gracchusdixit

One of the most curious aspects of the 2014 mid-term election was the Republican Party’s obsession with the Keystone XL pipeline.  They made its approval one of their main campaign issues, and now it has become their top legislative priority.  This extravagant passion is not new.  When Mitt Romney was running for President, he went so far as to say: “I will build that pipeline even if I have to do it with my own hands.”  Quite a boast from a man who, judging by his manicured fingernails and pressed jeans, has probably never done a lick of physical work in his life.  Lucky for him that electoral defeat relieved him of the need to get his hands dirty.

The newly elected Republican majority in Congress made no such ridiculous promise, but they quickly moved to get the pipeline pushed forward, challenging the President of the United States to play ball “or else”.  Republicans in the House had already passed a bill designed to override a reluctant White House, and their counterparts in the Senate just did the same—helped by Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and a dozen equally craven Democrats from states where the oil and coal industries call the shots.

It has to be asked: why all this desperate urgency, especially at a time when the country faces a host of issues that are infinitely more consequential?

It is not as though there is any shortage of oil or likely to be one anytime soon.  On the contrary, there is a glut, reflected in the fact that oil prices have plunged more than 25 percent in less than a year.

It is not as though Keystone will add to domestic oil supplies, even if there were any need to do so.  It will carry Canadian oil to refineries on the Gulf, from where it will promptly be shipped abroad.  Not one drop will heat one American home, fuel one American automobile, or lower the price at the pump by one cent.

It is not as though Keystone will bring us closer to realizing that fantasy called “energy independence”.  Two-thirds of the oil we consume already comes from domestic sources, and half of the rest comes from Canada, which, the last time I looked, posed no threat to our independence or way of life.

It is certainly not as though Keystone will contribute to our economy.  Instead of creating the “thousands” of jobs that its supporters tout, it will create fewer than 100 permanent jobs.  The rest will be short-lived, evaporating the moment the oil begins to flow.

In truth, the Keystone pipeline is nothing but a monstrous boondoggle.  It will pump a river of toxic tar-sands oil through the very heart of the country, exposing millions of productive acres and precious aquifer to the possibility of catastrophic contamination.  Given the abysmal safely record of the oil companies, such a catastrophe is likely to come sooner than later.

Despite all this, we are being told by the new Republican majority in Congress—emphatically and with a straight face—that the Keystone pipeline is somehow crucial to the nation’s economic future.

Again one has to ask: why?

There are those who say it is because Keystone has become a “symbol” of everything Republicans believe to be wrong about “big government” in general and Barack Obama in particular.  That may be the case, but the reason is simpler than that.  The reason is money—specifically the money of Charles and David Koch.

Keystone will make the Koch brothers even richer than they already are, a notion that is difficult to fathom, since each of the Koch brothers is already nine hundred thousand times richer than the average middle class American.  But I suppose no amount of money is ever enough for such people.  Which brings us back to Keystone.

Koch Industries is a major owner of the Canadian tar sands that will pump oil into one end of the pipeline and of the refineries that will process that oil when it comes out at the other end.  If construction goes forward, Keystone will be subsidized by a billion dollars worth of tax breaks, thousands of landowners will be displaced under the rules of eminent domain, and its completion will net Koch Industries 100 billion dollars.

Even so, you may still be asking yourself why the Koch brothers want to expand oil production in the face of declining consumption and falling prices  The answer is: because time is running out.  Oil—and coal—are quickly being replaced by natural gas and renewables, which are catching on faster than anyone imagined.  If the Koch brothers can’t exploit the tar sands they already own, if they can’t get their oil to market before time does indeed run out, they will be left holding a very big bag of worthless sludge.

Whatever else Charles and David Koch may be—none of which is very pleasant—they aren’t stupid.  As they wag their libertarian fingers in the air, even they can sense which way the wind is blowing.  That is why they—through their phony institutes, think tanks, and Superpacs—funneled $300 million into the 2014 election and, for all intents and purposes, bought the Republican Party.  With $100 billion at stake, that investment was chump change.  And because of it, the chumps are now in charge.