Americans finally beat Big Oil

From the moment the Keystone fight was launched, representatives of conventional wisdom — such as USA TODAY’s Editorial Board — have insisted that this project, like every other piece of fossil fuel industry infrastructure ever proposed, should be built. Thank heaven that millions of Americans refused to listen, and instead mounted a campaign that has resulted in one of the first big defeats for Big Oil on record.

The fight against Keystone has kept 800,000 barrels a day of the dirtiest oil on earth underground. That’s good, especially since Canadian activists have blocked other potential pipelines, and because it has proved far too expensive to move more than a token amount of the oil by rail.

Better, it has damaged investment prospects in the tar sands and other big projects. Long before the price of oil began to fall, investors pulled tens of billions in financing from the carbon bomb that is the tar sands, simply because there’s no way now to get the oil out.

Best, the Keystone fight has spawned a thousand similar battles — what one beleaguered fossil fuel executive called the “Keystone-ization” of every similar project that attempts to prolong the fossil fuel age.

The oil companies and their backers have long insisted that we have no choice but to keep destroying the climate with their products. But this is simply false: In the seven years of the Keystone battle, the price of a solar panel has fallen more than 80%. In most of the world and much of the U.S., the sun is now the cheapest way to generate power — power, in turn, that can be used to run cars.

That the oil companies would deceive and mislead to maintain their dominance is now obvious (and as the new Exxon investigation by New York’s attorney general makes clear, potentially actionable). As long as figures like the Koch brothers (the largest American leaseholders in the tar sands) hand out money and political favors, we can expect the mainstream news media to keep pushing their pet projects. But happily, Americans are seeing through the deceptions.