Obama breaking out the veto pen today for Keystone

[traininthedistance]

Keystone has acquired totemic significance by far and above more than its actual impact.  It won't make that many jobs, but it also doesn't actually change the cost-benefit analysis for the tar sands that much.  I mean, right now, even with the pipe in place, projects up there just don't pencil out anyway.  But it's convenient to use it as a shibboleth for both sides: the environmentalists can "rally the troops" more effectively over symbolic megaprojects like this better than they can do so for unsexy but important structural things that would actually reduce fossil fuel usage like urban upzoning and cutting down on wasteful sprawl megaprojects (like say the bloated Tappan Zee, to harp on a pet peeve of mine).  Whereas the right can use it as a disingenuous wedge in their attempt to paint careful, science-conscious stewardship as "elitist" or "job-killing" or whatever.

In any case, it would be bad strategy for Obama to just roll over on this one, so Freedom Veto I guess.  Use it as a bargaining chip to beef up HSR funding or something, sure, I'd sign on to that.  I'll happily accept letting Keystone go through as part of a good-faith compromise process.  But don't give up something for nothing, man, have some backbone.

[traininthedistance]

This post is hard comfort for the many livelihoods that have been forever altered by said railroad collisions.  I don't mean to make judgements on your character, but I find it incredibly disturbing how in this post you almost wave off the deaths of dozens of people as collateral damage.

...

I wish I could be more optimistic about "railroad regulations", but so far the success of recent regulations leave me doubtful if kicking the can down the road is the right solution.

Man, just imagine if people were willing to use this sort of logic when it came to cars and trucks and buses.

People would be in the streets.  And not giving them back.

But, no, America is horrified when a freak accident happens on the rails or in the air, while the daily carnage (and let us be clear– carnage is the most appropriate word) on asphalt gets a yawn.

[traininthedistance]

Also, another ftr here, I don't want my above post to be misinterpreted as an blanket "f*** trains" post.  Trains obviously have a useful purpose in transporting people, goods, resources, etc. etc. etc. long distances.  Hell, I am not even entirely opposed to some very limited transportation of crude (ie Rome wasn't destroyed in one day).  What I am opposed to, however, is the mentality that says that expanding crude by rail is a very good thing.  It is not.  If anything it needs to be reduced (but not immediately done away with, again Rome wasn't destroyed in one day) and Americans need to get used to having more limited supplies of it (even if it means paying significantly higher costs).

What I was trying to point is that the sorts of safety regulations that rail is subject to are far stricter than for any other non-air mode (every train crash gets a federal investigation– how many truck crashes do?), and are often counterproductive– such as FRA materials requirements making our trains much heavier than other countries (rather than caring about signal modernization instead), a move that is ostensibly to make them safer but simply makes them more expensive and less energy-efficient.  One of those few cases where the neoliberal "bad regulations" line is actually correct.

While a pipeline would, indeed, be safer than shipping oil/gas by rail, freight rail is generally pretty safe and the common rhetoric that is scared of it while accepting crashes on our road system as just the price of doing business is backwards.