The whole thing is fishy.
Republicans are trying to leverage it as a job creation and a step towards less energy dependence. Bad Obama!
Democrats are playing up environmental hazards. Good Obama!
Both are playing to their base and neither are addressing reality.
Reality is that we already get shale oil piped in from Canada and those pipes are not at full capacity nor are the refineries in the midwest that handles it. The proposed pipeline is to get the oil down to someone else's constituents down by the Gulf so they can toot their own horn about economic recovery after the gulf spill. It would certainly create a few jobs during construction but nowhere, and I mean nowhere, near enough to have dragged this into the national spotlight the way it has been. The oil could be trucked down to those refineries to create more jobs for a longer period of time if that was the goal.
Reality is that our cars are dumping far, and I mean far, more pollutants into the water and air than the proposed pipeline would. As are our oil and coal fired power plants. Democrats? No comment? Right... they don't really want to address any real issues. Reality is that importing more shale oil would have zero effect on the price of gas in the US despite what Republicans are saying.
Way to make a huge political lightning rod of a mountain out of a mole hill.
Build it or don't. Won't make much difference except to the refineries in the midwest that lose business, the ones in the gulf states that get it instead and to a couple thousand guys along the way who get a year or 2 of work out of it. Brilliant. Was it really worth all the fuss?
Must be an election year.