[Environmental tragedy] 2nd train derails in 2 days, spilling oil

Rejecting Keystone is a train wreck, literally and figutativy

 

Doesn't sound like this was oil that would have been on Keystone anyway. Are there other rejected pipeline projects I'm not aware of?

 

You're right, it's way past time to transition away from fossil fuels.

 

There is something like 100k barrels of Bakken oil reserves for the Keystone XL. Tar is too viscous to flow in a pipeline, so it must be cut with a lighter oil - in this case Bakken. The K-XL would definitely take a lot of that oil off train tracks but I'm sure there are some politically relevant points won by stopping the pipeline.

For one, it boosts the investment into U.S. oil in politically relevant states like Ohio. Also, it may or may not give benefits to railroad companies who transport the oil and are competing with pipelines. And it also may be shifting the focus of refining operations to the east coast US but I really don't haven much to back that up.

 

Oil's on the way out.

 

This bit is spot on. Per an offline article rail shipments of oil in the US have increased from 9500 cars in 2008 to 493000 in 2014. And rail usually goes along side riverbeds.

Doesn't mean Keystone was a 'good' pipeline, and I'm hopeful this means much more stringent environmental and safety guidelines -- but oil is moving, demand continues and pipelines are the safest means to transport it.

 

This is a another example of why we need to move away from fossil fuels.

 

i hope i live to see when the world is at a point that it uses most of its energy from the sun and wind.

 

SMH. While other countries are working on 2nd and 3rd generations of high speed passenger trains that are nearly completely green and simultaneously slowly replacing airplanes as the primary method for long distance transportation, we're still using fossil fuel to transport fossil fuel. Thank you conservatives for literally trying to conserve 1950.

 

The conservatives don't want to use trains. They want to use pipelines.

As far as passenger trains they would be nice but what cities would you connect?

 

I love certain peoples' very, very selective definition of an "environmental tragedy"

 

My thoughts exactly. I work for a full service environmental company in the Houston area. Although the official numbers on gallons spilled is always much less than accurate, those numbers do not equal an "environmental tragedy".