I see the two-sidedness of this occurring more and more lately. On one side you have these environmental summits where all these people are concerned with changing the environment and reversing "global warming." They will say things like, "We have to make the hard choices, we have to get tough on global warming, we have to tax you for your own protection, etc."
And then the other side where it's more important to grow the economy and create jobs at the risk of seriously hurting the environment. They'll be sure to add in something to say they also have environment issues in mind, but to pump this much oil across the country is just a recipe for distaster. There is plenty of incidents to point to the risks involved and having things in place to clean up any distaster that might occur afterwards does nothing to prevent it.
I think both of these views by these people are bullshit and they only care about one thing: money. They are carbon taxing everything they can when it suits them for the environment side, and taking lobbying money and more taxing from the people who want to make money from the pipelines.
We're being played on both sides and people are falling for it. There are examples around the world where the economy has continued just fine without government interference, so I guess I'm on the side of the environment, but I'm not for any sort of carbon tax. If governments are going to get involved, they should be there to simply say, "No, you can't do that because it is harmful, or has the potential to harm the environment. And any harm to the environment is ultimately harm to the people that need it to survive."
Nice debate. I've seen the 'economy' used as a justification for years as people need jobs to pay their bills and live. However, when we realize that those bills are a dependency, which then forces us to work jobs, are we not really suggesting that the 'economy' is to support our own slavery? After all, all our needs can be met through a direct one-on-one relationship with Mother Earth. So would a justification for the project based on 'economic' arguments ring hollow once people realized the true nature of their relationship with the corporate and government enterprises that depend on people being dependent upon them? If that is indeed the case, does the governments argument all of a sudden evaporate and put the whole project into jeopardy as the project is only needed to encourage and support slavery?
Very well put. Most people need the job, to buy the gas, to put in the car, to get to work and keep the job, to buy the gas, etc, etc.
I was also just thinking that oil spills would be good for the economy as well. It could create jobs for years to come. So..... should we have some spills on purpose every now and then when we need an economic boost? No, of course not. But I bet a politician could convince a number of people otherwise, tax them to do it, and then tax them to clean it up.
Chilling thought eh! Yikes