Today’s front page of USA Today:
The paper adds that “Obama was putting politics ahead of jobs and the nation’s energy security by rejecting the pipeline now, Republicans and oil industry leaders said.” It closes with this:
Business leaders and Republicans say approving the project now would create as many as 20,000 jobs for an ailing U.S. economy and lessen dependence on foreign oil.
“This political decision offers hard evidence that creating jobs is not a high priority for this administration,” said Tom Donohue, the president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
If the argument in favor of this pipeline is that it creates jobs, then reporters should look into the claims about job creation. USA Today doesn’t do that, but others have. A piece by CBS reporter Alain Sherter (1/18/12) explained that the 20,000 figure, while lower than some estimates, still has some problems:
But subsequent analysis suggests that Keystone’s job-creating potential is more modest. The U.S. State Department calculated last year that the underground pipeline would add 5,000 to 6,000 U.S. jobs. One independent review of Keystone puts that number even lower, with the Cornell University Global Labor Institute finding that the pipeline would add only 500 to 1,400 temporary construction jobs. The authors of the September report also said that much of the new employment stemming from Keystone would be outside the U.S.
Transcanada itself cast doubt on its employment forecast when a vice president for the company told CNN last fall that the 20,000 jobs Keystone would create were temporary and that the project would likely yield only “hundreds” of permanent positions.
Another reason for the discrepancy appears to stem from what that 20,000 figure really means. As Transcanada has conceded, its estimate counted up “job years” spent on the project, not jobs. In other words, the company was counting a single construction worker who worked for two years on Keystone as two jobs, lending fuel to critics who said advocates of the pipeline were overstating its benefits.
The inflated claims will continue to fly, though–especially when reporters don’t push back.
The irony of all this is that if Dear Misleader’s re-elected (the most likely outcome), he’ll use the same talking points of job creation and energy security to justify his approval of a rerouted pipeline.
Of course, his election victory will be owed in part to the support of “the environmental community”, which is why he rejected the current proposal, and why he sought to initially delay his decision.
But before he does the dirty deed, we’ll witness deja vu all over again, as the perpetually naive gather in front of the White House, once again appealing to his phantom conscience, and urging him to “do the right thing”.
I don’t mean to question their sincerity. It’s just that some people never learn.
And this world doesn’t have time for such a long learning curve, does it?
As the sign says …
THERE IS NO PLANET B
Obama didn’t reject the pipeline. He rejected the timeline. That means he broke the very law he signed.
WE NEED SECURE OIL!!!Any knuckle heads out there hear that?At a time when mideast oil and Iran are heating up around us, and so many libs are kissing Ah ma need a jobs feet….now is the time to put another kink in the line.It is a finger in Canada’s eye.And it cost us jobs.Now i will leave the floor to you to articulate why we should not have this pipe line.
NPR is guilty of parroting these very tidbits of Pipeline (and Republican) support too.
Tar Sands Oil is filth. It is dirty, toxic sludge. It requires a tremendous amonut of energy to extract, process and transport – an incredibly large carbon foot print. It will be piped (we know how safe, well maintained and reliable Big Oil’s pipelines are) across some valuable, pristine land and aquifers. It will be processed on our Gulf Coast (and we know how safe, well maintained and reliable Big Oil’s refineries are). It will be shipped to another country (and we know…). It will line the pockets of Big Oil and Speculators.
Speaking of jobs NO media including FAIR will talk about the grass roots idea of a National Hiring Day that would put thousands to work in one day.
For one year I’ve been pushing a country wide National Hiring Day, a jobs fair for the US. No one has talked about it – none of these jobs jobs jobs people will talk about National Hiring Day. At some point it just gets bizarre.
National Hiring Day – This is a day that corporations are encouraged to hire new employees. Corporations are called on to put patriotism first and help their country in
hard times. Those corporations that cannot hire, are asked to stop firing for that month.
This helps all and requires very very little up front help from any one corporation that in the end should help them too.
I love your since of humor, michael.
michaele:
What makes you think Tar Sands oil is going to the US market? It goes to Texas where it is refined and then it is sold on the world market. China could ultimately wind up with the oil. Or are you suggesting we then just go up north and take the stuff from the Canucks?
