If Kinder Morgan is bad, why is LNG good?

“Double, double, toil and trouble,” Shakespeare’s three witches chant in the opening of Macbeth. Although Shakespeare didn’t intend his lines to describe modern economics, they seem appropriate.

For the last year, Canadian news reports have included regular updates on trade negotiations between Canada, the U.S., and Mexico. Donald Trump repeatedly threatened to cancel the existing North American Free Trade Agreement. And Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Christia Freeland repeated her mantra — negotiations are proceeding in good faith.

Fires burned. Cauldrons bubbled. Delegations met. Endlessly.

And then, at the last minute, just before a U.S.-imposed deadline — where did NAFTA grant the U.S. the privilege of imposing unilateral deadlines? Someone threw in “eye of newt” and someone else withdrew a “lizard’s leg,” and just like that, we had a new trade and tariff agreement — USMCA, a.k.a. the U.S., Mexico, and Canada Agreement.

Poof! The ugly toad turns into a charming prince.

Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer took a jaundiced view of the prince — the U.S. bragged about what it gained; Canada celebrated what it didn’t lose. That was Monday. On Tuesday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and B.C. Premier John Horgan congratulated each other on what Trudeau proudly called “the single largest private sector investment in the history of Canada” — a $40 billion commitment by a consortium of five global petrochemical companies to build a liquified natural gas (LNG) exporting facility in Kitimat, in northern B.C.

LNG Canada CEO Andy Calitz said the company is "immediately, today, moving into construction” on the pipeline from Dawson Creek and the processing plant in Kitimat.

According to CBC, Calitz claimed his project has already obtained all the necessary approvals from the National Energy Board, Department of Fisheries and Oceans, BC Hydro as well as 25 First Nations. Wait, I don’t understand.

The Kinder-Morgan pipeline from Alberta’s tar sands — let’s call them what they are — would have followed an existing route to tidewater near Vancouver. It was bad. Because it’s a pipeline. Carrying fossil fuels. And because tanker traffic to the open Pacific could endanger vulnerable coastlines and marine species.

But the LNG pipeline, which will also carry fossil fuel, but will slash a completely new route through northern B.C.’s pristine forests to reach tidewater at Kitimat, where tankers will have to navigate an even more perilous labyrinth to reach the open ocean, is a good thing? The witches’ hell-broth boils and bubbles. I’m glad I didn’t study economics at university. The rationale for these developments strikes me as circular at best.

We need to sell our products to other nations, so that we can afford to buy the products which they will produce using our energy, which they will sell us so that they can afford to buy our energy, which we need to sell to them so that we can afford to buy their products.

Ancient Egyptians invented a symbol of a snake eating its own tail; ancient Greeks named it an ouroboros. Its shape has been used by Gnostic Christians, by the Theosophical Society, by Hinduism, and even by chemist August Kekule to reveal the structure of the carbon atom.

To me, the ouroboros aptly describes international trade. I make a profit off you, so that you can make a profit off me. By hoisting each other’s bootstraps, we shall all levitate together. No? Murder mysteries repeat the refrain, “Follow the money.” Economics is all about money.

Back in the Great Depression, economist John Maynard Keynes argued that government intervention could rescue national economies. Franklin D. Roosevelt took his advice.

In the post-war boom, economist Milton Friedman argued that government intervention stifled development. Ronald Reagan took his advice.

Now I read that James Buchanan, an economist who, aside from receiving the Nobel prize for economics in 1986, spent his life working under the public radar, believed that governments have only one function — to make the wealthy wealthier.

Democracy, Buchanan felt, favours “takers” against “makers.” Self-interest becomes the only foundation for public policy. Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” of public interest has been amputated.

No surprise that, according to Nancy MacLean’s meticulously researched book Democracy in Chains, Buchanan received funding from far-right groups like the Koch brothers.

Buchanan’s personal papers, sealed until his death in 2013, included a list of steps needed to transform the role of government. As MacLean notes, Repugnicans and Donald Trump have already implemented some of them.

There’s something wrong with this witches’ brew. Not being either a witch or an economist, though, I can’t define what it is.

Jim Taylor is an Okanagan Centre author and freelance journalist. He can be reached at rewrite@shaw.ca. This column appears Saturdays.