He may not quite have the maniacal stare of Fatty Arbuckle, but it’s impossible to look at Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, flanked by his stern colleagues, without thinking of the Keystone Kops, reeling around in their open-topped police car and waving their batons with bug-eyed insanity. Around and around they go: the sheer repetitiveness is mind-boggling.
When the Republicans crushed the Democrats in November’s midterm election, McConnell solemnly swore the parties could at last work together and get some important things done, avoiding the partisan divisions of recent years. So — with immigration, health, and budget bills begging to be addressed — what does he open with but a bill to approve the Keystone XL Pipeline, a clichéd example of a dirty energy source, and a guaranteed non-starter: the president had long ago pledged to veto it. So much for avoiding partisan divisions.
We already have more than enough oil. More oil is like more guns: we need some, but the more we have, the more accidents will happen. Trucks crash, ships hit rocks, wells explode, trains derail, and pipelines leak. Oil seeps from all of these, causing untold personal pain and permanent damage to our environment. Thousands of gallons still pollute Alaskan waters from the 1989 Valdez ExxonMobil spill in Prince William Sound. The 2010 BP well blowout still poisons the Gulf of Mexico. Two major pipelines spilled last year (in North Dakota and Louisiana), and one already this year by the Yellowstone River. The Wall Street Journal reported 1400 pipeline spills from 2010-13. The damage and litigation from all of these are multi-tentacled and unending.
President Obama has spoken — thoughtfully, not crazily — against the Keystone pipeline, which is not only small potatoes, but an unnecessary potato; and all the Republicans really want is for Obama to swallow it. But what we need now is a bill — a series of bills — to finally turn America toward facing climate change and the future. We should have started 40 years ago. Kowtowing to the power of Big Oil, we let Japan beat us into the small car market, and it’s beating us again with electric and hybrid cars. Europeans live in towns where its citizens can pop on trains to London, Paris, Berlin, or other countries. China, Germany, France and Japan offer their people high-speed long-distance rail systems. The Netherlands has built an incredible series of dams, dikes and windmills to protect their cities from the rising waters predicted for the future. Many nations — neighboring Nicaragua puts us to shame! — are making huge investments in unlocking the natural energies of the sun and wind.
Americans believe fiercely that we’re the greatest country in the world. Well, let’s buckle down and prove it. Let’s bite the bullet and support the taxes needed to fund these programs, cut our doomed dependency on oil, and invest our energy and ingenuity in making the next generations safer and healthier.
The Keystone Kops, famous for their frenetic incompetence, raced in all directions at once, bumping into each other at the corners. Still, this is America, where happy endings are de rigueur (to use an un-American phrase), and the Kops gradually morphed into supporting players for stars like Charlie Chaplin, Abbott and Costello, and others. It seems hopeless now, but I like to think that in 2016 someone will harness our Kongressional leaders, so instead of jackrabbitting all those jalopies they’ll start turning windmills instead.
