eshope

This isn't an either/or decision about pipelines vs. rail/trucks. Rather, the tar sands industry wants it all, and is fighting the clean energy alternatives that will replace oil. As I indicated in a reply to another post in this thread, Alberta is landlocked. The tar sands industry wants to rapidly expand tar sands from the current ~2 million bpd of production to around 6 million bpd by 2030, and 9+ million bpd further down the road. In order to do that, they need ALL the pipeline and rail capacity that has been proposed, and more. So, a rejection of Keystone XL does in fact mean that the tar sands that would be transported through Keystone XL would have to stay in the ground. An economist at UC Berkeley has done some great analysis on how Keystone XL would in fact cause an expansion of tar sands and the associated climate change pollution http://energyathaas.wordpress.com/2014/03/24/it-just-doesnt-add-up-why-i-think-not-building-keystone-xl-will-likely-leave-a-billion-barrels-worth-of-bitumen-in-the-ground/

You should also know that the first Keystone pipeline spilled 14 times in the U.S. in just its first year of operation, with many additional spills in Canada!

It's pretty amazing how farmers, tribal members, First Nations, environmental groups, and many more are all fighting Keystone XL, together. What are the factors other than land and water that are causing people to fight so strongly against Keystone XL and tar sands oil?

You can generally search the incident registry and find all the spills at http://www.nrc.uscg.mil/ but it is currently down. For now, you can see p. 33 of http://keystonepipeline-xl.state.gov/documents/organization/221172.pdf. This was a big enough problem that Keystone was actually issued a Corrective Action Order several years ago http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/aswift/the_keystone_tar_sands_pipelin.html

Yes- pipeline and rail accidents are both tragic -- and this is why we need to be moving to clean energy, rather than embracing dirty fuels of the past like tar sands oil. They not only are very risky spill-wise, but cause more climate change pollution than conventional fuels, and even more climate change pollution than clean energy!