That would require a balanced and thoughful approach to solve the problems we face. Can't visualize that coming from either the Republicans nor the environmental movement. That people that are speaking up in this issue need to be quiet while the adults are talking.

Dr Myers Jaffe's contributions to this debate are always illuminating.

Whether we can protect the environment and achieve energy security at the same time is both the single most important policy issue we face, and actually pretty doubtful.

President Obama's State of the Union declaration that "we don't have to choose between our environment and our economy" rings hollow after his lackluster role in this debacle.

(See http://tinyurl.com/6qxast9)

Just to set the record straight. Obama did not veto the Keystone Oil Pipeline. This has been operational for a year.. It carries the tar sands processed bitumen oil down to refineries in Illinois and Oklahoma. It also has had many leaks this first year, some of which were covered up.

Obama was pushed for a decision and needed more time. So the canceled the XL *UPGRADE* to the Keystone line. This is a rerouting of part of the current (new) line and a increase in pipe diameter, and line pressure because this product is a bit rougher than well-pumped crude. It also wants to make the pipe out of thinner wall stock, to make it more profitable. The goal is to get it to the Texas coast where it can be processed a bit more and loaded onto international tankers for external sale.

Right wing rhetoric says this is to save us from our shortfall in oil production. Does the above sound like "Energy Security for America?"

I have several blog posts on the XL upgrade, here is one: http://lasttechage.wordpress.com/2011/10/19/keystone-xl-the-balance-sheet/

The author claims that the Ogallala aquifer concern is a tactical shift. 30% of America's food is irrigated by the Ogallala Aquifer. As a Texan, I know about America's oil needs, and I understand the US food supply. Shifting the oil pipeline a hundred miles westward will protect US oil and US food. The oil goes to Texas because refineries have the capacity to refine tar sand oil, and pipelines can send refined products to the rest of the nation.

In addition, global warming melts the Siberian tundra for more oil, gas, minerals, industry, water, timber, livestock, and agriculture. The US, Mexico, Africa, the Middle East, India, and Australia are becoming polluted deserts. China has 2 oil and gas pipelines completed and 3 more under construction from Siberia. China has been building a massive irrigation system since 2001 that will let it feed 3 or 4 billion people by 2025. 2011 grain yields show that it is working. Without poisoning the Ogallala Aquifer, the US may need food from China or Russia by 2025. Poisoning the Ogallala Aquifer will definitely make the US dependent for food from the Communist Party of the People's Republic of China or from the KGB in Russia. (Note: Some now call the KGB the FSR, but Alexander Litvenenko was poisoned in London in 2006 by the "former" KGB.)

Why not just build a refinery in North Dakota, or Montana? Wouldn't this abrogate the need for a pipeline ?

The article makes good points about the larger context for the dispute over the XL Pipeline but makes a serious mistake by arguing that the pipeline is needed to support domestic use. In fact, the pipeline is being extended to the Gulf coast so that the oil can be exported to foreign markets. This is not really an argument about increasing the security of US oil supplies but about expanding the global market for Canadian oil.

Randy characterizes environmentalists as childish; they should just pipe down and let the adults do the talking.

So. What do adults say about the exploitation of Canada's shales as a source of oil?

This isn't a simple matter of sinking a bore-hole and extracting positive-pressure oil. It isn't even a matter of pressurizing the oil to make it come up. Exploiting the shales requires strip-mining on a scale similar to the strip-mining for coal in the Appalachians.

Once you've strip-mined, to get usable oil out of the shale requires a great deal of energy and produces enormous amounts of toxic waste. If you haven't studied this issue, you have no idea just how much toxic waste is involved. It's enormous.

The simple truth is that our hunger for oil is pressing us into seeking it from sources that were neither economical nor environmentally feasible - until now, and only because we're desperate. Only by lowering our environmental protection standards and accepting that the oil we recover will provide a lot less energy for the energy expended than past oil production does it even begin to make sense.

And not very much sense, since with much less investment, we can reduce our consumption of oil and avoid the environmental damage that shale oil extraction is sure to produce.

This is just one fight in a long series of fights, and in each one, the stakes are higher and the returns are lower. If exploiting the Canadian shales goes ahead, the next battle will be over even more damaging, even less energy-return projects. At what point will the "adults in the room" acknowledge that our present oil-dependent course is fatally flawed?

We're past peak oil; we passed it around 2005. Now comes the long, slow decline in which production costs more and exacts more environmental damage for less and less return.

The only way out of this losing game plan is to shift our focus towards efficiencies in consumption and towards clean energy sources. This is a true statement. The only question is when we'll decide to get serious about making this change, and how much environmental damage we'll accumulate before we do it - during one of the six largest extinction events in the history of life on this planet.

Now strikes me as a good time. But then, at 59 years old, I'm not yet an adult. Perhaps I'll see the light as Randy sees it when I'm more mature.