Robert Redford: 'Keystone Pipeline Would Carry the Dirtiest Oil on the Planet'

February 4th, 2013 9:05 AM

There's a domestic energy boom happening in America producing thousands of jobs with the likelihood of creating thousands more if Washington doesn't get in the way.

Not according to Robert Redford who published a scathing attack on such efforts at the Huffington Post Sunday evening calling on President Obama to "say no" to the Keystone pipeline.

"Real economic security is found in clean energy," predictably wrote Redford. "That's our future, not dirty energy that threatens us with ever worsening harm from climate change."

Never mind that renewable energy projects supported by this President have failed to produce either the energy or the jobs promised.

Environmentalists such as Redford always seem ignorant of such inconvenient truths.

But he was just warming up.

"The Keystone XL tar sands pipeline would carry the dirtiest oil on the planet from Canada to America's Gulf Coast's refineries and ports, and then most of it likely exported overseas," Redford bloviated. "It would promote one of the most damaging industrial practices ever devised, to coax low-grade crude oil from tar sands."


"We don't need another pipeline for Canadian tar sands," he continued. "It's not in our national interest but is a profit scheme for big oil that needs to be rejected."

Jobs and cheaper energy are in our national interest, Mr. Redford.

But sadly, such things are never important to environmentalists.

And here was Redford's unintentional punch line: "Wind, solar, and other renewable power, now that, to me, is the future. It's clean energy that will produce new and plentiful jobs for generations to come without the disastrous effects of tar sands and carbon-belching power plants."

If America has learned anything from the last four years, it is that we are likely decades from the technology of wind and solar being viable long-term alternatives to fossil fuels.

The more timely solution is indeed from tar sands and hydraulic fracturing which combined promise to make the United States the world's leader in energy production creating thousands and thousands of jobs while reducing energy costs for people across the fruited plain.

This is what's before us.

But folks like Redford want to stop it.