While on his road trip he to pointed how "you can't talk about a pipeline that will create 2000 jobs and call it a jobs plan." A clear reference to Keystone XL because while TransCanada like to talk about much higher jobs numbers independent analyses paint a radically different picture. The reality is America needs jobs in the millions.
While the construction phase does create many more jobs, those jobs are temporary and so will not contribute to long term economic stability for the American economy.
Indeed when we factor in the instability from the changing climate, KXL will be a huge contributor to economic collapse.
According to Yale University, Toronto has already suffered environmental degradation from tar sands. In 2011, tar-sands companies used and polluted more water than used by Toronto's 2.3 million people, 370 million cubic metres.
As you might expect Republicans are whining that the president's comments are putting KXL at risk. They may disagree, but it is a good thing. Texas' water resources are already under pressure with severe drought and even wild fires in recent years.
New Mexico is already doing the seemingly insane, farmers are draining an aquifer to sell the water for fracking. If there were plenty of water and no problem with methane leakage and Carbon Dioxide then there would be no problem. But Carbon Dioxide, is the highest it has been in over 1 million years setting for to the bread basket states and flooding the south and east coasts with increasing violence and regularity. Methane leakage is 17 times higher than the level needed to keep radiative forcing from methane under that created by the carbon dioxide produced by natural gas from fracking. And New Mexico is in severe drought. But then, this is the state that kept voting for Sheriff Joe Arpaio. A man so despicably racist, that he did not see fit to direct resources to investigate the rape of Hispanic children, was defiant when protests called him on it, and created the law that put one woman -- a citizen -- in custody for 4 months, until a judge asked prosecutors "didn't you check her birth certificate" and prosecutors replied "we assumed it was fake." It wasn't fake the judge had checked the certificate before the appearance, and was shocked by the case. But at least New Mexico will remain untouched by the tar-sands network.
The president executive power is for now the only hope of killing this white elephant. What is worrying is the prospect of a future president flipping the Oval offices position.
See also
Reuters - Obama dismisses KXL as a jobs plan
EPA True KXL impact not adequately addressed.
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