Good post, Anthony. My sentiments exactly. I believe that one of the goals of both the Keystone XL pipeline and hydraulic fracking is to get these products on a world market and let the world market determine the price. I believe the price will then go up for all of us, as China and other emerging markets drive up the price. This energy isn’t just for us (but the adverse impacts are). It’s for the world.
Doug, I hear you but I know you’ve looked at the Republican side and things look worse there. Where do we turn?
We need honest information to have an honest debate.
The pipeline is about further opening up the environmentally-sensitive areas of Alberta to high-cost energy extraction that only makes sense because we are almost out of oil. Actually burning this oil would amount to “game over” for the climate because of the carbon added to the atmosphere.
The pipeline, constructed and operated by a company with a history of oil spills, would be over the primary source of drinking water for the Midwest and would cross through enviornmentally-sensitive areas that would be destroyed forever.
The purpose of the pipeline is to bring more oil to the Gulf for refining and export, not primarily for meeting US demand, where it would not fetch as good a price on the market.
When we have honest information out there, conservative Nebraska does not want the pipeline, save for politicians who have received lots of oil money and local unions who have been lied to about the number of jobs created locally.
No wonder they need to omit and lie to build support for this boondoggle.
Agree, tishado. Drill, baby, drill, so we can get this stuff on a world market. It’s all about the money and the money is never enough.
Most of the easy-to-reach oil has already been tapped, I believe. What’s left is the oil that’s very difficult and very environmentally damaging to extract. It would indeed amount to “game over” for the climate.
The pipeline already exists, it goes from Canada to Indianna, they could build more refining capacity in Indianna and put that gasoline on the US market and reduce prices – but after all the oil industry are enemy terrorists who hate Americans.
Plus its your own right wing governors who dont want the thing in their backyard, but you expect Obama to take away their states rights.
Elaine, we turn to ourselves. The lesser of two evils is, by definition, still evil … and a case can be made that the sedative effect of this presidency on those who by any rational measure should be raising holy hell over its transgressions is, in fact, a greater sin.
At best, electoral politics is a limited tactic employed to stave off the worst conditions for true change. Frederick Douglass said, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will.”
Our only hope, if we still have any, is to find our strength in each other, to understand our obligation to each other, and to act with each other.
We have to ask ourselves the question, “Just what the hell are we here for?”
If the answer is to do what our conscience demands, and our courage allows, and never be satisfied with the limits of either, then that takes us beyond the limits of this pantomime of democracy, doesn’t it?
I don’t pretend to know the perfect path to take. I only know it’s a road less traveled.
And it’s well past time to start walking.
Let me see…Obama is going to stop something that the detractors on here believe will create jobs…at least 20 of them anyway….and he would have what reason to stop job creation that can only help him? Tens of thousands of Americans who aren’t paid by the oil companies don’t believe this pipeline will create many jobs at all. The Keystone XL deal will create some temporary jobs, and much, much fewer permanent jobs….maybe 20….except for the thousands of people who will have to clean up the pipeline breaks when they happen…Canada had 19 pipeline breaks last year. The Pipeline will endanger our country and our air and water in ways that even regular oil doesn’t do (Google the Michigan/Kalamazoo River Tar Sands Pipeline Spill to get some idea of how impossible these tar sands spills are to deal with). We are not talking about light sweet crude here that they can at least suck up or soak up. We’re talking thick dirty, almost impossible to clean up heavy oil sand, mixed with heavy chemical toxins to make it “flowable” through the pipeline. Do you’re homework and stop drinking the Oil Whore Machine’s Kool Aid. And if nothing else realize that I, and thousands of others, called and wrote and emailed and marched to stop this from going forward. The majority of Americans have made it clear we want clean, safe, non-polluting energy sources and don’t want to foul our land and rivers and bodies and lungs with the tar sands poison. There are thousands and thousands of jobs to be had by rebuilding our infrastructure, working on renewable energy sources like solar and wind and water, and retrofitting existing buildings to save energy. I do not want, and from what I’ve seen, most Amercans don’t want this pipeline.
Bravo, Donna Crane! All of the support for this pipeline is based on partial, or inaccurate information intentionally perpetrated by the vested interests. There is NO benefit from this pipeline for America to compare with the benefits and jobs created if we just get on with renewable, clean energy technologies and rebuilding our infrastructure.
