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Gene Cook: Business needed

Gene Cook

I’m certainly better informed having read Holly Wilde and Russ Doty’s March 6 commentary titled “Unwanted consequences of the Keystone pipeline.” The litany of nightmarish consequences thrown at us certainly should give us second thoughts. According to the authors, building the pipeline and using the oil could cause:

■ 6,000 new cases of tick fever within three years

■ Outbreaks of dengue fever



■ Outbreaks of malaria

■ Lowered food production



■ Increased gas prices

■ Political instability

■ Refugee migration

■ Terrorism

■ Conflicts about water and other resources

Also, I hope that the Center for Navel Analysis referred to in the letter will not be examining our bellybuttons.

My thought is that this Canadian oil is going into the world market. We can have it piped south through the Keystone pipeline after it is built all the way to Houston (my choice), or we can see it piped westward through Canadian territory to the Canadian coast, using all Canadian labor and Canadian equipment and materials, and shipped to China (apparently Wilde and Doty’s choice).Either way, it will be used as needed, refined, burned, whatever, and occupy its place in the world environment, all without having produced any measurable change in that environment. 

As U.S. residents, we have an obligation to keep our cool, use our common sense and not be panicked into ill-conceived decision making. Personally, I’d rather the U.S. had the business. 

Gene Cook

Steamboat Springs


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