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" It&amp;#039;s remarkable how quickly the proposed XL tar-sands pipeline from Alberta to Texas has become an article of faith among the Republicans. Every one of them gives you the unmistakable impression that, if they didn&amp;#039;t have all this running-for-president stuff to do, they&amp;#039;d be out there on the Canadian plains right now, pick and shovel in hand, digging out the trench themselves, like John Henry with his hammer, Lord, Lord. As we know, the administration temporarily put the kibosh on the project, largely to protect the environmentally delicate Sandhills region of Nebraska, but also because of concerns about what a spill from the pipeline would do to the Ogallala aquifer, without which everything from Illinois to Nevada is pretty much the Gobi desert. This, of course, has set the underpants of the GOP contenders aflame. N. Leroy Gingrich regularly refers to the president as having acted at the behest of &amp;quot;radical environmentalists from San Francisco,&amp;quot; although what in the name of god San Francisco has to do with anything is impossible to discern. (I think it&amp;#039;s just one of those wingnut conjuring phrases. &amp;quot;Radical environmentalists&amp;quot; are somehow worse if they&amp;#039;re from San Francisco. Suddenly, men in evening gowns appear, throwing sand in the gas tanks of progress.) The rest of them just concern themselves with exaggerating how much the pipeline will stimulate the economy and squawking about &amp;quot;energy independence.&amp;quot; What gets lost in all of this is that the most stalwart opposition to the crazy notion of running a pipeline of the world&amp;#039;s dirtiest carbon-based fuel through what is literally the bloodstream of the nation&amp;#039;s farm economy is coming from landowners in Nebraska. Trans Canada, the company that wants to build the pipeline, already has folded and offered an alternate route that it says would keep the pipeline out of the Sandhills. (The danger to the aquifer remains.) But the ranchers whose property abuts this new route are not yet satisfied. A delegation of them met with Governor Dave Heineman last week to voice their concerns, particularly about the fact that even the new route would bring the pipeline through areas in which the water table is as close to the surface as it is in the Sandhills: There are places where &amp;quot;you could [walk] down the line [defining] the Sandhills and you wouldn&amp;#039;t see the difference&amp;quot; between the land on either side, said Terry Frisch, one of the ranchers who met with Heineman last week.... The landowners showed the governor the results of soil samples they sent to a laboratory in Omaha. They said the tests show little difference between the soil inside and outside the boundaries shown on the map. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;ve been called radical environmentalists,&amp;quot; Frisch said, &amp;quot;but we&amp;#039;re just looking out for our livelihood.&amp;quot; Nebraska doesn&amp;#039;t choose its delegates to the Republican National Convention until the state convention meets in July. (There&amp;#039;s a non-binding &amp;quot;beauty contest&amp;quot; primary in May.) So there likely will be little on-the-ground campaigning there. Until then, digging the XL pipeline will remain just another entry in the litany of issues to which GOP candidates must swear allegiance, and it will have nothing to do with the reality on the (very delicate) ground. Which is a shame. Newt Gingrich could have met some &amp;quot;radical environmentalists&amp;quot; who aren&amp;#039;t from San Francisco. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a12588/xl-pipeline-nebraska-6651998/>