Obama did the right thing

Yesterday the Obama administration did the right thing by rejecting the expansion of the Keystone oil sands pipeline.  Republicans need to realize that something of this magnitude does not need to be rushed.  You can not be mad at Obama for wanting more time to look over studies to see if this is a good idea for our environment or not.

I will admit that the Republicans are correct that this expansion will create jobs, but at what cost to the environment?  Oil sands are mined in a very close way to coal is mined.  For years we have heard about how bad coal is for the environment, both in the mining of it and the use of it.  America's finally starting to get away from coal usage and the deforestation that it contributed too, now the Republicans and the big oil companies want us to mine oil sands the same way we do coal.

Oil sands are just that, sand with oil.  The amount of energy used to remove the oil from the sand can use anywhere from 5% to 30% more energy that processing conventional oil.  These oil sands aren't any cleaner than the oil we import from other countries either. 

I can see how the approval of the Keystone Oil Sands Pipeline Expansion would reduce our dependance on foreign oil.  The Republicans are also correct that this would create jobs that our country badly needs.  The fact still remains that we can do both of these by investing these same funds into projects that work with green energy sources. 

President Obama wasn't catering to the green activists by rejecting this proposal, he was thinking about the long term condition that this could leave our country in.  The United States needs to reduce it's dependency on all oil, not just foreign. The Republicans need to get their hands out of the oil companies pockets and realize that everything they are saying this pipeline expansion would accomplish with jobs and dependance on other countries can be accomplished in a more Eco-friendly way.