Infinitesque

Subjects:

Bad assumptions on Keystone XL

Principal author:
John L. Clark

Abstract

We have yet another opportunity to submit public comments on the proposal to permit the Keystone XL pipeline to be built. This time, I'm going to zero in on one particularly pernicious assumption presented in the Final Environmental Impact Statement: that the energy industry will just find alternatives to the pipeline, so disastrous tar sands exploitation is inevitable.

We have yet another opportunity to submit public comments on the proposal to permit the Keystone XL pipeline to be built. The State Department released its Final Environmental Impact Statement for the project on the Friday before Superbowl Sunday, and we have until March 7 to add our voice to the mix.

Last time, I laid out the broad picture of why the goals of this project are insane, and how that insanity is a symptom of a much larger problem. This time, I'm going to zero in on one particularly pernicious assumption presented in the Statement: that the energy industry will just find alternatives to the pipeline, so disastrous tar sands exploitation is inevitable. I think not: nothing is inevitable. As with last time, I encourage you to join me in demanding that the State Department, our government, and our whole society do what is necessary to strive for a healthy world, including rejecting this pipeline.

President Barack Obama, and all those working in support of his policies, including Secretary of State John Kerry and the State Department:

The Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement on the Keystone XL pipeline, which was released on January 31st, is deplorably weak and fickle on the critical issue of Global Warming. It essentially allows for any possible interpretation of the CO2 emissions impacts of the hypothetical presence or absence of the pipeline, which permits the most powerful voices to stretch its meaning in support of their perspective. As I argued in my public comment on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement, we need to completely rethink our approach to how we live in the world. Here, though, this statement formally, publically, and officially reinforces a faulty assumption, which is willfully misguided and extremely dangerous. This assumption—that even without the Keystone XL pipeline, tar sands will be exported somewhere—refuses to aknowledge that tar sands exploitation, including export, must be stopped everywhere.

The Statement authors admit that Global Warming is a grave problem, even as they immediately turn around and cravenly avoid and deflect any policy responsibility. They point out that “total annual lifecycle emissions associated with production, refining, and combustion of 830,000 barrels per day (bpd) of oil sands crude oil transported through the proposed Project, as determined through this assessment, are approximately 147 to 168 MMTCO2e”. But then they immediately go on to demur that “approval or denial of any one crude oil transport project, including the proposed Project, is unlikely to significantly impact the rate of extraction in the oil sands, or the continued demand for heavy crude oil at refineries in the United States” (section 4.14.1.3). The reader can infer whatever she wants from these dizzying statements.

The point is that the Keystone XL pipeline will help to facilitate exploitation of the tar sands: otherwise, the energy industry would not be investing in it in the first place. Denying the pipeline, then, will force the industry to work harder to find ways to move the extract, giving us fewer and higher-profile channels to target for cessation, and thereby allowing us to better focus our energy on stopping these flows.

It is disingenous, even pernicious, to willfully look only at this one pipeline and shrug off the potential effects of its carbon pollution as inevitable. We cannot just say, "Oh, well, if not this one outlet, the carbon will be exported via some other channel, so it may as well be this one." No, sanity and justice demand that we stop exploiting the entire Alberta Tar Sands operation immediately, which means that this bitumen must not be exported at all.

Blocking this pipeline will certainly force industry investors to look elsewhere for exporting this extract: they are already. But with fewer options, the difficulty increases, and we must continue to increase the difficulty to the point known as impossible. Just because it may happen elsewhere, doesn't mean that it has to happen here; in fact, the opposite: if it's bad, we want to make sure it doesn't happen here, and then help others make sure it doesn't happen elsewhere, either.

Sincerely,

John L. Clark

P.S. I have also published this online at <http://infinitesque.net/articles/2014/comment/>, where the text includes inline references.

This page was first published on 2014-03-04 16:00:00-05:00.

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