To Doug Latimer, cynicism accomplishes nothing and is ultimately a cop out. Until we give a Democratic president a Democratic Congress with a SUPERmajority, we can’t blame Obama. We must blame ourselves. That’s the way our govt. works. Never before in our history has a president faced such virulent obstructionism. On the bright side, we’re on the cusp of realizing the power of united action (hooray for Occupy and the 99%ers!) and now have the means and the will to connect, organize and generally raise hell. That beats money, and even politics, any day!
The whole “rejection” is a crock, nothing more than a cheap political trick … which is all it takes to fool the yuppie pseudoenviros. The SOB explained that the oil transport outfit could reapply later, then — after the election, acourse — get “proper” environmental review by our rubber-stamp reviewing agencies, and build the thing, after obummer is safely ensconced in the White House for another four years of doing the bidding of the wealthy. Much ado about nothing, but the dumbass, authoritarian upper middle class enviros are singing hosannas, and giving their votes, to the phony bastard as a result. They’ve already been sending out mass emails instructing us poor, dumb Working Class types to send emails of thanks to the skinny-assed, lying sonofabitch.
And, michael e, I see you’re still dumber than a log.
HReading: I have the same concerns but which phony bastard do we vote for? I think they’ve all been vetted and approved by the 1% before they ever come before us and anyone who’s not, is simply marginalized out of serious consideration.
Sherry, I understand the temptation to live in the fantasy world of an Obama campaign ad, but as awful as it is, I try to live in the real world.
I imagine you’re relatively young. I’m not. I’ve seen this farce played out time and time again.
That doesn’t make me cynical, and I’m not sure how you could label my comments as such. I don’t mindfuck myself, and I try not to mindfuck anyone else.
Facing up to the fact that the likelihood is that this planet is doomed doesn’t in any way deter me from trying to do what I can to make what time I have left actually mean something, and I can’t do that by blinding myself to the reality before me.
If you want to persist in twisting that into the copout of cynicism, I can do nothing to stop you.
I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing, along with the folks I’m doing it with, and try to effect what positive change we can, for you and for everyone else on this rock.
The pipeline would create about 2,000 (not permanent) jobs and destroy thousands of permanent jobs in the farm sector. It’s sad that so many posters here parrot the lies of the oil lobby and Repugs.
Not only will this project create few jobs and massive risks for Americans, the pipe will be imported from India and the oil delivered to Gulf refineries will be exported. How’s that for reducing our dependence on foreign oil?
Elaine, don’t vote for any of the phonies … it’s what about half the country has been doing for decades. And, unlike what the propagandists on TV and in print would have us believe, they are not lazy, not stupid, not ignorant. They are just fed up with the whole pack of lies that we are fed from cradle to grave. The only reason I stay registered to vote is for local ballot measures and offices, where my vote may actually mean something, and where there are often real choices.
In 2012, I will either write in Elizabeth Warren, whom I would hate to see corrupted by a term in the odoriferous cesspool we call the senate, or, Rocky Anderson. Last time I wrote in Cynthia McKinney/Rosa Clemente. Ralph Nader was another choice in 2008, actually ON THE BALLOT in all 50 states if I recall correctly. There ARE choices, if only people would make them. Unfortunately, the mentality here in the U.S., a result of very effective brainwashing by the rulers, is that the false choices they present us with every two years are our only choices. Talk about defeatist, robotic compliance with their will. What a bunch of willfully ignorant fools.
“…to reduce dependence on foreign oil” Hmmm. I thought Canada was a foreign country, although maybe it IS, in reality , a northern province of the U.S.
HReading: I understand what you say but I cannot watch the Senate become Republican controlled as well as the House. We see the extreme ideology of this House now. Even the most common sense regulatory reforms with regard to Wall St., environmental protection, consumer protection, taxation, etc., are rejected. The House voted NOT to end tax breaks for companies that outsource jobs. They voted NOT to end oil subsidies. John Boehner promised jobs upon election and we still wait for the jobs while they talk about drill, baby, drill, reduce corporate taxes, reduce capital gains, too much regulation, make permanent the tax cuts for the rich, privatize Social Security, end Medicare, cut any program that helps ordinary Americans, etc. This is the Worst.House.Ever.
Compassionate, conservative Republican governors are now means testing people who apply for food stamps. In one state, for example, if you are below 60, you can have no more than $2,000 in savings (if above 60, no more than about $3,250). More than that amount and no food for you. Go to a local food pantry instead (which is having problems keeping shelves stocked).
