What would a pipeline across America have to do with Cambodia?

Conventional wisdom: The Keystone Pipeline? Most people agree that it would be good for the US economy. It would create jobs, give a secure supply of oil in case of a Mideast disaster, but many believe that it would be, at least potentially, harmful to the environment. Now, I suppose that if a big earthquake hit, and some of the oil we took out of the ground in Canada went back into the ground a few hundred miles south, that would be messy.

But here’s what the public doesn’t know, or doesn’t care about. If that oil doesn’t come to the USA, where it will be refined and used with strict environmental oversight, it will go to China, and other developing countries in Asia, including Cambodia, and here everything burns dirty.

The USA is shutting down, relatively clean, coal powered electric plants, and sending the coal to China. China is expected to add about 160 new coal-fired plants to the 620 operating now, within four years. They do the same with oil. It’s transported in supertankers which are floating environmental disasters. The proposal is for tanker traffic that will sail through waters off Canada’s B.C.’North Coast, taking crude from the Alberta oilsands to developing markets in Asia where they burn the oil dirty. Want to ship them something? How about compressed natural gas and propane?

Here’s the point: The most environmentally friendly thing we could do for the planet is build the Keystone Pipeline. Yet what is the conventional wisdom? “The Keystone Pipeline will harm the environment.” Not according to my roofing sheets!

Five year old roofing sheets on a FCOP church home cafeteria.