Scene from the Conflict Oil Wars: Austan Goolsbee v. the Naive Greens

Quick background: there’s a lot of oil in Canada. Quite a bit of it is tied up in the form of oil sands, which radical Greenies hate with the same passion that normal people reserve for ax murderers or child rapists. Despite this hatred, the Canadians have noticed that the price of oil makes oil sand development highly cost effective, which is why they were planning to build the Keystone Pipeline to ship the stuff from Canada to American refineries and distribution centers. This promised to make both America and Canada quite a bit of cash and make our energy costs significantly cheaper, which is why the Greenies successfully pressured President Obama to ‘temporarily’ delay the project.

Anyway: strictly speaking, it is not quite accurate to say that former White House Council of Economic Advisors Chair (and Obama mouthpiece) Austan Goolsbee called opponents of the proposed Keystone Pipeline “naive.” It’s more accurate to say that he called the idea of opposing it ‘naive’ – in fact, that’s pretty much explicitly what Goolsbee said: “It’s a bit naïve to think the tar sands would not be developed if they don’t build that pipeline.” And it is a bit naive, of course.

But then, opposing the pipeline is also homophobic.

And misogynistic.

And anti-Semitic.

Not to mention straight-up racist.

Commie-loving, too.

Because the reason why opposing the Keystone pipeline is ‘naive’ is because we’re not going to go back to some bizarre, never-existed dystopia where nobody burns petroleum products and 99% of the population is bound to the soil (while the 1% members of the Inner Party live a carbon-neutral and largely luxury-free lifestyle). Because that’s a stupid way to live. So scientific-illiterate religious fanatics… excuse me: “Greens”… are not going to legislate/regulate the internal combustion engine out of existence; but they can maintain our current status quo for a bit longer. Which means that their actions are simply making it harder for us to buy more ‘ethical oil‘ – which is to say, oil from regimes that aren’t gay-hating, women-oppressing, Jew-baiting, terrorist-enabling, democracy-suppressing kleptocracies.

Oops?

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: You probably remember Goolsbee from the time in the 2008 campaign when he allegedly sub rosa assured the Canadian government that of course Barack Obama wasn’t a trade-hating protectionist ninny. I don’t know: given the last three years, should we be scoring Goolsbee as being a bit naive himself?