Oil Pipelines and Other Energy Distractions

Reuters

"The national interest will be served only if it does not significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution. The net effect on climate will be critical to determining if this project goes forward."
Keystone XL pipeline: "...Only if this project does not significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution"
U.S. President Barack Obama

Tellingly, and catering to the American environmental pressure lobby, it was Alberta "tarsands", not Alberta-based oilsands to which President Obama referred. Concern for the environment, particularly in the face of overwhelming and coincidental threats making their sinister presence increasingly known through the rising prevalence of catastrophic natural disasters in the form of geologic and atmospheric incidents costing lives and property in the extreme, insists the issue be addressed.

On the other hand, the science relating to global warming is confused and has more than its logical share of critics from within the scientific community. Yet it is unmistakable that, global warming which has mysteriously slowed, if anything, now plays second fiddle to the inexorable changes that have taken place on this planet as a result of climate change. For the climate is changing. And we don't quite know how to react.

Cutting back on coal generated power stations accounting for 40% of greenhouse gases produced in the United States is a start. Particularly since no limits exist in law regarding how much carbon dioxide power plants are permitted to emit: "It's not right, not safe and it needs to stop", President Obama intoned. To do that, to halt the use of coal-generated American electricity, whose use has, as it happens, been slowly diminished in favour of gas-generated power, would impact jobs and cut GDP significantly.

The American public, when polled about their most immediate concerns, cite in the majority, their worries about the economy and quite specifically, the lack of jobs from a slow recovery. Concern over the environment appears way down on the list of problems they feel should be addressed. Addressing the environment in fact, places the economy under greater stress through increased costs and decreased financial benefits, leading to greater unemployment.

These are difficult matters to unravel in a country that is continuing to struggle to haul itself out of a depressing economic slowdown, with an enormous deficit and even more disastrous-for-future-generations debt. Coal-fired furnaces are dirty, they spew carbon into the atmosphere far more than any other mode of energy-provision. And if President Obama turns his disfavour on gas as well, and fracking in particular, the cost to the U.S. economy will swell.

But there's always Alberta oil. Whether or not the president blocks the route to the Gulf of Mexico, Alberta crude will be shipped out somewhere. It will go by rail, by ship, to China and anywhere else Canada can find customers for its product. It is an energy source that is proven and vital to the economy in the United States. The pipeline itself will generate thousands of jobs in a depressed industry, it will guarantee a secure source of energy.

From a country that is a neighbour, a stable democracy, the largest trading partner that the U.S. has, in fact, and from which it already obtains far more of that energy extracted from natural resources, than anywhere else in the world. And which, in the larger scheme of environmental pollution on a global scale, adds relatively little to the carbon burden.