Keystone Debate The proposal of the Keystone Pipeline XL has led to controversy in the United States recently. Why is there so much debate, you may ask, when it has, “the support of an increasing number of Democrats, as well as the vast majority of Republicans in Congress” (Steinhauer)? There are many disputes between political parties and groups in the U.S., but what is special about the Keystone Pipeline is that the support is not one sided. The oppositions and support of the pipeline breaks down according to beliefs of individuals. While a political party may share similar interests, core belief groups lie within these parties that separate them even more. To understand this and why there is not one hundred percent of either party approving, …show more content…
The Keystone XL is a proposed part of the Keystone Pipeline System, which transports crude oil to Steele City, Nebraska and from there it is transported to Texas for refining. It is inciting to many who speculate it will ,”generate more than $585 million in new taxes” and an “estimated 20,000 new jobs”(Lee 2011). It has also gained support, because it means easier access to oil It has gained opposition because of its environmental …show more content…
This may come as a surprise, given that Traditional Conservatives share a substantial chunk of belief with Classical Liberalist. However, when one looks at “Burke’s criteria for what constitutes a “conservative”…change must contribute to furthering the well-being of the community…what is being conserved needs …whether it contributes community self-sufficiency… a smaller ecological footprint”(Browers). Here author C. A. Browers, applies the old Burkean Conservative to a modern problem, the effect of human evolvement to the environment. Browers argues that the word conservative is misused and being applied to modern republicans, who, diminish environmental progress. As Browers also states, “conserving the self-renewing capacity of nature…also conserves the well-being of human communities—as Burke understood their organic continuities”(Browers). This highlights that Traditional Conservatives have a sense responsibility for the environment. The Keystone Pipeline which, “poses other environmental challenges, like toxic sludge ponds, greenhouse gas emissions and the destruction of boreal forests, constitutes to worsen the ecological footprint”(Krauss & Rosenthal). A Burkean Conservative would view this environmental impact of the pipeline as a way to destroy the environment, in which the next generation will live in, and would disagree with its diminishing ability to lower the quality of the next generation’s