While the authorization papers sit on the desk of President Barack Obama, the fate of the Keystone XL Pipeline continues to be in question.  With the February 21 deadline a little over a month away, the President’s window is dwindling to decide if he’s going to go with politics over policy or make a decision that will put upwards of 20,000 American back to work and get the nation one step closer to being free of the Middle Eastern oil interest.  With the project’s clear benefits, what’s the hold-up?  President Obama’s attempt to pander to environmentalists and the far left who, despite inarguable evidence to the contrary from the State Department, are hell-bent on stopping the pipeline and, as a result, keeping the nation’s recovery at the pace of a turtle with paralyzed hind legs.

According to TransCanada Corp., the Keystone XL Pipeline will create at least 13,000 jobs along the pipeline’s path during the construction phase of the project, as well as upwards of 7,000 manufacturing jobs in plants that build key parts for the pipeline.  Aside from the 20,000 direct jobs created, economists also suggest that hundreds of thousands of jobs could be created in towns along the pipeline’s path as a result of the pipeline’s economic impact. With unemployment holding at 8.5% and the economy virtually stagnant, the jobs created as a result of the pipeline seem to good to be true.  And those on the left say they are.

Opponents of the project say that a more realistic job creation number is between 2500 and 4650, and even so, they say, those would only be for a 2 year period.  These numbers come from a study conducted by Cornell University’s Global Labor Institute.  Lara Skinner, Associate Director of the institute, says that TransCanada’s numbers are high because the corporation inflated the costs of building the pipeline in the United States in an effort to make the pipeline more appealing.  Fair enough; let’s use Dr. Skinner’s projections as the correct figures and assume only 2500 jobs will be created.  My question for Dr. Skinner is this: What alternative do you have to create 2500 private sector jobs?  In an economy like ours, isn’t the creation of even a single job good news?

Now, I could understand the protests of Dr. Skinner and the rest of the peanut gallery if only they had some factual basis.  The State Department and the US Fish and Wildlife Service both concluded that an adverse impact on wildlife is “not likely” and that the risk to soil, water, and air is “minimal.”  Still, environmental groups have taken the State Department and USFWS to task on their reports, warning that the pipeline’s construction will endanger the habitat of the American Burying Beetle and therefore must be stopped.  Rather than ask Dr. Skinner how she intends to create 2500 private sector jobs, perhaps I should ask the American Burying Beetle population for its alternative.

At the risk of being naive, I’m putting my faith behind President Obama to make the decision that’s right for the economy and right for America.  He will take heat from environmental groups, but their protests of the Keystone XL Pipeline are off-base and without merit.  Though I understand the profound impact the American Burying Beetle has had on our nation’s development thus far, job creation should always take precedence in these troubling times.

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