Fixing old water and gas pipelines would create far more jobs than building Keystone

[Cigar]

Fixing old water and gas pipelines would create far more jobs than building Keystone XL
http://grist.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/shutterstock_158470826.jpg

In the coming months, President Obama will decide whether to approve the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, which would transport crude tar-sands oil from Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico. We know that the pipeline would greatly aggravate climate change, allowing massive amounts of the world’s dirtiest oil to be extracted and later burned.

The payoff, say supporters such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, is a job boom in construction industries, which are currently suffering from high unemployment. Earlier this month, Chamber of Commerce CEO Tom Donohue called on the president “to put American jobs before special interest politics.”

If you believe headline-grabbing challenges such as Donohue’s, the president is painted into a corner on the KXL pipeline — trapped by a stagnant economy and an ailing environment.

The president knows KXL’s jobs promises are way overblown. In July, he explained it this way to The New York Times: “Republicans have said this would be a big jobs generator. There is no evidence that is true.” The most realistic estimates, said the president, show that KXL “might create maybe 2,000 jobs during the construction of the pipeline, which might take a year or two.” And after that, “we’re talking about somewhere between 50 and 100 jobs in an economy of 150 million working people.”

http://grist.org/climate-energy/fixing-old-water-and-gas-pipelines-would-create-far-more-jobs-than-building-keystone-xl/


:rollseyes:

[Heyduke]

The Oracle of Omaha doesn't want Obama to allow the pipeline, because it would obsolete his transportation empire.

Fixing gas lines is on the minds of Californians after Pacific Gas and Electric blew up the city of San Bruno.

[zelmo1234]

Why does it require federal money to fix these? In the little city of Stanton MI they went the local voters who approved a bond issue and they got half of the little town last year and will do the other half this year!

The pipeline will be built by private industry.

This may come as a shock but the federal government is beyond broke and it is hurting economic growth in the country. There are tons of problems that would be solved locally if, and only if the Feds have the courage to tell them that the federal funds are gone.

[Heyduke]

Why does it require federal money to fix these? In the little city of Stanton MI they went the local voters who approved a bond issue and they got half of the little town last year and will do the other half this year!

The pipeline will be built by private industry.

This may come as a shock but the federal government is beyond broke and it is hurting economic growth in the country. There are tons of problems that would be solved locally if, and only if the Feds have the courage to tell them that the federal funds are gone.

Yeah, the public cost per job 'created' by Federal programs doesn't make economic sense. Keynes was a proponent of public investment, to be paid for with budget surplusses, or if a debt was incurred, to be rapidly paid off. Keynes would roll over in his grave if he could see what is being done today in the name of Keynesianism.

"Far more disturbing is the adherence of soi disant [self-styled] Keynesians and the allegedly more heterodox post-Keynesians to a form of fiscal orthodoxy explicitly disavowed by Keynes. We expect them to know better. What most Keynesians put forward as effective policy, namely a far greater fiscal boost to aggregate demand than the Obama administration is prepared to consider, was explicitly rejected by Keynes as “too late” to revive an economy in deep slump." --Donald Moggridge

[patrickt]

Unfortunately, liberals do want gasoline and fuel oil but they don't want jobs. Live with it, Cigar.

[Blackrook]

By the logic of the article, we should just shut down all oil pipelines and return to the days of horse and buggy.

[darroll]

They won't do anything about the rusted our gas pipes until we get a major boom.
Then they will spend ten years pointing fingers at each other.
A vote is more important than a bad pipe of any kind.
Bridges and rusty old pipes don't vote.

[Agravan]

You see, if we don't build the XL pipeline, then that nasty oil won't be used, because it can only be shipped thru America. The Canadians surely wouldn't build a pipeline to their own shore and then sell that oil directly to China, would they?

And besides, those 2000 workers that would only work for two years? They're much better off sitting on their asses and collecting unemployment like our liberal overlords decree they should.