On Keystone, we’re telling the customer he’s wrong
Stephen Harper flew down early last week for his annual trip to New York City to not give a speech to the UN General Assembly. The prime minister found some time while he was in town to do something he never does in his own country, and sat down for a long TV interview.
Harper made news with comments about the Keystone XL pipeline, which would move Alberta bitumen to refineries on the Gulf Coast of Texas, if, that is, U.S. President Barack Obama approves it.
“My view is that you don’t take ‘no’ for an answer,” Harper said. “We haven’t had that, but if we were to get that, that won’t be final. This won’t be final until it’s approved and we will keep pushing forward.”
Obama would be foolish to reject Keystone, Harper said.
“Ultimately over time, bad politics make bad policy, and I believe in strong, advanced countries and economies like ours, bad policies will ultimately get reversed.”
The comments raised eyebrows, since Harper seemed to be saying it doesn’t matter what Obama decides, but that is likely true. When the Republicans win back the White House, the pipeline will go ahead. And Obama might yet approve it.
The arguments for it, as outlined by Harper, are persuasive. It will create jobs at a time when Americans are crying out for work. It will allow the United States to get oil from reliable Canada, where environmental standards are better than many other oil-producing countries. The environmental impact should be acceptable.
But Obama has not made up his mind, and key Obama supporters in the environmental movement despise Keystone, because so much carbon is produced from the Alberta oilsands, and they have made this the test for Obama on climate.
That’s dumb because coal is a bigger problem. In 2011, American coal-fired electricity plants emitted 1.7 billion tonnes of carbon. The Alberta oilsands produced 55 million tonnes, 4.3 per cent as much.
Because Republicans control Congress, Obama can’t pass meaningful legislation to address climate change, and big coal is very powerful. But an important part of Obama’s base wants action, so he must give them something, even if it’s dumb. He can’t do much, but he can say no to Keystone.
According to The New Yorker, at an April fundraiser with rich Californians who want to stop Keystone, Obama warned them that the politics of acting on climate are tough.
“Because if you haven’t seen a raise in a decade; if your house is still twentyfive thousand, thirty thousand dollars under water; if you’re just happy that you’ve still got that factory job that is powered by cheap energy; if every time you go to fill up your old car because you can’t afford to buy a new one, and you certainly can’t afford to buy a Prius, you’re spending 40 bucks that you don’t have, which means that you may not be able to save for retirement. You may be concerned about the temperature of the planet, but it’s probably not rising to your No. 1 concern.”
Obama can’t say no to jobs, but in an interview with the New York Times in July, he actually laughed aloud at the idea that Keystone would create many.
“The most realistic estimates are this might create maybe 2,000 jobs during the construction of the pipeline, which might take a year or two, and then after that we’re talking about somewhere between 50 and 100 jobs in an economy of 150 million working people,” he said.
Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver told a New York energy conference last week that Uncle Sam ought to clean up its coal industry — the real threat — before going after the oilsands.
This is the right message, but this government has previously delivered less helpful messages.
In 2011, the Tories embraced “ethical oil” — the argument that the world should embrace Alberta bitumen because the alternative is oil from dictatorships like Saudi Arabia.
The Ethical Oil organization, whose super secret funding sources are likely the oil companies who have made so much money importing Saudi crude, is an astroturf group aimed at drawing attention away from the real environmental problems caused by our oil industry, a way to shout down environmentalists who are rightly concerned about Canada’s rapidly rising oilsands emissions.
Amazingly enough, the government of Canada spouted this propaganda, cheerfully joining the stupid culture war over pipelines, acting as a mouthpiece for the big oil companies that environmentalists despise, fuelling the fire that now threatens Keystone.
Also, the Harper government cut funding to Environment Canada, killed the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, defunded the Experimental Lakes Area, withdrew from Kyoto, blocked progress on other climate treaties, muzzled scientists, audited environmental charities, vilified environmentalists, repeatedly promised emission-reduction targets and failed to deliver them.
This stuff may please some dinosaurs in the oil industry, but even there opinion is divided. Alberta has certainly acted more responsibly, because the province knows that if it doesn’t take action, customers won’t like that, and the customer is always right.
The customer is Obama. We keep telling him he’s wrong.