So why should I trust one to build in my backyard?
If so, I don’t think that is common knowledge. I wonder why pro pipeline people don’t highlight it more.
An example, tangent logic of this is the common trend to prevent roads from being built. There is a belief that this will result in fewer cars.
Instead, it results in cars sitting and idling, and cars accelerating then stopping.
Another example is a carpool lane. In many (not all!) cases, carpool lane are almost empty. Meanwhile, traffic stops and starts, or idles beside it.
The most polluting a car does, is during acceleration. The most efficiency is driving a constant speed.
So by trying to reduce car usage the wrong way, the result is as if 2x the number of cars are on the road.
Better to focus on excellent public transit with hyper efficient ride times, than stop new roads.
The same is with pipelines. Prevent anything that has to do with delivery, especially if it is safer and cheaper. After all, if it is safer there will be fewer oil spills, and the public won't mind this aspect of oil extraction. If it is cheaper, oil prices will fall, also bad for global warming.
I feel, sadly, tunnel vision will destroy us all.
Pipelines could very well be safer, I don’t have the data in front of me. But that’s irrelevant if when they fail their operators refuse to make the ones whose lives they’ve ruined, whole. East Palestine, Ohio is as good an example as the North Dakota border as far as I’m concerned.
And just because your comment is upstream the tree, doesn't make it the only one upstream. People were discussing "why" more generically.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/anti-pipeline-america...
But your response is a bit weird to me. You say it is irrelevant if it is safer? Ok, so there are 4 equal spills vs 2.
Regardless of being made whole, if there's 1/2 the spills, and therefore 1/2 the people not harmed, you think that's not better?? Or worth pursuing?
This is sort of what I'm talking about. Any improvement is good. But you're saying "screw all those extra people being hurt, and that damage, because it's not perfect in this way".
That's folly.
Probably because you want to discuss politics and climate change conspiracies instead of corporate capture.
> You say it is irrelevant if it is safer?
Not what I said at all. I said that, pipeline, ship, or truck, no matter which transport method fails, the operator bears in practice very little legal liability.
> But you're saying "screw all those extra people being hurt, and that damage, because it's not perfect in this way".
Not a direct quote.
But.. but it is?!:
"Pipelines could very well be safer, I don’t have the data in front of me. But that’s irrelevant if when they fail"
You said safety was irrelevant.
I get you didn't mean that, but that's how the words are written. It's an if... then... logical statement.
And if pipelines are safer, you should immediately support them regardless of legal liability shortcomings. Why?
Well you say these shortcomings exist regardless of the method. So if you shift transport to a safer method, you now improve safety and there are fewer accidents.
How is this not a positive?
Do you believe it is better that more people are hurt?
Is there some payoff or benefit to having more accidents?
You can likely tell I'm baffled. You must view it as a plus, but I dont grok why.
It's not just God. I also know!
The Democrats believe climate change is real, the externalities of fossil fuel extraction, processing, and consumption are real, the injured parties in pipeline construction are their constituents, and the fossil fuel companies fund Republicans and Republican-aligned organizations.
It's a really deep mystery, but I've sussed it out. Me and God.
I’m guessing climate change is the reason, but it’s hard to see how the current state of affairs is better for the environment. Diesel trains are a lot less carbon friendly than pipelines.
Are you saying that the trains have the same throughput and cost as the pipeline would have?
The pipeline unquestionably means more production, more co2.
It would necessarily pass through Native land and the native tribes dont want it on their land. Forcing it through is a tribal sovereignty issue.
The Fort Belknap Indian Community of Montana and the Rosebud Sioux Tribe of South Dakota contend there was no effort to study how the 1,200-mile pipeline project through their respective territories would affect their water systems and sacred lands."
---https://www.npr.org/2018/09/10/646523140/native-american-tri...
Do you mean to propose this was the real reason behind the scenes? I find it hard to believe.
https://mydakotan.com/2025/04/keystone-pipeline-resumes-oper...
Trade deals are not made with generosity towards oil producers in mind.
There are other landlocked countries throughout the world so it's not like it's impossible, but Alberta would be creating an uphill to climb.
Bottom line is that none of Alberta's longstanding limited market oil pipeline grievances are solved by becoming a landlocked independent state.
And a natural foreign ally.
Writes someone in English. I don't think everyone would agree.
Alberta has oil majority of it foreign owed and wants free pipelines paid by the rest of Canada as subsidy and they got one for free and they believe they get more for free...
