When I looked at the results for the Metro mock election, I saw that out of 245 people, 141 voted that America "should invest in clean, renewable sources of energy, especially solar and wind power". That's what President Obama believes as well. Climate change is something that is becoming more and more of an issue every day, and we are feeling the effects of it (Hurricane Sandy anyone?). The weather patterns we're dealing with have been very unusual. Two hurricanes within two years? That's a little unusual, don't you think?
As I was reading the results, I stumbled upon something called the Keystone XL pipeline. I had never heard of it before, but it's actually a big deal. This project is about constructing a pipeline stretching from Alberta, Canada, to the Gulf Coast in the United States. It's supposed to extract from the tar sands in Alberta to create fuel and send it to America. That way, we no longer have to depend on Asia for our fuel, because there has been a lot of controversy about that lately. Sounds like a good idea, doesn't it?
Well a lot of environmentalists don't think so. The Keystone fuel has been called "one of the ‘dirtiest’ and most polluting fuels on earth". It would pump 900,000 barrels of oil into the atmosphere every day. So as you can see, environmentalists strongly oppose this whole idea. People who support is claim that the fuel isn't that dirty, and that the emissions per barrel will be minimal. And it would be beneficial getting fuel from these rich sands because that way North America reaps the benefits of it, not the Middle East.
So it was interesting learning about this whole idea in general, and I think it does have good potential though. But no matter what, I agree with the majority of people at Metro about this-we need to invest in clean energy regardless of whatever else happens. We need to innovate, not rely so much on a depleting resource (fossil fuels).
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