An Old Start to a New Congress

We tend to romanticize and overemphasize beginnings and endings.

We celebrate the coming and going of new years, and memorize the opening lines of novels and the dying words of great men.

It’s a trend that persists regardless of creed or color: God declares himself “the beginning and the end” in the Book of Revelation—precisely the phrase the great Quranic exegete Ibn Kathir chose to title his history.

But to bring attention to matters seedier and decidedly less sanctified—there’s a new Congress in town. And it’s off to quite a beginning.

The Senate, under the new management of Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, began its session with Senate Bill 1, the Keystone XL Pipeline Act, which would authorize TransCanada to build the controversial 1,200-mile tar sands oil pipeline.

The pipeline has been heralded, trumpeted, and drummed up by congressional Republicans as the salvific steel that will create thousands of jobs, stimulate the economy, and reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

It’s a bit curious that infrastructure creation is so lionized by the GOP, while repeated attempts to stimulate the national economy by repairing our decrepit and decaying public infrastructure are repeatedly spurned—though the $1 million TransCanada spent last year on lobbying may have something to do with that.

Of course, oil pipelines are necessary in the modern age where fossil fuels make up more than 80 percent of our energy. And provided that the plan is studied, and the necessary precautions against spills are taken, nothing would be amiss with the pipeline’s approval.

But the purpose of the bill is to circumvent that process entirely—and all for such measly gains.

The final draft of the State Departments’ Environmental Impact Statement for the project estimates that the project would, in fairness, create 42,100 jobs during the pipeline’s two-year construction period. But once the project enters service, only 35 permanent employees and 15 temporary contractors would be needed. All this fuss for such a small omelette?

The report also estimates that the project will inject $3.4 billion into the economy, which isn’t nothing, but it’s also .02 percent of last year’s GDP. And contra claims of American energy independence, which aren’t going to appeal to people when gas prices are at such lows, the report estimates that the construction of the pipeline won’t have much of an effect on the markets.

The Environmental Protection Agency has also cautioned that the oil sands transported by the pipeline could add as much as 935 million metric tons of carbon dioxide over 50 years. In terms of yearly emissions, that’s like adding another Maine to the nation.

But there are silver linings to this most auspicious of senatorial openings. An amendment to the Keystone bill “to express the sense of the Senate that climate change is real and not a hoax” passed 98-1, with only Senator Roger Wicker, a Mississippi Republican, voting against it. Even Senator Jim Inhofe, the Oklahoma Republican who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and wrote the book “The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future,” voted for it.

But curb your enthusiasm: A stronger worded amendment suggesting that human activity significantly contributed to global warming was defeated 50-49. Basic mathematical majorities should command the chamber—no matter who’s in charge. That the counterintuitive phrase “defeated 50-49” just had to be written is another sign that we still have a ways to go. And don’t forget that—should the bill pass Congress—the likely veto it faces just makes all of the above a longwinded excuse in futility.

Alas, all this still makes for a better opening than the House had, where the first order of business was passing a sure-to-be-vetoed (and almost certainly unconstitutional) bill that would have banned abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, that wouldn’t include exceptions for rape unless they had been previously reported. The bill was later scrapped after a last-minute revolt by the party’s female members.

That was the beginning. And here’s to the end.

Idrees M. Kahloon ’16, a Crimson editorial executive, is an applied mathematics concentrator in Dunster House.