JELTEZ42, you make a lot of good points, but what is the "better electric car technology" you refer to? all that's been been mentioned here is lead-acid or some varieties of lithium, and indeed they do have problems, including the finite supply of lithium. Do you mean the EV1? I think that was lithium. Or are you suggesting minimal battery but onboard fulltime electricity generation - maybe a natural gas-powered generator, maybe Stirling cycle? What is your solution?
(Mine might be a teeny tiny thorium salts reactor, maybe even no battery at all, if that's possible: if not onboard, then lots of them to recharge the grid. Glad to see former CEO of e-Ink is thinking about that - the grid-powering type. Look upTransatomic Power and see the video under 'Company.' These solutions make the whole tar sands thing look like the dinosaur it is.)

Rich people need the money. They have life styles to maintain and can't survive with out it. Poor people going without drinkable water suffering thirst is nothing compared to rich people going without money and suffering a lack of wine and caviar. But KXL is win win for wall street. Big profits from the crude and big profits from taxpayer funded bottled water, water filtration and water supply systems after a few good spills. The point is to poison the water! For a few of the crazies, just like Revelations says they should.

First a correction. Alison Redford is the Premier of the Province of Alberta, not the Prime Minister of Canada. I know it is a small point but Canadians do like it when our American neighbours get the titles of our politicians correct.
Second, there is a very significant opposition to both the Keystone Pipeline to the Texas gulf coast and to the Northern Gateway Pipeline to the Pacific Coast. I would give the Northern Gateway at best a 50/50 chance of getting built. It must cross many First Nations tribal lands in British Columbia. These are mostly opposed and, unlike in the USA, their treaty make them sovereign nations. Unless the Federal government unilaterally changes the treaties (not likely) or moves in troops (also unlikely) it is going to be a long time before this pipeline gets built.

It is one thing to talk about the Ogalalla aquifer and it is another to start putting numbers to it. This is not just one aquifer, but an interconnected chain of them running from South Dakota, through Wyoming, Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and into Texas and New Mexico. Then we are talking about 160 millions gallons removed per sq. mile each year in many areas. Now lets talk about ground water recharge for this area (how fast will the aquifer fill up). That rate varies from .24 inches in Texas to 6 inches in Kansas per year. More water is going out than coming in. That will make a spill much worse.

Here's one reason why the Keystone XL is a bad idea. A major spill could impact water quality over 8 states. It will impact farm irrigation and will severely impact farm production. And since the recharge rates are low, the oil will stay around for a long time. Plus we do not have technologies to "clean up" aquifers. The Saginaw Bay aquifer is still contaminated from oil drilling in the 70's and not one drop of oil spilled.

Another reason has nothing to do with environmental, it is pure politics. The Enbridge pipeline in Michigan (still leaking and still not totally cleaned up) is set to see the flow of oil cut off. The oil that was going to Illinois refineries is now going to head to Montreal. Why, because Canada decided they were better off keeping their oil than selling it to Midwest refineries. The sharp people know where I am going. The Keystone XL is supposed to bring Canadian oil to Houston for export to South America. This is in Canadian papers. A small fraction of it will be sold to the US. Now here it the bad part and what Mitten's and friends won't tell you. Canada is currently selling Alberta oil to Midwest refineries cheaper than market due to high transportation costs. With the Keystone, no need to take the loss and no need to sell to the US. As if that was not enough, Canada is building a pipeline to the Pacific to sell to Asia. Hmmm, who's to say that Keystone won't get turned off in favour of the Pacific line. Just remember, Canadian oil is flowing to Montreal now rather than flowing to Joliet and Midwest gas prices are in the $3.70's. Canada could turn off the tap to Keystone any time they wanted.

So either side you wish to be on, Keystone XL is a horrible idea. Combined, it is a disaster that will happen. And those jobs Mittens and the GOP talks about. According to CBC, the real number is 200 construction short-term and 50 operational/maintenance and these long-term jobs will be Canadians, not Americans.

Keystone is not in America's best interests economically and most certainly not environmentally.

The only real way to circumvent these types of catastrophies is for a ground up movement to change from gasoline cars to electric cars and put solar panels on your home. Then you can significantly reduce your dependence on fossil fuel and all its attendant problems. Nothing will come from the top down, as the complexity of delivering tens of millions of barrels 0f oil a day necessarily entails all these failures, because it is an inefficient and vastly imperfect old technology. We must move beyond the Oil Age and into the Solar Age....just like we moved beyond the stone age.

Running the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline through the environmentally-sensitive Sand Hills of Nebraska where the Ogalalla aquifer could be irreversibly poisoned was such an intelligent plan by the old, billionaire Kochroaches.