So Conor wrote an article:
Ever since Feb. 13, when I chained myself to the White House fence with 47 other protestors urging President Obama to kill the Keystone pipeline, people have asked me why I felt strongly enough about the issue to endure arrest. Many of them have the same questions that should have been asked in the State Department’s EIS. If we don’t build the pipeline through the American prairie, won’t the oil companies just route it through British Columbia by rail, tank trucks or pipelines and sell their oil to Asia? Won’t the Keystone XL pipeline give America energy security and the U.S. jobs? Won’t the pipeline lower the price of gasoline at the pump? Haven’t the oil industry and government regulators given us adequate assurances that Keystone is safe? Don’t the oil and pipeline companies have their own incentives to make sure the Keystone pipeline doesn’t leak?
Here are the answers:
1) Is the Keystone XL Pipeline safe? Anyone who watched the oil industry and its regulators scramble to point fingers and dodge responsibility during the BP oil spill should be skeptical about industry claims of pipeline safety. Tar sands oil, sometimes known as bitumen, is extraordinarily corrosive and the industry has not figured out how to stop it from bursting even the most fortified pipelines. On March 31, an Exxon pipe carrying 95,000 barrels per day of Alberta tar sands oil from Illinois to Texas refineries burst and flooded an upscale suburb in Mayflower, Arkansas beneath an ocean of toxic heavy bitumen and lighter dilutents, added by oil companies to help the gelatinous bitumen move through the pipe. Arkansas taxpayers were shocked to learn that thanks to a loophole artfully created by the industry’s political allies, they—not the oil companies—will have to pay for the cleanup.
That same week a burst Minnesota pipeline vomited 15,000 gallons of Alberta crude. In 2010, an Exxon pipeline in Michigan spewed a million gallons of dilbit into the Kalamazoo River, causing the worst and most expensive pipeline-based oil spill in U.S. history. Experts are still scratching their heads trying to figure out how to clean up the Kalamazoo spill which received little coverage from the mainstream corporate media. Clean-up crews commonly collect aquatic oil spills using floatable booms. As it turns out, tar sands oil doesn’t float. Instead, it tarred and coated the Kalamazoo River bottom, which is the foundation of the aquatic ecosystem. In fact, oil and gas companies even shipping conventional oil, experience thousands of oil spills each year. In June, an Exxon pipe that runs parallel to the proposed route of the Keystone XL pipeline burst, spilling between 750 and 1,000 barrels, at a crossing on the iconic Yellowstone River and killed life in that blue ribbon trout fishery and national treasure for 25 miles.
Given the industry’s abysmal record, it’s safe to say that Keystone XL will experience a major spill and, due to its planned route, that spill will almost certainly contaminate the Ogallala aquifer, the sole water supply for millions of middle state Americans as well as the breadbasket of American agriculture and the ranching industries in seven states.
2) Keystone XL will not create significant American jobs. According to the State Department’s study, Keystone will provide only 35 full time jobs following the construction period. We could more beneficially create permanent jobs by incentivizing solar and wind development which, even with the current anemic federal incentives, are creating each year, more new generation capacity than all the incumbents (oil, gas, coal and nuke) combined. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are already 93,000 jobs in solar and 85,000 in wind, and those numbers are growing exponentially.
3) Keystone XL will neither improve energy security nor lower gasoline prices. Virtually all of Keystone’s Alberta tar sands oil is destined for Asian markets. Canadian and mostly non-U.S. owned oil services companies, the Koch Brothers, and Asian plutocrats will profit from the pipeline but there will be little value to the U.S. in terms of security or lower oil prices. In fact, U.S. oil prices will actually increase as the result of Keystone because U.S. oil prices are dictated not by world market prices but by refinery capacity in this country. Since tar sands oil destined for Asian markets will first be refined in U.S. refineries, tar sands will compete for limited refinery space and therefore drive up the price of oil. The State Department estimates that the average cost of American gasoline will actually rise upward of 7¢ per gallon if Keystone is constructed. The Pipeline will hurt the U.S. economy, not help it.
4) Why are environmentalists mad at Obama? Why have they made this the political line in the sand for his carbon legacy? Because this issue is one of the few issues that is solely under Obama’s control. President Obama doesn’t need to go to a Congress awash in democracy polluting oil money. He can pull the plug on Keystone XL while sitting alone in Oval Office. If we cannot win this issue with Obama, what hope do we have with other environment issues where he has to work with Senate Republicans?
5) If we don’t build Keystone, the oil companies will just haul their tar sands out by rail and truck, generating more carbon and more spills. The $7 billion Keystone pipeline will transport 1.1 million barrels each day—far more than could be transported economically by rail and truck traffic. If we stop Keystone, we lock most of this carbon permanently underground.
6) If we kill Keystone, the oil companies will not build a pipeline elsewhere in Canada. The oil industry will not build an alternative pipeline elsewhere in Canada. Resistance among Canadians in British Columbia, especially salmon-dependent First Nations, is even greater than here in the United States.
7) We don’t need oil-based fossil fuels while we ramp up renewables like Solar and Wind. Renewables are proven and market ready technologies. Their widespread deployment is only being impeded by multibillion dollar annual subsidies to oil and gas. In any case, the Keystone XL Pipeline is not a stop gap measure. Instead the pipeline will entrench our use of fossil fuels.
