Last updated on 2013.01.28
Last year the Cornell Global Labor Institute knocked the snot out of TransCanada's inflated jobs claims for the Keystone XL pipeline. Now the same nice folks come forward to argue that we need to balance the claims of Keystone XL's economic advantages with a clearer accounting of the pipeline's negative economic impacts.
GLI's latest report, "The Impact of Tar Sands Pipeline Spills on Employment and the Economy," makes the following points:
- Keystone XL promises twenty (20, not 20,000, not 130,000, Kristi) permanent pipeline operation jobs in the six states it will cross.
- In the same six states, agriculture employs 571,000 people and generates $76 billion in economic activity.
- In the same six states, tourism employs 780,000 workers and generates $67 billion in economic activity.
- Oil spills are generally bad for agriculture and tourism.
The backers of Keystone XL exaggerate the jobs and dollars Keystone XL would generate. They never give us the full picture of how much we will lose in clean-up costs and interrupted jobs and economic activity when that pipeline springs a leak (and TransCanada has done a poor job of predicting the reliability of its craftsmanship). Sensible policymakers must consider the externalities right alongside the profits Big Oil wants to make.
Cory, why are you and Cornell trying to complicate things in an election year ?????
Bret, ask my students: I'm always complicating things. Always one more vocab list, one more grammar point... and always one more effort to explain the way things really are, not the way our leaders want us to believe they are.
Thanks Cory! If....errrrr....when a spill occurs, who is going to pay for the clean up and damage?
Same people who pay and clean up the messes every day, Ms. Lady. The very same people. And that's not Mr. Hiedelberger.
Hey! I pay taxes! I also buy gas... just not as much as some folks, since as my wife noted today, the Heidelbergers managed to go everywhere they needed today without motor assistance.
Am I missng something here? Mr. Grudnick? Do you not read the studies from Cornell? Or are you being facious? I do not know you? Or are you Thune? LOL Pardon me......
I do not believe in studies from places like "Cornell." I believe in studies from places like Mitchell, Redfield, Belle Fourche, Edgemont, and Camp Crook. Those are places where people have common sense and have dirt under their nails. Where people don't use their own shoes to pound out the crazies in their heads. And where nobody is forced to listen to something called Umphrey's McGee (what in the hell IS that??) and sip wine coolers (what in the hell is wrong with a good whiskey or beer??), like I'm told the kids at "Cornell" do. Ms. Lady. Like my friend Mr. Sibby says, my analysis shows that Cornell is full of it.
Good night, grudz! You can't dismiss science and economic analysis with "common sense" and dirt! That's just anti-intellectual, anti-factual horsepuckey. Give me one solid reason why the numbers laid out in the Cornell study are flawed—not your wishful thinking that the moral superiority of your imagined "real Americans" somehow trumps real data. Show me that pipeline will employ more people in South Dakota than the study (and TransCanada's own numbers) say. Show me that oil spills and even the mere construction of the pipeline won't put some of those dirty-fingernailed farmers and ranchers out of work. Show me that the increased oil prices on which the business case for Keystone XL is based won't cause economic drag that will dampen job growth in the U.S. as you and I pay up to 20 cents extra for gas.
Well Mr. Grudznick, you have identified yourself as one of the "good ol' boys". Do you believe in jackalopes too? They must be real, as you can buy them all over SD in gift shops and C Stores.
Don't be so quick to stomp on the pointed headed professors, as it is because of those wine sipping, head thumping people, that we are advanced as we are. It is because of one of those guys you are getting you mega bushels of corn and wheat, compared to what we got in the 50's and must I go on?
As I sit here sipping my beer (a very ladylike manner), I read to find the truth... not just believe legislators who have been boughten off, or the big newspapers who are owned by millionaires that push their personal agendas, and I could go on. If indeed, the 2 PhD's who wrote the 2nd study are sitting and sipping wine, I would believe them over Joe Blow on the street.
That said, I need to go dig in the dirt, as the garden needs to be readied for planting.
Grudz's anti-intellectualism sounds disturbingly like the campaign strategy that a Jeff Barth backer appears to be banking on to discount Matt Varilek over on another thread.
Surprise! More research released by smart people suggests that industrial corn production is killing honeybees, too:
http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/17/10735129-honeybee-die-offs-linked-to-insecticide-study-says
grud=rd