It is well-known throughout the country that oil prices keep rising and rising and in a highly-developed country that is in need of oil for various reasons there are people who are willing to do essentially anything in order to get that considerably needed oil in any way, shape, or form. However, when it comes having something as destructive as a tar sands oil pipeline, the United States should not authorize the Keystone XL Pipeline to import tar sands oil from Canada because it can subsequently be threatening to our environment, economy, and especially to our health.
Tar sands oil is the world’s dirtiest fuel and when it contaminates the water it is not only harming the environment, but it is also harming the people who are utilizing this water to live off of, which is everyone. It makes one wonder if it is sincerely worth it to have such a device that threatens the lives and our planet in order to have a simpler transportation of oil. Though many people may think that the creation of this pipeline will be beneficial to the country for the sake of jobs, term energy independence and an economic boost to Americans, those factors are actually not completely accurate. With something as big as the Keystone XL Pipeline being made, there are going to be just as big issues that come with it that follows.
The Keystone XL Pipeline will be carrying crude oil for 2,000 miles from Alberta, Canada to Texas “crossing through six American states and when the pipeline will be in full-swing, it will “carry up to 830,000 barrels of tar sands oil” (Esquina) into the United States daily, which will “result in climate-damaging emissions equal to adding more than 5.6 million new cars to U.S. roads.” (Pica, Russel, Hammond) To further assess what exactly the Friends of the Earth organization does is they “defend the environment and champions a healthy and just world” and the members are essentially experts on how to reduce pollution and do research on how to make the planet a better place. Furthermore, not only will the tar sands oil pollute our air but it will also pollute water and wildlife. There is a massive risk that when the pipeline will be in action, the water it will be surrounding has a great possibility of being exposed to the tar sands oil and said water will become polluted. Another risk as said by members in Friends of the Earth, is that there is so much water going into extracting the oil, which incidentally ends up contaminating that water causing it to never be able to be used again, and the term for this is referred to as a tailing pond. Just for a barrel of oil alone, “it takes three barrels of water” and they typically extract 2.4 million barrels of water in just one day. (Pica, Russel, Hammond) These tailing ponds contain heavy chemical substances that can sink to the bottom of the pond and possibility end up working its way into near by clean water supplies. Not only is the pipeline impacting the air and water but it is also destructing forests. The Boreal forests of Alberta is home to various amounts of species in the bodies of water and when the tar sands oil is getting dug up, everything is getting destroyed, from the land down to the creatures. (Pica, Russel, Hammond) A further environmental impact of the pipeline being built is the possibility of having an oil spill. Most people do not know this but “oil spills happen every single year. Large spills happen every few years, from the 1969 offshore oil-platform catastrophe that dumped 3 million gallons of oil into the Santa Barbara Channel to the April 6, 2010, spilling of 18,000 gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico’s Delta National Wildlife Refuge — from a ruptured BP pipeline — to the cataclysmic April 20 spill.” (Millet) As said by Lydia Millet who is editor and writer for The Center for Biological Diversity and has a masters in environmental policy, oil spills happen very often and once an oil spill occurs, the water or land that it came in contacts with can longer be used until all the oil is evacuated which can take years and years. Now with having such a largely extended pipeline going directly through the United States, the probability of there being oil spills is more apt to happen. Since the Keystone XL Pipeline is harming the environment, it subsequently harms us as well in nearly the same way it is hurting our environment.