So if you’re old and saving for your own burial, or trying to pay the next big heating bill, or have a medical bill, or just want money for an emergency, don’t count on everything above $3,250. If above 60, forget about saving and trying to pull yourself out of poverty. No food for you either.
Well, Elaine, just what did the democraps do when they had a majority in both houses, not to mention a wealth-worshiper in chief, except claim that it takes 60 votes to get anything through the senate (rather than make the SOB rethugs actually filibuster until they dropped)? Where’s EFCA? Where’s a living wage? Where’s single payer? They didn’t even try. Sorry, but I don’t buy into the myth that they are a lesser evil. They and their fellow corporation-pimped servants of wealth are one and the same. The only difference is rhetorical. Hell, even democraps, like evil Pelosi, use the word “entitlement”, which was exclusively rethug in the 60s. Voting democrap only prolongs the agony. Let’s get this mess over with and start again. I look forward to seeing “leaders” from “both” parties dangling from lampposts, where they belong, right next to their wealthy funders.
If Canada has all this oil up there, and it does, why are we still being robbed by the rug heads in the East and South America?
The big problem with the XL Pipeline is the Ogallala Aquifer, which supplies water to 8 states. OIL goes in the water and soil… and it never comes out. EIGHT states and the peopple within those states would be impacted by polluted water. wow. Oh yes, and the Yelllowstone “spill” has now been underestimated. Imagine that. AND that pipe didn’t just have a leak, it ripped apart.
Leaky oil pipes across the breadbasket of America… and the breadbasket for the world? Wow, MacDonalds would have to create a real special sauce to get anyone to eat that strange food. I can just see the new food ads now” NATURAL Oil Nuggets… straight from the Earth to YOU!””
You know, in the anicient world wars, it was popular to burn the crops and poisoning the water supply was really popular…oh wait, we still do that. BUT NOW, we want to do it to ourselves! I understand that the GOP in Congress is going to put all of their energy into changing the Constitution and going around that presidential veto. Wow. Imagine that.
All those unemployed people and some politicians want to focus wasting time on the XL and on the jobs that weren’t really jobs with XL. They should really stay away from that blame game thingy, because after, all which governors refused to take the high speed rail job money? Plenty of all kinds of jobs there! Geez, media, you forget the recent past way too quickly.
HReading: I do see a difference between the two parties. The Republican Party is no longer the kind of conservative party I remember. They are extreme and radical in so many ways. They are ideologues posing as conservatives.
Recall, for example, the contentious battle over raising the debt ceiling. The raising of the debt ceiling was not to incur more debt. It was to meet debt obligations that we already had. The battle over that resulted in a downgrading of our credit rating which, as I understand, makes it even more expensive to pay off debt because more interest can be charged. What one is announcing to creditors is that you can’t be trusted to pay the debt you owe.
These ideologues have no qualms about wrecking this country in order to bring down one man. I have never lived under a party so extreme and partisan. Imagine if they capture both House and Senate.
Elaine, are you one of those who voted for Reagan?
HReading: Yeah, I know, I really sound like a Reagan supporter, saint that he was.
Well, Elaine, the democraps of today are a lot like him. Hell, even obummer praised him during his campaign.
Well, HReading, I, too, have issues with the Democrats of today but I have far more issues with the extreme radicals that represent the Republican Party of today.
Enjoy your dreams.
I have no dreams. However, when you have the Senate Minority Leader say that “the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president,” that is startling. It isn’t the recovery of the country and the people in it that would be the most important things to achieve but getting rid of the president.
So you have a major political party having the gall to say, in effect, that it really doesn’t care what happens to this country–the country can go to hell in a hand basket– as long as the president is a one-termer. That is a radical position–some might say almost treasonous. This, to me, is not normal. This is not a normal party.
Come hell or high water, they refuse to compromise on anything. ‘No’ to virtually every appointment. Filibuster everything. Hold the unemployed hostage over getting an extension of unemployment benefits unless tax cuts for the rich (one of the reasons we have a big debt) are extended. Hold the country hostage over raising the debt ceiling, not to create more debt, but to pay bills already owed, and watch our credit rating lowerd. ‘No’ to every idea except fighting for tax cuts for rich people and keeping a bloated military budget.
