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If it works anything like it does in Canada, the issue is nowhere near as cut and dry as you make it out to be. I'm going to draw comparison to the Canadian sit
by cal5k 7y ago
If it works anything like it does in Canada, the issue is nowhere near as cut and dry as you make it out to be. I'm going to draw comparison to the Canadian situation to illustrate my point.
First, the many native bands in Canada have had a variety of motivations for slowing/blocking the Trans Canada Pipeline project - some have been about environmental protection and preservation of heritage, sure, but a lot of it is political.
Band leaders are, rationally, trying to maximize funds flowing from federal coffers to their bands in the form of grants, subsidies, etc. Some use this funding to help their people, and some don't - it varies widely, just like municipalities do - but holding up infrastructure projects is a tried-and-true method of getting more funding.
While bands are rationally acting in their own self-interest, the government has to strongly consider the interests of the nation, state, region, etc. as a whole.
All of these native concerns, plus the potential environmental impact, have to be weighed against the benefits: fewer petroleum shipments via rail, which is much more dangerous than pipelines, tax revenue, jobs in the oil & gas sector, strategically vital energy security, etc.
- ilikehurdles 7y agoOil shipments via rail are more dangerous when only measuring deaths caused (such as due to rail accidents). Oil shipped via pipeline is much more likely to spill than rail [1]. Also there's this "pretend that macroeconomics doesn't exist" notion among pro-pipeline hard-liners. By allowing crude oil to be transported in greater quantities without accounting for the permanent environmental costs, we're actively fighting against market forces that make green energy more feasible. If the supply of oil increases, then its prices drop, and the demand for alternatives to fossil fuels lessens. [1]: Congressional Research Service - https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R43390.pdf https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R43390.pdf
- kortilla 7y agoPipeline makes transportation cheaper but doesn’t increase the supply if they were already using trucks. In that case your entire macroeconomics point is wrong unless the pipeline made the difference between profitability and loss.
- ilikehurdles 7y agoIt obviously increases the supply in the regions being supplied. Of course I don’t mean that we are creating something out of nothing.
- cal5k 7y agoI completely disagree with that method of promoting renewables, so there's no "we" here. The people who would be most impacted by rising petroleum prices would be those least able to afford it. America is built on the automobile and most working families can't afford a Tesla at this point - intentionally pushing up oil prices by cutting supply would essentially be a regressive tax. Tesla is approaching this the right way, however - make electric products that are superior to what's on the market, then aim for economies of scale to dramatically reduce prices and make them affordable. No supply-side manipulation of oil prices necessary, it just takes time.
- ilikehurdles 7y agoThe people most impacted by any price change of any product anywhere are the ones the least able to afford the thing whose price is changing. It’s a cute tautological sound bite that is meaningless without numbers to realize the impact. There is a real cost to the environment, communities, and people’s health that is completely externalized and unaccounted for by the fossil fuel lobby. It’s a real cost that will eventually be paid by taxes and lives, not a manipulation. Ignoring that cost in the price of oil is the opposite of market-driven.
- cal5k 7y agoIt's tautological only insofar as you are intentionally ignoring context. If we were talking about the rising price of yachts or some other niche item it would be irrelevant, but almost all working Americans commute. To address negative externalities there are other proposed solutions - such as a carbon tax - which would not require the intentional scuttling of pipeline projects, although I'm not a huge fan of those either. My solution would be to walk down the list of emitting sources and tackle each individually. Electricity production is #1, and utility-scale anything is much easier to influence at the policy level. Subsidize the shit out of nuclear and remove the regulatory barriers to getting projects done. Ditto with grid-scale solar and wind. Transportation is next... get the cost of electric vehicles down by encouraging economies of scale. You can use specific positive incentives here rather than broad-based negative ones. Anyway, you get the point. Given the complexity of energy policy I find the idea that a soundbite-worthy policy would be the panacea to be laughable. Not building pipelines would just hurt the petroleum industry and have nearly zero measurable impact on carbon emissions.
- ticmasta 7y agoEven in the wildest dreams of greens we don't displace oil with renewables today. A huge piece of the puzzle is that all the oil delivered to consumers is not equal. Oil produced in Canada, US , Norway, etc is done so under much tighter constraints than the middle east, Africa or parts of S.A., and the beneficiaries match a lot more with the general consensus of "right" than any of these locations. example: Alberta sits with land-locked oil while eastern Canada imports massive quantities from the middle east because "oil is dirty" when you can see how the sausage is made.
- cal5k 7y agoExactly. Most policy issues are way more complex than people think, and the proposed solutions way too simplistic to actually work.