Decision on Keystone XL is no cure for climate change
Rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline will do nothing to help fight climate change.
President Barack Obama said last week he was sending a signal about his commitment to fighting climate change when he chose to reject the pipeline, but that’s all he did. Companies will continue to extract oil from Canadian tar sands, they will continue to ship it to Texas refineries, and global consumers — including environmentalists —will burn that fuel.
My colleague Robert Grattan writes that oil from tar sands is not profitable at current prices, and that has led many companies including Shell and Statoil to suspend projects in Alberta. But that is a temporary lull that will end as soon as prices rise again. And they will rise again when supply tightens, prompting reconsideration of those projects.
Oil remains the world’s main transportation fuel, and no other source of transportable energy can compete with it at current prices. Even high-priced Canadian crude is far cheaper than energy from a battery, natural gas or a fuel cell, when all costs are included.
Until an alternative form of affordable and accessible transportation fuel is on the market, the world will continue to consume more than 90 million barrels a day of crude. And demand is growing.
The only thing that Obama got
right on Friday was that the Keystone XL pipeline had taken on far greater significance that it deserved. It was never a large source of employment, and it was never a major threat to the climate. Politicians were using a steel pipe, intended to deliver crude safely to a refinery, to bludgeon each other.
Placed in this political situation, Obama took a political decision. He made his supporters happy and eliminated an issue that Republican candidates had hoped to use against the 2016 Democratic nominee.
But that’s all he did. He did not approve a safe method for transporting Canadian crude. He did not stop the mining of tar sands. He did not stop tar sands from arriving in the U.S. by rail or barge. He did not stop the refining of tar sands oil. All he did was require companies to use more dangerous and costly forms of transportation.
If you want to do something about climate change, then use public transportation and spend a little more money to buy a less-polluting vehicle. But don’t think for a moment that defeating a pipeline made the planet a better place to live. It most definitely did not.