As long as we have gas that costs little per gallon, we aren’t going to change. And we are addicted to it. Your argument is essentially, “just give me one more hit.” In countries where oil costs more, people conserve. Not here. We drive huge cars, have inefficient houses, and build our towns in ways that require oil dependence. We are past the time where we need to make hard choices and start doing hard work–all of us, the President included. We are changing the chemistry of the planet in a way that is harmful to life. That is a much larger problem even the human construct of a deficit. There will always be an argument to delay, it just isn’t as good as the argument to start addressing the problem in earnest.

You are unaware of what the climate scientists are saying. I’m not surprised, as the anti-science campaign has been so successful. This is not about personal choices, or recycling, or any of that nebulous “I’m all for saving the environment, but…” bullshit. It looks like we have about ten years to get a real solution up and running, and if we get into the Tar Sands, according to James Hansen, like Brer Fox we will be stuck forever in this mess, maybe extinct. Go read what the climate scientists are saying, and stop reading the worthless journalism we have now which makes pretend match-ups between real science and denialist propaganda. We don’t have time for this. You need to do better than reading the made-up controversy and putting down the paper saying to yourself, “Gee, I like the scientist a little more, maybe I should drink less bottled water.
Carbon Tax. Cap and trade. Carbon ban. Or deus ex machina we stumble across spray-pain solar cells or cold fusion in three years. Other than that, we might all be dead.

The whole reason for this pipeline is so that Canada can find other markets outside North America. It will contribute nothing to our “energy security” nor will it cause lower prices for anything in the US. What it will do is re-affirm “gasism” as the new regime.

John, I had to pick on one of these to reply to, yours seemed eminently reasonable.
I have been involved in various ways with Alberta Oil Sands for my entire career and I am 56 now, I have friends who are engineers who graduated with me who have spent their entire careers perfecting ALL of the processes INCLUDING lessening its impact on the environment.
There is almost a tone (in these posts and this group’s messages) that suggests this is somehow ‘new’, the only thing that is new is additional pipeline capacity into the States.
The town of Fort McMurray had a population of 5000 when I first went there in 1975 and now I believe in is over 100,000 including a University and an active arts scene. The place is darn cold in the winter, no doubt and some of the best testing and research on providing building spaces to work and live in cold climates have been perfected in Canada and in Fort McMurray where its residents have to be innovative to keep their living expenses at a reasonable level. It may seem odd but residents there get no break on the price of fuel or plastics or any of the derivatives of oil (which the activists continue to disregard), they pay more per liter because much of it is refined 300 miles south in Edmonton.
When I moved to Edmonton in 1975 it was already known that the oil reserves there and in several other major pockets in areas a few hundred miles from Fort Mac exceeded the Middle East, the problem then was the cost barrel. Now engineers have brought the price barrel down to lower or about equal that of Middle East Oil plus it can be pipelined vs shipped over the oceans to the refineries.
During the 80′s and 90′s the capacity to mine the oil has grown steadily and there are astonishing plans to expand further with a 1000 year lifespan being considered IF they increase production by over 100 TIMES! At present I believe they mine 1.1 Million Barrels per day and I think that former company Great Canadian Oil Sands was producing 10,000 Barrels per day in 1975.
Oil is needed in so many parts of our lives ASIDE from burning it for energy. To keep padding the bank accounts of dictatorial misogynistic Sheiks and Mullahs is beyond the pale in terms of accountability to society, these activists are on such a narrow and misguided track, I am deeply saddened by their misdirection. Perhaps in a few hundred years sun and wind might provide for us but today, the costs would render the entire industrialized world dirt poor and the poor nations would surpass us because they wouldn’t self impose suicide by environmental insanity.