President Obama announced Tuesday he would veto a bill approving the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. Evidently, Obama opposes any attempt to go around the federal review process of the pipeline, in which the Obama Administration gets to approve or deny the pipeline’s application for construction.
The first application for Keystone’s construction was submitted on Sept. 19, 2008, four months before President Obama took office. Still, the President has now been in office for almost six years, reviewed multiple environmental impact statements on the pipeline, and once asked for a reapplication.
Why is it taking Obama almost six years to make up his mind on Keystone XL? Here are nine things you could have done while waiting for Obama to decide Keystone XL’s fate.
Build Keystone XL
It would take about two years to build the Keystone XL pipeline. In the time that Obama has waited to decide on Keystone XL, the pipeline could have been built three different times.
Walk
Walking three miles per hour, you could walk 160,895 miles in six years if you didn’t take any breaks. That’s almost 6.5 times the length of the equator. You could walk from Fairbanks, Alaska to the Panama Canal and back 24 times.
Read
At 300 words per minute, you could read the King James Bible 1,200 times in six years. That version of the Bible contains 788,528 words.
Watch
You could watch all six Star Wars movies 3,917 times. Starting in 2009, that should have been enough viewings to memorize every line before the seventh movie is released in December 2015.
Play
It takes about three hours to play a standard game of Monopoly, according to BoardGameGeek.com. That’s 17,520 games, which should be enough to figure out which of your family members is best.
Build
One massive, 750,000 piece Lego model of the Kennedy Space Center took 2,500 hours to build. Twenty-one models could have been built in six years.
Breathe
At a respiratory rate of 20 breaths per minute, the average person would breathe over 63 million times in six years. In other words, don’t hold your breath waiting for Obama to decide on Keystone XL.
Listen
Over six years, you could listen to Taylor Swift’s latest album, “1989”, 64,752 times. You know you want to.
Drink
In six years, you could drink 52,560 Keystone Light beers if you drink one per hour. Please do not hold the Washington Examiner liable for any liver damage.
