With great trepidation, I just had a look at TransCanada’s
website regarding the Keystone XL Pipeline. As I don’t know a single soul who
supports the thing, it seemed important to look, not just stay wrapped up in my
cocoon of certainty about the foul nature of the proposal. Not that my mind or
heart are open to change on this point, but I do want to know where these
people on the other side of the public comment race to March 7th are
coming from, to see what reasons people could possibly support inefficiently,
dirtily ripping an ecosystem apart to send the—aptly named—crude oil thousands
of miles through a thin pipe to be refined. After the refining, it will be
burnt, consumed, combusted, and all its carbon will be released into the
world, continuing to alter the climate, to change the weather patterns,
ecosystems, and landscapes of our homes, increase storms, make enormous numbers
of jobs uncertain, and all the rest that climate change means.
I want to know the reasons anyone could be for a future that
looks like that.
TransCanada’s argument for the pipeline is, essentially, “Keystone
XL is a choice between construction of a pipeline that supports the creation of
40,000 American jobs and reduces America’s dependence on Venezuelan and Middle
Eastern crude oil versus continuing to import oil from countries that do not
share American values.” Also, it purports to be the safest pipeline ever
constructed, promises to pump billions into the U.S. economy, and in the “Myths
and Facts” section skirts the overall issues of climate change and ecosystem
impact. The website soothingly tells landowners that that TransCanada will be liable and responsible for all spills. As they should be, but wouldn't it be better to not have anything to spill in the first place?
I am American. I do not share the values of Keystone XL. I
do not share the values of continuing to do business as usual while nothing—climatically, economically, politically, culturally—seems “as
usual” of late. The uncertainty of the weather, of the skies we look at, the
temperature and amount of sunlight on our skins, these do underlie more things
about our lives than we might like to think, with all the insulated boxes we
hop in and out of all day. And things are not usual in the weather department.
At heart, we’ve built our lives, our culture, our ways and means of being in
the world around certain natural truths—regular seasons, predictable tides.
This is the underpinning of what “usual” has been, the foundation of all else.
I believe that all actions come out of love and fear, and
generally, fear is just the result of love being threatened.
TransCanada’s rationale preys upon the deep fears that have
grown, culturally, out of the uncertainties that the unusual and unpredictable
climate create. Their theme that it is time to circle the wagons, make America’s
energy needs interwoven only with like-minded countries, preys on this fear.
Similarly, harping on the jobs that will be created, the billions that will
flow through the pipeline and into the economy—things are hard for a lot of
people right now, struggling to keep themselves dignified and fed, their
children happy—plays into our deepest personal fears, doubts that have all too
real reasons to suspect will bear bitter fruits. However, clothed in comfort
and the language of patriotism and security, TransCanada is just
fear-mongering, the tactics of a frightened bully, almost cornered, and seeking
to sow discord.
What do you love?
When you watch the news, when you read about injustice or
state-sponsored terrorism or unemployment numbers or particle counts of carbon
in the atmosphere or any of the rest of the not very good news that swaddles us
all day and night, are you afraid? Do you fear for the safety and security of
what and who you love?
I do.
Yet, in my fear—which manifests as wanting to reach out and
wrap my skinny little insufficient arms around so many people, so many places,
so much of the tangible and intangible good that there is in the world—I am not inclined to
take comfort from the lulling words of an international fossil fuel extraction
company.
I do not believe for a second that TransCanada's intentions are any
purer than their crude oil. They—and other fossil fuel companies—ravage
the environment to suck out the crude oil for gasoline and petroleum products
that our consumption of continues to alter the chemistry of the atmosphere, continues to throw our most basic senses of security into the increasing
chaos of a planet in flux. And, through all this, the fossil fuel industry continues to make money, while selling us a poisonous snake-oil panacea for all our fears.
They profit from our fear, which in another extrapolation,
means they are making money off our desire to protect what we love from
nebulous threats.
The threats aren’t nebulous. One
very real threat is a proposed pipeline, no wider than a hula-hoop, and today,
standing in as the target for all my fear and fury about what I cannot control,
what I cannot protect who and what I love from.
There are still more threats than Keystone in how we live,
how we are afraid to change although we know that we are living unsustainably,
that we are sickly addicted to a cultural structure that harms more than we
knew we could love. And, we are all learning how to live better, how to change,
how to make our own lives simpler, kinder, more sustainable, happier and more
about what we love than what we fear. In time, we will always improve in these
ways.
As one step of work towards that improvement, today, or tomorrow, or Friday, please for the love of
all your holy things, submit a public comment to the State Department in
opposition to Keystone. Answer TransCanada’s threatening myths with the clear
truth of what you want this world to be for all that you love.
(photo of oil spill from nrdc.org)
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