Is it better to have safer oil pipelines or no oil pipelines?

1. 87

   B. Leekleyposted 9 years ago

   Is it better to have safer oil pipelines or no oil pipelines?
   
   Michigan senators Peters and Stabenow are introducing the Pipeline Improvement and Preventing Spills Act to ban shipping crude oil on the Great Lakes and strengthen federal pipeline safety oversight. The group 350 says oil should be kept in the ground to keep global warming and the resulting climate chaos from getting worse and worse, causing massive loss of lives and property. My thinking is that the Senate should approve the act with added wording that it should be made moot  in the near future by replacing dirty energy with clean energy. Living in the slow lane beats speeding to disaster.

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2. 47

   Ericdierkerposted 9 years ago

   Brian,
   I have a five year plan to get all solar including the charging of a piece of crap electric car. I already work from home, combine all trips and we refuse any air conditioning even though it spikes to 100+ here. Our footprint is negligible and will even get smaller. Of course we go in for all the hippie dippy enviro reuse, use less and recycle stuff. We give a hoot and don't pollute.
   Crude oil is an interesting natural substance. La Brea Tar Pits are a must see for anyone. "As much as one half of the oil that enters the coastal environment comes from natural seeps of oil and natural gas. These geologic features are known to occur in clusters around the world, such as off the southern coast of California and in the Gulf of Mexico, but are still relatively unstudied,"  Found here: http://www.whoi.edu/oil/natural-oil-seeps
   
   The Earth The Way We Want It! Is a great concept. And as stewards we should strive for that I suppose. But that is different than the earth the way it is. I flinch and guard my head when I tell people that they are a part of the earth. We have politically correctly spoken ourselves into the mindset that we are somehow not part of the earth. Beavers and beetles can wipe out whole forests. "Wild" fires not man made can "destroy" a million acres in days. And one good volcano can fill the air with more "pollutants" than all of man in the last 100 years.
   Crude can be shipped and managed and used to build and supply life saving stuff for babies, from pharmaceuticals to incubators to bottles for water,  not to mention cooking their food and keeping them warm.
   Constant vigilance is required to keep our environment pristine. Shifting the burden from one locale or natural resource to another is socially irresponsible. All avenues should be kept open for transport and all available resources should be used to keep that transport safe. Nobody ever stopped venereal disease by outlawing sex. Prophylactics in order to contain and restrain fluids seems to work the best, not banning them.

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