Regardless, let's say two places have very different values and ideas about how they want to live and what goals to pursue. What the hell gives one place the right, particularly when it consistently votes down the desired values of the other, to prevent it from leaving and going its own way? Self-determination as a principle isn't magically restricted to national borders only. That would be a ridiculous assertion.
How granular does this asserted right go? Should Edmonton be able to secede from Alberta? Can I run outside and put up a flag on my front lawn?
There are practical limits to this principle, very hard for a landlocked city to secede, but at least in principle it seems morally correct if not practically possible. But I struggle to see how someone can conceivably oppose colonialism and also oppose secession.
On a more practical note, the Alberta government is currently actively meddling in municipal politics and policies, so in the currently discussed application it seems more of a "I want to have a government that's as large as possible that I can still have power over".
I don't support Alberta meddling in local politics. I don't support the US federal or state governments doing this. If cities or neighborhoods want to come together and say "we want a blue community in this red state" or vice versa that's a just form of self-governance.
I actually believe this is how we make democracy work better. It has scale problems but remains the least-bad form of government so we should work to design systems that make it function well.
Letting people self-assort to live with others with their values under rules that reflect those within reason is good.
Having a large representative base is the easiest way to prevent that.
I am perfectly fine with something like the clean air and water acts (in principle if not implementation). Obviously people in an upstream town aren't allowed to dump pollution in the river to save money.
Clearly someone/something has to assert the value that downstream towns have the right to unpolluted water. And won't that be the higher level government preventing the upstream town from asserting their rules and values?
Yes
>Can I run outside and put up a flag on my front lawn?
Yes, but the overhead burden of running a municipality even if it only has a population of 1 would likely quickly make you reconsider
I hope more people can embrace this way of thinking. It's not really partisan. If anything it lets people operate more democratically where voices and engagement mean more. It lets people live how they want in communities with shared values. It lets us run many different policy experiments across many different places to develop better policies.
If we fixed our voting system to be more truly representative I think some of these divisions would go away.
I don't make a habit of ignoring major world powers when they threaten annexation, and many others who are "paying attention" don't either.
Trudeau is no longer here, those threats continue to be made, even in the _presence_ of the current leader of Canada. I don't understand how one could not take these threats seriously.
Canadians like to argue that no province can secede from Canada because it would be illegal but the reality is that if a referendum showed 50%+ of people in Alberta supported independence then the US would support Alberta and that’s the only thing that matters. A lot of Canadian press is wilfully ignorant of that fact.
Please don't do regional flamewar on HN. Like national flamewar and religious flamewar, it's a circle of hell we want to avoid here. You can make your substantive points without it, so please do that instead.
It's a manufactured grievance. Alberta's been pumping and selling more oil than at any point in its history under Trudeau's liberals.
https://economicdashboard.alberta.ca/dashboard/oil-productio...
Trace this separatism bullshit back, and you'll find the fingers of the American right fully entwined in all this.
What all the separatists fail to be aware of is that 98% of Alberta is treaty land. It can't secede as a land-locked province, it could only secede as a bunch of fragmented municipalities surrounded by First Nations.
The only actual way towards it would be invasion and annexation by the United States. I hope that anyone looking forward to that timeline is also looking forward to IEDs.
I am a physical oil trader and I buy 200,000 barrels of oil a day to supply refineries in Canada. I have also worked on financing for Energy East, Keystone XL, Northern Gateway, TMX and the Line 9 reversal in my career. Trust me when I say the Canadian government is the problem and Alberta would be MUCH better off from an oil perspective split off of Canada.
Not to mention all the other things Alberta loses. BC the popular vacation and retirement spot, and like Spain to the British would be closed off to Albertans with their holiday homes now under foreign buyer and speculation taxation.
It’s all ceded territory, and assuming an independent Alberta retains the crown why would it present any issue?
> Indians DO HEREBY CEDE, RELEASE, SURRENDER AND YIELD UP to the Government of the Dominion of Canada, for Her Majesty the Queen and Her successors for ever, all their rights, titles and privileges whatsoever, to the lands included within the following limits, that is to say:
https://www.rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1100100028813/1581293624...
Even if Alberta became a republic or joined the US, its secession after all, a moment when old agreements which by their original text promising a fresh suit of clothes to each chief every 3 years and $5 per year to every band member are up for even more re-evaluation than they have already been subject to.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/enwwwm/map_of_the_...
(Probably with Colorado + NM as a little USC exclave now, and maybe with Saskatchewan joining Alberta as part of Trumpland.)
So the only viable outcome really is American annexation. (Additionally not advancing the Albertan grievance of only selling oil to one customer...)