NITC and Implications for Oil

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The Detroit International Bridge Company court dispute and the proposed New International Trade Crossing are at the forefront of our media topics all too often.

The best way to obtain a feel for how to handle the bridge crossing issue is to start with a drive to Windsor. Hopefully, the driver will find himself at the terminus of the proposed exit for the new location and then that of the existing bridge. The new location is in a non-residential section far from the University of Windsor. The old bridge bisects the community, making Windsor aesthetically and physically fractured.

Underlying all of this bridge disagreement is the process of international politics. How do we “give in” to Canada? On the one hand, Nebraska is fighting the Keystone XL pipeline precisely because the proposed route creates environmental harm. In Nebraska, Keystone promised an alternate route that would offer less risk to the environment, but has yet to produce the plan. Environmentalists like the idea of simply stopping a pipeline. In the Keystone situation, one can only find that maybe Keystone is a little wrong and the environmentalists are a lot right, but America also needs oil, creating an extremely difficult balancing act.

The opposition maintained that simply kicking the Canadians in the teeth on Keystone clears everything up. However, Canadians have the choice of delivering their natural resources overseas rather than to the United States.

Kicking the Canadians in the teeth on the bridge hurts everyone. The cost is not simply the damage to the City of Windsor (which is too much), but to those who drive the trucks and have to wait at the existing bridge entrances. Is this really the way we want to go?