When Republicans first assumed office in the House, they spent weeks introducing bills to restrict access to abortions. Weren’t jobs and the economy supposed to be the priorities? John Boehner promised jobs. Where are the jobs? In China?– as they refused to even end tax breaks for corporations outsourcing jobs. Even end subsidies to oil companies.Who are they representing?
I know that big money has co-opted many in Congress, both Republican and Democrat but this radical Republican crowd is unlike anything I’ve seen before.
Elaine try to see it our way.A man comes to your neighborhood and says he’s gonna knock your house down ,and put in a giant pool filled with pink Flamingos.He walks around singing please pass the ketchup- I think its gonna rain.He poops in a bucket that he balances on his head while juggling.Point to my silliness….You and your neighbors would say “first things first- we have to get rid of this nut”.You would disagree with his every move, and no you would not join in and go along.WE conservatives have had to live with lunacy for four years.That is how WE feel.Getting rid of the village idiot is first on our list.
As far as the oil…..Newt said today it is” beyond stupid to of blocked this.”That about says it all.
Yep, hurting working Americans and retirees is a great way to get back at the president you don’t like. As for Newt, he’s another anti-Earth president. Nothing to see here.
Elaine, apparently your eyes have been closed for decades.
michael e, you’re the personification of beyond stupid.
HReading: Jump to whatever conclusion you want about my closed eyes–whatever that is– based on whatever information you have garnered from what I said that would cause you to jump to that. I can’t control that and in the big scheme of things, does it really matter?
Now let me tell you what I am saying–both parties are corrupted by big money but one party is not only corrupted but dangerous to whatever might be left of this democracy, IMHO. To constantly filibuster and stonewall against everything that is put before it, is harmful and unproductive to this entire nation. It hurts working Americans in efforts to grow new jobs. It hurts the most vulnerable in our society—the old, the sick, the retired, the unemployed. We have one party that is either unwilling or unable to cooperate in any way, to compromise in any way, to resolve differences in any way. They are rigid and domineering in their positions. It’s their way or the highway. This is an extremely unhealthy place to be.
Now, if from that, you want to draw the conclusion that my eyes are closed, as I said, I can’t control that.
Elaine, it’s just that you put the supposedly “old” conservatives on an undeserved pedestal compared to their counterparts of today — as do many who voted for Reagan. Remember those bastards were the spawn of conservatives who opposed every action of the New Deal and the legislation that implemented it, and undermined it at every opportunity from the day those laws took effect. Neither they, nor their successors (your good guys) ever stopped trying to get repealed, or blocked, all the social programs that you support. In short, those conservatives you yearn for were working behind the scenes for decades to con working people into identifying with the needs of conservatives rather than their own. And, they were successful to the point that they can now publicly call for ending the “welfare” state, say right out loud what they and their predecessors would only dare speak in private, and get plenty of support from us commoners. Yet, for you, these are different people. They’re not. They’re just the same old conservatives they always were.
There’s not a damned thing decent about any of them, though they act so pious and caring. They are nothing more than today’s royalists and track their lineage to the likes of Alexander Hamilton. And, if you think the democraps are any better, then you’re kidding yourself. They are simply engaged in bad theater with their “opponents” when they wail about bipartisanship (politics, like legal systems, are adversarial by nature), and the inability to get legislation passed … even when they control both houses and the presidency. The whole mess is a big, bad joke on us nobodies, and they just love it when people like you respond as you do. It’s ensures maintenance of the status-quo.
Perhaps we misunderstand each other. Reagan was the beginning of the end for the middle class, as far as I’m concerned. Don’t think for a minute that I supported him. So-called conservatives have been working for years to undo the New Deal. I understand that. My point is that I have never seen such a terrible House in all my years. They not only disrespect this president but they disrespect the American people. They clearly represent corporations and the 1% and they are right in the faces of ordinary Americans in expressing this.
Perhaps you’re right in that they no longer have to work quietly behind the scenes to show their true colors. They can now be up-front about it. They can scream “You lie!” at the president when he delivers a State of the Union address. Alito can mutter (loud enough) “Not true!” when the president criticizes “Citizens United.” In fact, the “Party of No New Jobs” goes out of its way to do this because I believe it’s red meat for their base.
