Kirk showed courage on Keystone amendment

Sen. Mark Kirk was one of 14 Republicans who stood up for the future of the planet by voting for two amendments to the Keystone Pipeline Bill in the Senate.

Sen. Kirk voted for an amendment by Sen. Brian Schatz, a Hawaii Democrat, that stated that human beings are having a significant impact on climate change, as well as a weaker amendment offered by Sen. John Hoeven, a North Dakota Republican, which stated that man-made emissions have some impact on warming.

Sen. Hoeven ended up voting against his own amendment, as he did not want to scuttle the whole bill. The reality of the Keystone pipeline is that the effort is not economical, because those providing cost estimates once again have failed to include the up to $42-per-ton environmental cleanup costs in their figures.

For the 830,000 barrels per day of oil flowing through the pipeline, TransCanada would have to pay $5.2 million per day in set-aside cleanup costs, almost $2 billion a year.

No wonder they forget to put those costs into the estimates. Those elected officials pushing the Keystone bill through Congress may sincerely believe that less government is better government, but when the marketplace fails to address the environmental costs, governments must step in.

Thank you, Sen. Kirk, for showing your position by this vote. Now it is time to create a carbon fee and dividend bill that will charge a fee to carbon producers and return the fees raised directly to the taxpayers, instead of the oil companies.

Mary Hansen

Northbrook