Marking Up the Alberta Government's $30,000 Keystone XL Ad

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This is a guest post by Heather Libby.

If you’re a regular reader of the Sunday New York Times, you might have noticed a half-page ad in the A section promoting the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline last weekend. Paid for by the Alberta government with $30,000 of taxpayer funds, the text-heavy ad asserted several reasons why President Obama should approve the project.

Their primary argument? This is “the choice of reason”.

Putting aside the fact that their word selection suggests those who oppose the pipeline are illogical or unreasonable; the ad says “some still argue Keystone should be decided on emotion rather than science and fact about Canada’s responsibly developed oil sands resource”.

We completely agree. Here are a few scientific facts it forgot to mention:

And the list goes on, full of reasonable concerns that the Alberta government would rather you not ponder.

Check out our copy of the ad below (click to embiggen) to see a few more suggested edits to Alberta’s assertions. 

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