By Matt Rooney | The Save Jersey Blog
As The Wall Street Journal‘s Holman Jenkins stingingly put it back in February, Save Jerseyans, “[a]ctivists get their jollies blocking pipeline construction, but the crude still flows through your neighborhood.”
And the current forms of conveyance – by rail and barge – are approximately seven times more likely to result in a spill than pipelines which, as I’ve demonstrated for you in the past, are presently so numerous in this country that we’d all be dead already if pipelines were truly environmentally-poisonous.
So why are politicians on BOTH sides of aisle throwing a major hissy fit over the construction of the common sense Pilgrim Pipeline, a New Jersey/New York regional project designed to help begin to dramatically improve the Northeast’s out-of-date energy infrastructure while also making us more resistant to price-spike inducing weather events like Hurricane Sandy?
I’m afraid it’s for much the same reason that the Keystone Pipeline out west and the BL England Pipeline right here in South Jersey ran into trouble, as well as any attempts to drill offshore and expand environmentally-friendly nuclear energy (see the 2013 Pandora’s Promise documentary on Netflix for great background) never seem to gain traction:
(1) radical green ideologues spooking (2) a woefully uninformed populace.
It’s pathetic. Rather than explain the science behind this stuff to our voters, and the clear benefits, our politicians trip over themselves to reinforce the false premise that pipelines/drilling/fracking endanger green suburbia… the only thing they’re missing is evidence! The actual end result of this silliness, of course, is higher energy costs for suburban residents all because of an emotional reaction, and manipulation of this reaction, in response to a complete non-threat. All because politicians are reacting to public sentiment rather than trying to shape it as they’re supposed to do.
You know where I stand. We can’t carp about America’s energy infrastructure issues but then whine “not in my backyard” without facts to back it up.
Research, then make up your own mind…
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How about reason #3 – people through whose community the pipe will pass? That’s me, for one. The line will instantly halve my property value, and good luck suing the energy company. But yeah, someone will pocket a tidy profit.
YUP – America needs to grow. To do that, we need energy. And here is clean energy that is readily available and cheap. Besides, so few (not at I have heard of anyway) situations of underground pipelines blowing up. Would you rather have railway cars blow up, which they frequently do?
YUP – America needs to grow. To do that, we need energy. And here is clean energy that is readily available and cheap. Besides, so few (not at I have heard of anyway) situations of underground pipelines blowing up. Would you rather have railway cars blow up, which they frequently do?
As one who doesn’t plan to sell, I would welcome a property value reduction to cut my high taxes. The pipeline itself is a curious project with its two way system and one planned extension going to Linden where there is no customer. It won’t replace any rail or barge traffic, it is a supplement. The company building it has no track record in this field and little is to be found on it. Finally, the safeguards for oil pipelines are state responsibilities and NJ has little control in place (Keystone is international and that is why the Feds are involved). I’m all for the free market and am not a tree hugger. This project has an odor to it.
Do you have factual evidence that your property value will drop in half? And, will you complain when energy prices go through the roof again?
Waiting for that factual evidence
Fracking crickets!
Not in my backyard say all the GOP controlled towns that do not want the pipeline.