Your Opinion: Reject Keystone oil pipeline

Dear Editor:

Rejecting the Keystone XL is vital to national security, land owner rights and our future.

There are many reasons to not support the Keystone XL pipeline.

First, Transcanada, the Canadian oil company building the Keystone XL pipeline, has benefited from eminent domain claims on over 100 ranchers and farmers in Texas alone. This is a foreign oil company using the U.S. government to force Americans off their land. See http://dailyreckoning.com/why-you-should-oppose-the-keystone-xl- pipeline/#ixzz2Nvu8uU8y

Second, the fact that oil producers are now squeezing the dirtiest possible heavy crude oil from dirt and sand should tell us a lot. This strongly indicates that pumping light crude from easier sources is becoming difficult. The Saudi's have begun developing roads deep into their desert to access oil fields they previously would not go to. It's taken millions of years to make these oil resources that we're consuming at a rate exponentially greater than they took to create. Common sense should tell us oil is running out and we should move to other fuels.

Additionally, the Keystone XL pipeline is not projected to create 20,000 jobs as some say. The proposal for the pipeline estimated 20,000 person years. That is, for example, one person working four years is counted as four. The number of jobs estimated is 5,000 temporary jobs. In the overall unemployment picture, a drop in the bucket.

U.S. vulnerability to Middle East oil is linked much more to how much oil we consume, not to where we buy it. Oil price is set on world markets. For example, when uproar in Libya sent the price of light crude up 30 percent, Canadian heavy oil went up 55 percent simultaneously (Washington Post 1/18/12). Tar sand oil will not be cheaper.

Finally, the issue of carbon and climate change. Even Glen Beck said "You'd have to be an idiot to not see the temperature change." The Pentagon stated climate change is a national security threat that must be dealt with. Arctic ice, which reflects much of the sun's heat on the earth, has had it's minimum coverage decline 45 percent since 1979. (National Snow and Ice Center).

These are not natural weather cycles. The European project for Ice Cores in Antarctica found CO2 levels were no higher than 300 ppm in the last 650,000 years. We are now near 400 ppm.

Staying entrenched in fossil fuels is living in the past. We need to move on. Reject the Keystone XL.