Lestov16
Surprised there wasn't already a thread about this. I know Obama shut it down yesterday, but just wanted to express my thoughts on the whole matter:
Obama isn't stupid. There was only two ways the DAPL situation was going to end: Stopping the pipeline, or getting the military to assault and forcibly remove the protesters, and calling in the military would have been the ultimate sign of America's plutocratic authoritarianism and would have destroyed every shred of Obama's reputation. Out of pragmatism, he had no choice but to halt the pipeline.
But let's not ignore the bigger situation here. It would be easy to say protesters=good, DAPL=evil, but obviously the situation is far more complex than that. We Americans constantly decry the government for exploiting other countries for oil, yet when projects such as the DAPL occur here, we protest it as destruction of our land. Oil has to come from somewhere, and there is no way of getting it without some kind of environmental destruction. So if you like driving, you are going to eventually have to make the choice of either our country or foreign countries being environmentally destroyed for oil. We can't have it both ways.
It's easy to say we should just convert to electric or solar cars, but again, it is not that simple. A car is a multi-ton block of metal that needs A LOT of power to propel it at great speeds across great distances, power that electricity/solar energy can not provide as efficiently as oil, unless one desires a car battery as large as the car itself.
So unless you are willing to switch back to equestrian horse riding or camels, you're going to HAVE to choose where you want to get the oil to transport yourselves at the speed/distance you enjoy driving at. And it will either be here, or from foreign countries. So you can't decry the Keystone XL or DAPL, AND decry US oil profiteering in the Middle East. The oil has to come from SOMEWHERE......
Obama isn't stupid. There was only two ways the DAPL situation was going to end: Stopping the pipeline, or getting the military to assault and forcibly remove the protesters, and calling in the military would have been the ultimate sign of America's plutocratic authoritarianism and would have destroyed every shred of Obama's reputation. Out of pragmatism, he had no choice but to halt the pipeline.
But let's not ignore the bigger situation here. It would be easy to say protesters=good, DAPL=evil, but obviously the situation is far more complex than that. We Americans constantly decry the government for exploiting other countries for oil, yet when projects such as the DAPL occur here, we protest it as destruction of our land. Oil has to come from somewhere, and there is no way of getting it without some kind of environmental destruction. So if you like driving, you are going to eventually have to make the choice of either our country or foreign countries being environmentally destroyed for oil. We can't have it both ways.
It's easy to say we should just convert to electric or solar cars, but again, it is not that simple. A car is a multi-ton block of metal that needs A LOT of power to propel it at great speeds across great distances, power that electricity/solar energy can not provide as efficiently as oil, unless one desires a car battery as large as the car itself.
So unless you are willing to switch back to equestrian horse riding or camels, you're going to HAVE to choose where you want to get the oil to transport yourselves at the speed/distance you enjoy driving at. And it will either be here, or from foreign countries. So you can't decry the Keystone XL or DAPL, AND decry US oil profiteering in the Middle East. The oil has to come from SOMEWHERE......