Within the first 100 days of his presidency, President-Elect Donald Trump plans to allow the Keystone Pipeline and Dakota Access Pipeline to move forward.
“Donald Trump’s Contract With The American Voter” proposes that within the first 100 days in office, he will allow energy infrastructure projects like the pipelines to progress.
Trump released this 100-day plan at the end of October. In regard to his environmental plans during his presidency, Trump said he has plans to fix America’s water and environmental infrastructure. These plans will be funded with the money from cancelled payments to the U.N. climate change programs.
The Keystone XL Pipeline (Phase IV) would run through Baker, Montana, and would add American-produced oil to the Keystone’s current throughout from the oil sands of Canada.
In November 2015, phase four was rejected by the Obama administration.
John Pleasants, assistant professor of ecology, evolution and organismal biology, believes that Trump is viewing the continuation of these pipelines from a business perspective as opposed to environmental.
“That’s where he’s coming from. This has always been the mantra of Republicans," Pleasants said. "They particularly don’t like environmental regulations.
"The idea is that these regulations are holding back the economy by making a lot of red tape for businesses, so they’re going to cut all that red tape and let these businesses do the things that they were doing in the past, which were polluting and [more]."
Pleasants proposed a more environmental perspective by focusing on the energy sector.
“Rather than making jobs by going back to the past and putting people down in coal mines again, we can look to the future and look at renewable energy sources like wind," Pleasants said. "There’s a whole job creation that can come from focusing on that job sector.”
Pleasants also suggested that while environmental policies are important to the American voter, they weren’t at the forefront in swaying peoples' vote in the election one way or the other.
James Weatherly, sophomore in community and regional planning, suggests that the Keystone Pipeline is absolutely unnecessary when viewed from an environmental standpoint.
“We cannot use all the oil reserves we have in North America because that would just be too much carbon dioxide emissions," Weatherly said. "[Trump’s] definition of vital energy infrastructure is very narrow to vital fossil fuel infrastructure. We should really be investing in vital alternative energy infrastructure instead."
Weatherly expressed that he doesn’t have a positive outlook when thinking about the continuation of the Dakota Access pipeline.
“I feel like [Trump] is probably going to do everything in his power to pass that as well," Weatherly said. "On top of his general opinion towards respecting human rights of disenfranchised groups, I think he’s going to disregard that anyways."
In a recent article published by NBC news, CEO Kelcy Warren of Energy Transfer Partners — the pipeline company that is funding the Dakota Access Pipeline — said she’s 100 percent sure that the pipeline will be approved by the Trump administration.