The Obama Impact Statement

Sometimes even the federal government is capable of grasping the obvious. So it was late Friday afternoon, when the State Department dumped its report on the environmental impact of the proposed Keystone Pipeline, which is designed to transport oil extracted from Canada’s tar sands through America down to the Gulf Coast. Essentially, the report concluded that whether or not we go ahead with the pipeline, Canada is going to extract this oil.

“The dominant drivers of oilsands development,” says the report, “are more global than any single infrastructure project.” And because it will be developed with or without the pipeline, nothing the United States does will much affect the environmental impact one way or the other.

The truth is, no one needed an environmentalimpact statement to know this. The Canadians are determined to develop this oil; the only question is whether they will transport it down through the United States or ship it to China. In midJanuary, Canada insisted President Obama make a decision, with its foreign minister saying his country “can’t continue in this state of limbo.”

In short, the only one who needed this report was the president — because it was his excuse for putting off a decision until after the 2012 elections to appease the green wing of his party, which opposes all fossil fuels. He did so even though Keystone is supported by another important Democratic constituency, the unions, whose members stand to gain jobs.

When President Obama was sworn in, he vowed to “restore science to its rightful place” — i.e., to make decisions based on evidence and the facts. In his State of the Union last Tuesday, he touted his “alloftheabove energy strategy” that embraced all energy sources. Here’s his chance to do both.