I would hate to think that I was a part of this.
Elaine, democraps are no better. And, the guy was right in calling that bastard a liar. He is. None of them deserve an iota of respect. Holding office does not entitle one to respect, no matter what lies we are told to the contrary. It’s just submission to a demand for royalist obeisance in disguise.
The only middle class in this country are those highly paid scum — middle management and above — who directly serve the wealthy rulers. The rest of us are Working Class. Why have Working Class people fallen for the lie that they are middle class for the last 50 years? Such gullibility boggles my little mind.
Most terrible congress? How about the congress that approved the Gulf of Tonkin resolution? The one that passed Taft-Hartley over the Truman veto (a more plausible starting point for the demise of the Working Class. Reagan was simply a symptom of how bad things had already become by the early 80s)? Congress has never been anything but a servant of wealth. People need to purge their minds of the myths — of greatness in particular — taught to them in school and reinforced by corporate media.
I don’t know how to repond to this. I’d have to study the issue of the “American Dream” from an entirely new perspsective and the question might be “Was there ever an American Dream?”
Speaking from my own experience (and I know one person’s experience is just that–one person’s experience), I started with virtually nothing and was able to work my way up the ladder. There were opportunities and social mobility for me, and others, which I don’t see today in this country.
I had always believed that things really fell apart for us when wealthy conservatives, seeing the passage of Medicare, thought this country was becoming a little too “socialistic” for their own good and that the ordinary person was getting a little too much of the pie, and began capturing media outlets, establishing conservative think tanks, and working for the election of people who would represent their interests, not ours. The zenith of their efforts came with the election of Reagan and with it, trickle-down economics, reduced taxes for the rich, the consolidation of wealth, and turning us into a debtor nation. That doesn’t mean efforts weren’t underway before this time but it became obvious then. It is so obvious today that it’s virtually thrown in our faces, without any fear of the consequences.
The dream was mostly PR to keep us commoners in line. Kaputalism is the greatest pyramid scheme ever conceived, so most are destined not to achieve greatness, or anything near it. Sure, a few could make it big, but generally what your parents achieved was the best predictor of what you would achieve. The dream came closest to be fulfilled for the Working Class in general during and following the second half of the world war of the 20th Century, up through the 1960s. It’s been downhill since, for the Working Class at least.
I graduated high school in 1968 and enrolled at Cal just after Reagan began his assault on the University of California System. When I started, fees were $88 per quarter. When I left, in 1974, they had risen to $213, over double. Democraps acquiesced to the onslaught and now what was once the greatest public university in the world has become, to paraphrase the words of the current Berkeley Chancellor (a Canadian), a private university subsidized by the state. In the span of 40 years, higher education, rather than being easily attainable for Working Class kids like me, has become the province almost solely of the middle and upper classes. Had I been born a few years later, I’d not have been able to get the degree that saved my ass as far as getting a job went. I’d probably have spent my life working at a job with declining wages. Yet these days, the Chamber of Commerce bawls proudly about $15 or $20 per hour jobs (made by the imaginary “job creators”), which are just about equivalent to what I was making working part-time in a filling station, in 1969, while attending college, $2.50 per hour, then considered a low wage in a dead-end job. As I’ve said, the gullibility and willingness of Working Class people to identify more with the needs of the wealthy rather than its own needs simply boggles my mind, and has done so for the last four decades. I’d love to rub the nose of the rich asshole who coined the term American Dream in a pile of dog manure.
How many anti capitalists does it take to turn a lightbulb….or I guess in this day in age remove all lightbulbs.Anyway of course I think Reagan was amazing.The new deal was a disaster that lengthened the depression into a great depression.And there is no other kind of successful economic structure except trickle down.What is it you believe in trickle up?Poor paying the bills?H Reading and Elaine answer one simple question.Are you socialists?Tim has come clean and said he is.Let me show you how it is done.I AM A TEA PARTY CONSERVATIVE with very open social views.Now the floor is yours
since the light bulb phase out was written into law as part of the energy independence and security act of 2007 by a bi-partisan congress and signed by bush43, they must all be anti-capitalists…
Missing from media coverage, left and right, is this: Mining the tar sands in Alberta is destroying untold numbers of acres of boreal forest. The negative impact on wildlife alone is astonishing, yet only the political thing was found to be of interest by the media.