the gas mileage of automobiles or even using substitutes like natural gas and I am for public transportation, I want to see us get out of our need for Middle East (and Venezuelan) oil.  It would lower the need for our getting into wars there.  It is true that we didn't go into Afghanistan for oil, but it is the exception.