Keystone Pipeline (New Perspective)

http://reason.com/blog/2012/02/13/ny-times-columnist-joe-nocera-calls-out

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/07/opinion/nocera-the-poisoned-politics-of-keystone-xl.html?_r=1&ref=joenocera

Here are two links. This first one commented on the second one therefore I felt the need to include both because both are useful. Before I had read a more liberal perspective of the Keystone Pipeline, but today I had found one that's conservative. Not only does Nocera want to trade with Canada for tar sands, he criticizes Obama for declining the offer for political reasons. He criticizes our political system because he believes the only reason Obama declined the Project was because the election is coming up. Rather than taking the oil when it was offered, we let it go, ultimately allowing Canada to find diverse buyers for their oil for example China. At the current rates of consumption, we, the U.S. consume 51% of the oil in the world and China is right behind with 49%. Nocera argues that this trade would've even further decreased our reliance on OPEC Nations but according to my previous article, apparently the oil would be exported to other countries, therefore I don't know the accuracy in that statement. Many facts in the article contradict the previous one therefore its hard to pick a side. But Nocera only argues his side. Yes, he addresses the other side slightly but more mocks environmentalist. He is taking a more anthropocentric outlook on the situation and doesn't look at the picture as a whole. He doesn't support his argument with any evidence and is highly based off of assumptions. He doesn't show how the Keystone Pipeline would stabilize oil prices and for how long. He doesn't explain how much energy we would lose making the pipeline and how much we would actually gain. Currently, the United States consumes 20 million barrels of oil a day therefore how long would the supply from Canada really last us and how long would it be before we actually recover from the cost. Conservatives don't consider the process as a whole and try to sway the public with the magic words of "lower gas prices." Well, I heard the same thing about drilling in ANWR, and guess what, that would only lower gas prices by a penny. Is it really worth the trouble?