Senior Thesis Eats Asterisk

For the past two months, one thing has been buried in the back corner of my brain, continually creeping to mind and worrying me, and always lingering in my thoughts. Everything I do comes back to this in the end, and while I put it off, avoid it, and do my best to keep it at bay, it just keeps coming back and making me confront it.

Let’s talk about my senior thesis.

Interesting Things I Have Learned So Far:

-Everyday the United States consumes 15 million barrels of oil.

-Of those, roughly 10 to 11 million are imported. [1]

-TransCanada’s Keystone XL Pipeline is a proposed seven billion dollar project that would run nearly 2,000 miles across North America, from Canada’s Athabasca Oil Sands to refineries around Huston, TX, and the Gulf of Mexico.

-Obama recently shut down the proposal to start production[2], but TransCanada has the opportunity to submit a new proposal with an altered route. This has become a hot-button political issue, because:

            -TransCanada states that it is “poised to put 13,000 Americans to work to construct the pipeline,” as well as create 7,000 manufacturing jobs[3]—an important factor in the Keystone XL debate, seeing how (if you haven’t noticed) the United States is a little short on jobs right now.

            -Additionally, the G.O.P. argues that this would help release the United States from our dependence on Middle Eastern Oil—oh hey, “energy security!”

On that note, here are some additional important factors:

            -Construction jobs on the pipeline would be temporary. Duh. Once the thing is built, everybody who worked on it goes back to unemployment. (Well, maybe not everybody, but not all 13,000 people get to keep their jobs, obviously.)

            - Environmental risks and impacts that come with the construction and use of the Keystone XL Pipeline include: increased pollution in distressed communities where crude is refined, increases in carbon emissions, climate change, and habitat loss—god, let’s not even talk about habitat loss. [4]

            -Tar sands oil is corrosive, damaging, and incredibly difficult and expensive to clean up.

            -The Keystone XL proposed route goes through an area of recent high seismic activity.

            -Should the pipe break, leak, or spill, it would contaminate the Ogallala Aquifer, which provides drinking water for over two million people, and supports $20 billion in agriculture. [5]

So this has been an interesting project. I’m specifically examining the rhetoric of the environmental movement against the building of the Keystone XL Pipeline, and how they’d be a lot more effective if they engaged in a more personal appeal as opposed to abstract concepts like Global Warming, which the public still doesn’t seem to understand. The basis behind this appeal is known as “melodramatic rhetoric,” which is known for “generating stark, polarizing distinctions between social actors and infusing those distinctions with moral gravity and pathos.” [6] Essentially, rhetorical melodrama puts the fight behind its cause. It frames a situation with a clear problem, victim, villain, and solution.

For example, in this case: the problem is the pipeline and the dangerous, expensive, and long-lasting damage it has the potential to do. The victims would be the two billion people who need the Ogallala Aquifer to remain uncontaminated so they can continue to drink water out of the tap, the villains are the staunch supporters of the Keystone XL Pipeline, and the solution is not to build the thing.

This is going to be a big project, but I’m starting to make some headway, and I’ve got to admit, it’s pretty exciting. My new goal—aside from finishing the paper and graduating, is to try and get it published, but we’ll see how that goes sometime in the future. Until then, I’ll be slaving away at my computer, trying to remember what life was like before I was a second semester senior writing her last major paper of her university career.

Aaaahh!!

~Asterisk.

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[1] "Keystone Pipeline Project." TransCanada Pipelines Limited (2012): n.pag. TransCanada Corporation. Web. 2 Feb 2012. .

[2] Broder, John M., and Dan Frosch. "Rejecting Pipeline Proposal, Obama Blames Congress." New York Times [New York] 18 Jan 2012, n. pag. Print. .

[3] "Times Topics: Keystone XL Pipeline." New York Times[New York] Updated 18 Jan. 2012, n. pag. Print.

[4] "Times Topics: Keystone XL Pipeline." New York Times[New York] Updated 18 Jan. 2012, n. pag. Print.

[5] Anderson, Mitchell. "Ed Stelmach's Clumsy American Romance." Tyee [British Columbia] 10 July 2010, n. pag. Print. .

[6] Schwarze, Steven. "Environmental Melodrama." Quarterly Journal of Speech. 92.3 (2006): 239-261. Print.