[quote=Halo]
I'm like 99.7% sure it is. 'cause it's Nex.On-Topic:Literally everything I know about this issue comes from a brief Wikipedia search and reading this thread, but here's my two cents:The environmentalists aren't wrong, in a sense. In an ideal world, I'd oppose Keystone XL too. Unfortunately, we don't live in an ideal world, and sometimes we must sacrifice things for the sake of functionality and practicality. This is one of those cases.However, I only believe things like this should be allowed to go forward if we are simultaneously, actively investing in alternative energy sources. It should be viewed as a "necessary evil", so to speak: we have to do it now because of current circumstances, but we should be working towards a world in which it's not necessary. The purpose of humanity's progress and development should be to make the world a better place, and we need to invest in that, particularly in regards to energy (we all know the issues around finite fuel sources etc.) Not simply to find something that works well enough, despite its numerous and fundamentally damaging flaws, and let that be the status quo until it goes horribly fucking wrong.
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If there are good arguments against oil use, they don't come from scarcity. Just as technological improvements make alternative energy sources more capable, they also allow access to oil reserves that had either been unreachable or economically infeasible to utilize in the past.

To put it in perspective, the Athabasca Oil Sands alone have been estimated to hold two trillion barrels worth of oil, the vast majority of which cannot currently be collected. The entire world's current proven reserves are 1.3 trillion barrels.

Scarcity isn't an issue, and it becomes even less of an issue as time passes.