Keystone all about optics
Conservatives will have only themselves to blame if U.S. approval of the pipeline goes awry
This is the cruel irony in the federal Conservatives’ increasingly wan bleating — as they face the potential ruin of their North American energy strategy — that their record of environmental stewardship matches or exceeds that of U.S. President Barack Obama: It’s perfectly true. Obama has been a dud on the environment, particularly on coal. Until a minute or so ago, he couldn’t care less about any of it.
But that doesn’t matter — not one bit. The time has come for the U.S. to move on climate and Alberta’s oilsands make an excellent, highly visible kicking dummy. As Martha Stewart was to excesses in the stock market, so the Keystone XL pipeline may become in the climate wars: An abject lesson. For this, we have the master tacticians in the Harper PMO and, to a lesser extent, NDP Leader Tom Mulcair, to thank.
First let us acknowledge that, at every level, including of course in the Obama administration, the looming U.S. decision on Keystone is about optics now. Legitimate environmental concerns about the proposed pipeline, relating to the Ogallala aquifer and Sandhills region in Nebraska, have been addressed. The state governor is satisfied that the rerouted project is sound and he has green-lighted it. The locals are onside. The unions are also onside: They want the jobs.
As Jack Mintz argued Tuesday in the Financial Post, the economic case for approval, from a U.S. perspective, is unassailable. Even given the dramatic resurgence in U.S. domestic energy production, selfsufficiency is years away. Refiners on the Gulf Coast are seeking new sources of heavy oil, because of a decline in Mexican production and Venezuela’s politically driven shifting of its exports elsewhere. Canada has plentiful heavy oil, to the tune of 1.3 million barrels a day, trading at a steep discount to the world price, because it is landlocked. This is a marriage made in heaven.
Another fact: The oilsands account for less than seven per cent of Canada’s green house gas emissions. Transportation accounts for about 25 per cent; electricity and heating for another 14 per cent. The upstream oil and gas industry, and the government of Alberta, are intensely aware of environmental concerns and working hard to address them. Canadian consumers, as evidenced by our collective lack of enthusiasm for former Liberal leader Stéphane Dion’s proposed carbon tax in 2008, are less enthusiastic.
The Conservatives have cast themselves as do-nothing, care-nothing laggards.
So, optics, then: But how to play them? During the Chrétien years, the policy was to walk heavily but carry a tiny stick; that is, make grand pronouncements about the need to change our ways, while doing little or nothing to, in fact, change them. Successive Harper environment ministers have played variations on that theme. The current man on point, Environment Minister Peter Kent, says his “sector-by-sector” regulatory approach will reduce emissions by 17 per cent from 2005 levels, by 2020 — in line with U.S. targets. Why then, Conservatives ask plaintively, would U.S. VIPs such as Ambassador David Jacobson or Secretary of State John Kerry doubt Canada’s climate bona fides?
Hint to Harper brain trust: It may have something to do with the daily, mind-numbing effluvium emanating from your backbenches, vis-a-vis a “$21.5-billion, job-killing carbon tax,” ostensibly planned by Mulcair’s New Democrats. The “carbon tax” was, in fact, a cap-andtrade plan proposed by the NDP in the 2011 campaign, not materially different from one offered by the Conservatives themselves in 2008. Implicit in both plans, as well as Dion’s Green Shift, was that a price be set on carbon, something every economist acknowledges is necessary to change consumer behaviour.
In beating this drum so vehemently, therefore, the Conservatives have cast themselves as do-nothing, carenothing laggards. Environmental provisions in their 2012 budget, which gutted protections for lakes and rivers, haven’t helped. Mulcair, meantime, has heaped fuel on the fire, by casting oilsands producers as cartoonish polluting villains. This supports the narrative of the U.S. radical environmentalist movement, which simply want the oilsands shut down. That movement, in turn, is the tip of the spear now prodding Obama to reject Keystone.
Is there a way through? The thirdplace Liberals, often clouted for their lack of policy conviction, in this case have the right approach: Weigh the needs of industry against environmental concerns and make concessions to both, without demonizing either.
The trouble is that, in this case, it may be too little, too late: Kerry’s decision is imminent. It may already have been made. These past six months, believing they were crafting a lethal narrative for the NDP, the Conservatives were shaping one about themselves. With the country’s economic future hanging in the balance, they now belatedly see their mistake. They can do little but eat crow, shut up about the “job-killing carbon tax” already, and hope U.S. economic self-interest prevails.