For anyone who lives on planet earth or anyone who cares about the safety of humanity or anyone who cares about the health and welfare of our country, you might be starting to get concerned about the many (thirteen executive orders have been signed as of a day before this article is written, to be exact, Obama signed an average of thirty-five executive orders annually, to give you a better picture) and the content of these articles has ranged from freezing federal hiring to increasing deportations and barring immigrants from certain countries to enter the United States. While these are all cause for concern and I urge every single person to look into these issues and understand the impact these executive orders will have, I want to focus on one particular executive order: the one that has now expedited the productions of the Dakota Access Pipeline and the Keystone XL Pipeline.
The production of The Dakota Access Pipeline would impede on the Standing Rock Sioux tribe's existing water supply and would impede on sacred burial grounds and archeological sites. All of these are disastrous culturally and environmentally and every American should care about it, unless you want something like The Flint Water Crisis to happen again. Celebrities like Shailene Woodley and Shia Labeouf have protested alongside Sioux Indians to stop the production of the pipeline.
This executive order to expedite the production of these pipelines is written with the intention of producing jobs for Americans. Another executive order made to go along with the initial order regarding the pipelines, demands that any pipeline in the US will be made with American steel, another facet made to produce more jobs for the American people. To that, I say their will be no economy and no jobs if we have no earth.
To the people who believe we need prioritize the economy over the environment, we can't have one without the other. Sustainability takes a balance between economy, environment and ethics. We need to be supporting the environment while creating fulfilling jobs for all Americans, not just the Americans that work in the oil or steel business, to create a future that the next generation can be proud of. Instead of figuring out new ways to produce and mass transport oil, we need to be supporting the creation of diverse jobs in the private energy sector that can compete with oil companies-foreign and domestic.
At one point, we will tap out our oil supply, and at that time we will be so reliant on oil that there will be no time for alternate solutions. At this time, we need to be creating competitors for oil that will stimulate job growth in all parts of the energy sector, not just the oil industry, and be able to compete with oil, creating a competitive environment in the energy sector that will lower prices for the average American. Striving for a healthy environment and a healthy economy can go hand in hand, if Trump is willing to listen.
