Keystone XL Pipeline: jobs vs the environment?

A bitter partisan struggle is currently taking place in Congress and across the United States. The main subject of controversy is the Keystone XL Pipeline (KXL) slated to be built and to transfer bitumen oil from the tar sands of Alberta, Canada all the way down to refineries in Oklahoma and the Gulf Coast of Texas.

Extraction of bitumen oil is an environmentally-damaging procedure. 22% more Greenhouse-gas emissions are emitted as during conventional oil production. Highly-toxic water (called “tailing ponds”) is leftover from this process, and it has found its way into drinking water – of both human and animal alike. It is a highly consumptive energy process that wastes barrels of clean water just to extract a single barrel of oil.

Alongside the environment aspects, TransCanada, the multi-national corporation seeking to profit the most from the venture, would be given all the land it needed, taken via eminent domain – where private property is re-appropriated by the state to be handed over to new owners.

It is, therefore, not surprising in the least the environmental activists, students, trade-unionists, workers, and community members have combined in protest of this harmful, inefficient, and selfishly profit-driven proposal of the 1%.

In October and November of last year, thousands marched, demonstrated, and surrounded the White House while carrying a “model” pipeline.

Obama had no choice but to bow (to a certain extent) to the demands of elements of his core constituency. He promised to make no official decision on the XL pipeline until 2013, after the completion of a more “thorough” environmental review of its potential impacts.

Republicans were beside themselves. They recognized that so long as Obama remained president, the deal for the pipeline would probably not go through, so they would do their best to find “work-arounds” in order to rubber stamp the proposal into law. “The only way we’re going to get the Keystone pipeline started is to defeat Barack Obama,” said Senate-minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY).

For instance, a bill was introduced into the House of Representatives by Terry Lee, a Republican from Nebraska – a state in which the proposed line would go through – that would have allowed the permit for construction to be issued by requiring said permit to be issued within 30 days of receiving an application. This would, effectively, negate any oversight process by the Interior Department or the Army Corps of Engineers. The pipeline would be exempted from state and federal environmental regulations.

Senate Republicans tried their hand at even more cynical tactics: they tried to empower Congress (where the Republicans have a majority in the House) to move the project along by slipping it into a bill designed to reauthorize transportation funding for the next half decade.

But Obama later reneged on his position; he reached an agreement with Republicans that he would render a decision on the pipeline within 60 days of the passage of a bill that would extend payroll-tax cuts for another two months. Once again, the Republicans chose to hold our wallets for ransom and Obama and the Democrats caved in.

Of course, this wouldn’t be the first time this has happened. Lest we forget that only 6 months after the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico Obama approved the resumption of drilling.

A good second example was Obama’s cave-in to Republicans in late 2010 when the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy were “fought” – with minimal resistance – and ultimately passed in return for Republicans supporting the extension of unemployment compensation insurance to the long-term unemployed.

Nevertheless, Obama met the deadline with a rejection notice, thanks to social and environmental activists, #Occupy, sections of the labor movement – including the trade unions and political organizations – and, of course, the youth.

Republicans tried to paint environmental activists and their labor allies as “job killers” and out of touch with the considerations and plights of American workers.  They’ve tried to frame the narrative in terms of a dichotomy between jobs and the environment. Take your pick, they say, because you cannot have both. You either want to put food on your table or you want to “enjoy” nature’s splendor.

The labor movement itself was divided predictably on the issue. AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka remarked, [we] are headed ever more swiftly toward irreversible climate change…every factory and power plant, every home or office….must be modernized, upgraded, renovated, or replaced with something cleaner, more efficient, less wasteful.” He was joined in support by 6 unions that heralded the President’s decision to deny building permits. Other unions, those directly benefiting from the work of the pipeline, one the other hand, supported plans for immediate construction.

Republicans and TransCanada promised that up to 20,000 jobs would be created by pressing forward with the pipeline, although the US State Department estimates job creation far lower: around 6,000 (most of those being temporary). An independent study conducted by Cornell University’s Global Labor Institute demonstrated that no more than 50 permanent jobs would exist once the initial building phase was completed.

Both the Republican Party and their allies have exploited the jobs crisis to compel passage of their plans and turn the public against all those struggling to defend our environment from profit-hungry energy multi-nationals. President Obama’s denial of the KXL permit was ‘sacrificing tens of thousands of good-paying American jobs in the short term, and many more than that in the long term,’ claimed the US Chamber of Commerce in a press release.

Facing a stagnant economy, many workers are understandably willing to take anything they can get, and the polls reflect that sentiment. Rasmussen Reports found that 59% of likely US voters believed that creating new jobs is more important than environmental protection, and 56% of pollers reported that they supported the building of the pipeline.

Whereas the oil industry and their political mouthpieces in Congress have done their best to present the whole question in the form of a juxtaposition – a “one or another” scenario – it is the task of socialists, environmental activists, and progressive forces to bridge the artificially-constructed gap between preserving and defending our environment and resolving a widespread, deep-seated unemployment crisis. Fundamentally, this means demanding and struggling to force Obama’s administration and Congress to implement an immediate public (green) jobs program that will put millions back to work doing socially-useful labor at union rates of pay, benefits, and pensions: most crucially, developing and building the infrastructure necessary to effect a transition away from a fossil fuel based economy and into renewable alternatives.

This is a task of the working millions, the unemployed, environmental and progressive activists, and their organizations, including the trade unions. Obama and the Democrats cannot be trusted on this issue; they are not consistent defenders of the environment, nor are they fighting for employment for millions out of work. Keep in mind that Obama never said explicitly that he was against the Keystone XL pipeline on principal. He was compelled by his electorate the delay action until he can find a more credible way to sell the plan to those who voted for him and his Party and appease at the same time the energy conglomerates.

The Keystone XL pipeline project must be canceled totally, and those workers in the industry given free re-training by the government to install and create green-energy alternatives, paid for by taxing the super-rich 1% and by nationalizing and merging all the private banks (without compensation) together under workers’ control.

Throughout the entire energy-producing sector, the strictest environmental regulations and emissions standards must be determined, implemented, and forced upon the profiteers by the workers and the labor movement in general.

What we say goes! And we will back up demands up with direct action.

We need to fight ultimately for the complete nationalization of the energy corporations without compensation to shareholders and under workers’ control with helpful input exercised by environmental experts and activists, and organizations representing communities in which drilling, extraction, or transport occurs.

To really save our environment and ensure its permanent protection, the working class must take political power out of the hands of the capitalist 1% and use what it has won to institute those social, economic, and political measures designed to preserve our planet and, thereby, our place on it. Such a workers’ government will promote energy and productive policies that facilitate technological and economic develop in harmony, not contradistinction with the Earth that makes it all possible.

Such is the surest way to win over those perhaps thousands of workers feeling the sting of unemployment and who are backing the Keystone XL pipeline, not because they have nothing but contempt for the environment, but because they are struggling daily to eat. That is how we can turn the reactionary narrative of “jobs vs the environment” presented by the bosses on its head.

Originally from REVOLUTION: Socialist Youth Organization www.revousa.org