8) Keystone XL will have a catastrophic impact on climate change. The amount of carbon in the tar sands is equivalent to all the carbon in all the oil ever removed from Saudi Arabia. Burning the vast oceans of oil beneath Saudi Arabia has gotten us where we are today; ice caps melting, glaciers retreating on every continent, water supplies drying up, continent wide droughts disrupting agriculture and global food supplies, acidified oceans and rising sea levels, and climate chaos flooding our greatest cities. According to a new study published last week by Oil Change International, “Cooking the Books: How the State Department Analysis Ignores the True Climate Impact of the Keystone XL Pipeline,” the pipeline will emit 181 methane tons of carbon every year—the equivalent of 37.7 million cars or 51 new coal plants. There are 561 tons of carbon locked in Alberta’s tar sands. More than twice the amount, according to former Goddard scientist James Hansen, then have been released by all the oil and combustion in the history of mankind. We can double that sum by burning Alberta’s tar sands, but what genocidal politician or oilman, would want to do that to future generations? We could better solve our energy problems by scuttling the pipeline, investing in renewables, and putting the greedy megalomaniacs from Koch oil and Exxon’s puppets in the U.S. Capitol in jail, where they belong.
#good times indeed
(Source: livewithpurpose, via fearlesswift)
Hmmm…I mean they had to know they weren’t going to have time to see each other much and they just now figured that out?
People may talk about Taylor Swift and Conor Kennedy’s whirlwind romance, but it’s clear that the superstar singer has won over the people who count the most – her boyfriend’s family.
“She is just spectacular,” Ethel Kennedy, Conor’s grandmother, said at the RFK golf tournament at the Hyannisport Club on Oct. 12. “She’s just sensational inside and out.”
When asked if her grandson, 18, has taken a liking to Swift, 22, Ethel replied, “Yes! How could you not? I think the world has.”
Last month, a source in Swift’s circle told PEOPLE that the singer, 22, is “head over heels into” Conor, adding, “[She] is on cloud nine. … She thinks she is in love.”
And, it seems, Swift will do a lot for love.“You know what she really is? She’s game. She had never sailed before; she sailed,” Ethel continued. “She had never gone dragging before; she dragged. She played anything that everyone else was doing. And she was good at it and no fuss. And I’m happy that we’ll be neighbors. I’m thrilled.”
Kerry Kennedy, Conor’s aunt, echoed Ethel’s opinion of their new neighbor, saying Swift fits in perfectly with the famous family.
“She’s wonderful, we’re all so happy that she’s our neighbor in Hyannis Port. She came up several weekends this summer and she was a complete participant in every single thing with our large and active family,” Kerry told PEOPLE in an interview Monday. “If somebody said, ‘Lets go sailing,’ she jumped on the boat.”
Swift’s charm, Kerry says, extends beyond the high seas.
“We’re jumping off the boat to swim to the break walls, holding everybody’s hands and jumping, singing, dancing, laughing, drawing pictures with everybody from the 2-year-old to my mother,” she continued. “[Taylor] is a light. And she’s a star in our family because she is a lovely, sweet, fabulous human being.”
But will Conor fit it Swift’s world? He sure seemed to on Monday night in New York, where he attended the premiere of HBO’s documentary film about his grandmother, Ethel, which airs Oct. 18.
Rare picture of Taylor with Conor’s cousins.
(Source: star-lightsx, via tswiftdaily)
A few photos of Taylor & Conor at the Kennedy Compound on Aug. 20th
The sizing is weird, but click for full size…
Oh hello watermelon
Taylor is back in Greenfield! (9/24/12)
oh she got 2 donuts. She prob brought one to Conor as a snack to school. awww what a sweet girlfriend
(Source: eyesopen, via karinalovesesheeran)
Taylor Swift made the journey out to western Massachusetts this weekend to visit her high school honey, Deerfield Academy junior Conor Kennedy, but there were no footall games or school dances on the couple’s agenda. In fact, their weekend agenda was more like a middle-aged couple’s than a pair of young lovers …
The duo kicked it off Friday night with a low-key dinner at the appropriately named Taylor’s Tavern in Greenfield, where Swift, looking lovely in a green dress, ordered a salad, and even let Conor grab a few bites. He sported the typical prep-school “uniform” of shorts and a button-down shirt, and ordered a burger.
But don’t worry that 22-year-old Taylor is a negative influence on Conor, who’s got to wait a few years before he can legally hit the bars. Staff told the Track that the couple’s beverages of choice were all non-alcoholic.
The next day, Taylor hit the antiques circuit, and was spotted cruising for hidden treasures at Old Station Antiques in Deerfield. Furnishing her new home on the Cape, perhaps? Unfortunately, the saleswoman wasn’t too keen on giving us any details.
The couple capped off the weekend at the Montague Book Mill cafe, where Tay Tay showed she’s got a healthy appetite. In addition to a warm brown rice salad and a curried chicken sandwich, Taylor ordered an everything bagel with cream cheese AND butter!
“She was very nice,” a cafe employee told the Track. “And a little bit shy.”
Meanwhile, US Weekly caught up with Conor’s Aunt Rory Kennedy at theCreative Arts Emmys in Los Angeles over the weekend, and asked what she had to say about her nephew’s new love.
“I think she’s fantastic and I couldn’t be more thrilled,” said the documentary filmmaker. “She’s a good friend of our family and we all adore her and love her. It’s great to have her around.”
She hit the antique store, why am I not surpirsed. lol
(Source: bostonherald.com)
Darius Rucker performed in Hyannis tonight!
wait does she mean, taylor & conor or just conor lol
(via karinalovesesheeran)
oh Taylor and Conor are barefoot again
(Source: tswiftdaily)
