Keystone XL Pipeline

I was not surprised to see one of Chairman Biden's first acts upon stepping into the Oval Office was to halt construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline, thus killing tens of thousands of jobs and likely raising gas prices with the stroke of a pen.

Many years ago I had the opportunity to attend an excursion to Washington DC and explore the Capital with a handful of my peers. Part of the trip included meeting with our elected local officials, which gave me the opportunity to meet Senator Ed Markey, a strong advocate at the time against the Keystone XL Pipeline. Ed had given my group a thirty minute lecture as to who Paul Revere was (I think to soak up time), and then said he would take two questions. Unfortunately for him, I was one of the young students he called on. I had asked Ed a question along the lines of, "If you claim to be a big proponent of policy geared towards curtailing climate change, then why would you cancel the pipeline? Because now we will need to purchase our oil from a country that does not have nearly the same level of environmentally friendly laws on the books - so can you explain your logic to me." I could not tell you his answer because it took him twenty minutes to formulate an incoherent response.

Ted Cruz questioned Pete Buttigieg during his confirmation for Transportation Secretary as follows:

Cruz: I will say it was disconcerting to see yesterday – the first day of the Biden administration – straight out of the gate, President Biden announced that he was canceling the Keystone Pipeline. That is a major infrastructure project. That is a project that right now today has 1,200 good paying union jobs. And in 2021, the Keystone Pipeline was scheduled to have more than 11,000 jobs, including 8,000 union jobs, for contracts worth $1.6 billion. And with the stroke of a pen, President Biden has told those 11,000 workers –those union workers – ‘your jobs are gone.’ Mr. Buttigieg, what do you say to those workers whose jobs have just been eliminated by presidential edict?”

Buttigieg: Well I think the most important thing is to make sure that we make good on the promise of the president's climate vision as being one that on net creates far more jobs - millions we hope. I know that just won't happen, we'll have to do a lot of work to make sure that's real, but getting this right means ensuring that there are more good paying union jobs for all Americans delivered through that infrastructure vision.

Cruz: So for those workers the answer is somebody else will get a job?

Buttigieg: The answer is that we are very eager to see those workers continue to be employed in good paying union jobs, even if they might be different ones.

Cruz: Well I fear that decision is the front end of a whole series of regulatory decisions, one after the other after the other, that will be eliminating union jobs, that will be eliminating manufacturing jobs, that will be eliminating energy jobs. And that is altogether out of step with what the American people want.

To me the message is clear. The Democratic establishment does not care about climate change. They eliminated a pathway to economic prosperity for middle American families with no net benefit to climate change outside of appeasement to their base in coastal regions that mainly consume news articulated by the mainstream media. Such an action demonstrates Biden does not aim to be the President for all Americans, as the needs of those working on the pipeline have been truncated. As I watched Pete Buttigieg in his confirmation hearing I could not help but get the impression he thinks it is easy to get another job. I got news for Pete - it's not, especially in the midst of a global pandemic where your administration just killed a major piece of the regional economic ecosystem.

In addition, Pete floated the idea of a gas tax hike - the first since 1993. Who does that hurt? Those with lower incomes. "Elites" in coastal locations with higher paying jobs can afford to be less price sensitive compared to those in struggling areas. So, democrats continue to be advocates for the "little man" while they kill their jobs and depress their wages, but it's okay because it's all in the name of climate change. Yet it's not, since canceling the Keystone pipeline means we now need to import oil from regions like the Middle East via massive tankards. Thus we have the risk of not only an oil spill in the ocean, but have lost any decrease in net carbon emissions because we need to move all this oil by using massive amounts of more oil. Oh, and don't forget they have very little environmental laws in the Middle East. So what do we have here? Virtue signaling at its finest. Surface level college intellectuals eat this kind of stuff up, yet they do not know anybody in Midwestern regions decimated by this kind of action. It breaks my heart. Those on the left like to denigrate us who question the mainstream climate position as anti-environmentalists, but it's okay - let them have their virtue signaling, we'll continue to truly fight for the issues.

So as Biden and his team begin to unravel not only the country, but the world with their pen, we will work to put it back together with ours.