Many people heard about TransCanada Corp.’s Keystone XL pipeline for the first time when Republicans in Congress would not pass an extension of the payroll tax cut unless President Barack Obama agreed to make a decision about the pipeline construction within two months.

TransCanada’s claim that the pipeline will create 20,000 direct construction and manufacturing jobs is, according to a report from Cornell University’s Global Labor Institute, not substantiated. The GLI estimates, using TransCanada’s own data supplied to the U.S. State Department, that the pipeline will create between 2,500 and 4,650 temporary construction jobs for two years. The permanent jobs maintaining the pipeline are estimated to be fewer than 100.

Even if TransCanada’s estimate were correct, it should be noted that the U.S. economy must create more than 90,000 jobs each month to keep up with people entering the labor force.

As to the energy independence that proponents of the pipeline claim as a benefit, the pipeline is a global project that would move oil refining from the Midwest to the more lucrative Gulf and export markets, including to the Port Arthur, Texas, refinery half-owned by Saudi Aramco, a Saudi Arabian company. A good portion of that oil is expected to leave the United States.

NASA’s leading climate scientist, James Hansen, has described the carbon emissions from full exploitation of tar sands oil extraction, accelerated by the Keystone XL pipeline, as “game over for the planet.” That might be the most important thing people hear about this pipeline.

Renee Cote, Auburn