KEYSTONE XL IS A DIRTY DEAL FOR AMERICA
March 27, 2017
Photo credit: shannonpatrick17 / Wikimedia (CC BY 2.0) and Meclee / Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 3.0)
President Donald Trump’s announcement that he approved the controversial Keystone XL pipeline was welcome news for a Canadian company, foreign steel manufacturers, some rich guys, anybody who thinks the planet should be warmer and 35 ordinary Americans. It’s not a good deal for the rest of the country.
“This announcement is part of a new era of American energy policy that will lower costs for American families — and very significantly — reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and create thousands of jobs right here in America,” Trump said Friday.
What the president did not say is that the vast majority of the jobs created by the construction of the pipeline will be temporary. A 2014 State Department study indicated that Keystone XL would create only 35 permanent jobs.
As WhoWhatWhy has shown, that is not the only issue with the pipeline. We thought that Trump’s announcement provided a good opportunity to revisit our previous coverage, which identified many of the problems that make the construction of Keystone XL a terrible decision on many levels.