“We are here today to share dramatic new information that will shine a spotlight on the health impacts of tar sands oil – health impacts that are already being felt in communities exposed to one of the filthiest kinds of oil on our planet.” (Boxer) To begin with, Senator Barbara Boxer is California’s senator and is a democrat who is very involved in the environment and is a committee member for many organizations to make the world more eco-friendly. Boxer explains in detail in one of her articles entitled “Keystone Pipeline and the Threat to Human Health” how each step – from extraction all the way to waste disposal is toxic to our health. In the same way that the pipeline and the tar sands oil harms the environment, it is just as detrimental to our bodies. Again, since the pipeline would be “equivalent of adding 300,000 more cars on our road each year” (Boxer) and is harming the air we breathe in and it can cause a various amounts of health problems. Additionally, when tar sands oil is being extracted there are tons of “pollutants and carcinogens” that are escaping into the air and these toxins have been proven to cause cancers such as “leukemia and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.” (Boxer) It is not known by many that the pipeline is putting our lives at stake and all is needed is more voices like Barbara Boxer to say the truths behind the Keystone XL Pipeline. Moving on, according to Friends of the Earth, since there are indigenous communities living near tailing ponds, the toxins radiating from the ponds and going into their own water systems are causing severe health risks such as “rare cancers, renal failure, lupus, and hyperthyroidism” and their “cultural traditions and livelihood” are being condemned because of the tar sands oil operation. (Pica, Russel, Hammond) It is disappointing because the evidence is crystal clear and yet there are still people either oblivious to these facts or are simply just unaware what is really going on in the country.
If you have heard of the Keystone XL Pipeline then you have definitely heard of the claim that with the building of the pipeline and the pipeline in general, there will be thousands of high paying jobs (20,000 exactly) that would be created centered on this pipeline alone. (“Cornell GLI Study”) However, who exactly is creating these numbers? Of course it is not environmentalists or any person looking out for our health but it is actually the TransCanada Corporation, the Politicians, and Unions, using these figures to get support for the project. There is a Perryman Group study that claims that this will “create 118,935 person-years of employment and a person year of employment is not equivalent to an individual job” in the real world. (“Cornell GLI Study”) The study also comes up with results that it would take over a hundred years to construct and operate the pipeline nonetheless, it would not take that long since they had already built two pipelines in recent years then that just leaves the few people who work on operating the pipeline. Unlike the number of jobs TransCanada Corporation has claimed to make, the Department of States says Keystone will actually bring no more than 6,000 direct jobs over three years, most of them non-local and temporary. (“Cornell GLI Study”) This is because the jobs coming from the pipeline are not all new jobs since there are already existing Keystone and contractor employees and there will only be about 10-15% of total workforce being hired locally. Instead of it helping people receives jobs and benefiting the economy it is actually doing the exact opposite. As said in the study, it is really hurting people, particularly the ones in the fifteen Midwest states because in just merely the first phase of the Keystone, there has been “fourteen spills in just its first year of operation,” which lead to a contamination in drinking water and threatened the jobs of farmers in that region. (“Cornell GLI Study”)
Of course there will be people who say that some jobs are better than no jobs when you have a family to take care of and TransCanada Corporation is going to do everything they can to make many precautions in order that nothing unprincipled happens with the building of the Keystone XL Pipeline but there are just some effects that are not avoidable. Yes, there would be those people who get an opportunity to have a job and support their family, conversely just down the pipeline there could be another family suffering either with their health or with the house they just lost because it was near a contaminated tailing pond. Fortunately, there are tons of people who had never had the burden of living in bad conditions and at times people take the simplest things for granted. There was a time in my life where there was a malfunction with our water pipes and instead of clean, clear water; brown and gunky water came out the sinks, showers, and the toilet. For those two weeks my family and I had to go over to my next-door neighbors house just to use the restroom or to take a shower. It was a rough feeling having to hassle doing something we usually do just out of second nature but then next thing you know we had to live our life around these unfortunate accommodations. Knowing there are families out there that have to live in those conditions, and may not be lucky enough to have neighbors with clean water, all because of tar sands oil that actually could have been avoided is just saddening. People have to keep in mind that this pipeline is unquestionably going to hurt the environment we live in some way or the other and the risk should just not be taken and we must stop while we are still ahead.
In conclusion, the United States should not authorize the Keystone XL Pipeline to import tar sands oil from Canada with the high probability of health defects such as toxic carcinogens entering our bodies, a not-so promising job opportunity that may last no longer than a few months are may not even be there, and a hazard to the planet we live on with the contamination of the water, air, and land. A pipeline running from Canada to our own country sounds amazing, simple, convenient and almost like a dream come true and a solution we so desperately need, but when taking a step back and looking at the bigger picture you can really see the harm that will be caused if the pipeline were to go into full effect.