Now that the Northern Gateway pipeline has apparently been put on hold after Premier Christy Clark’s decision not to push forward with the project, eyes are turning to the Keystone XL pipeline — and at the moment, it seems possible that Alberta’s pipeline expansion might not make it, either.
U.S. President Barack Obama came out last week to discuss the project’s future as a part of a sweeping strategy in reducing America’s carbon emissions, limiting the environmental impact of current energy systems, and investing in clean energy and low-emissions projects. In light of this policy, Obama declared that the Keystone XL pipeline will only go through if its backers can prove that the project won’t increase emissions.
The final White House decision is still forthcoming, but Obama’s reservations are familiar language to B.C. environmentalists, who opposed the Northern Gateway pipeline on similar grounds.
Canadian defenders of Keystone, however, are talking about it using quite different language. Last week, the Globe and Mail summarized the defenders’ arguments for the project in terms of the boost that it will give to Canada’s economy, the huge potential for Canadian job creation, and “American energy security” — which perhaps is a moot point when we’re talking about finite, non-renewable resources, but anyway.
The crux of the discussion is the seeming conflict between environmental concerns and economic concerns. In B.C., the former won out, at least temporarily; in Alberta, the latter seem to be the more persuasive.
B.C. environmentalists opposed the Northern Gateway pipeline out of concern about the presence of tankers in our potentially treacherous and ecologically vulnerable waters; similarly, American environmentalists are concerned about Nebraska’s delicate Sand Hills region. But Obama’s key argument against moving forward with Keystone is the phrase “not significantly increasing emissions.” This phrase sounded fine when I first heard it, but upon further reflection, it’s actually sort of weird.
This means that the Keystone project mustn’t involve any additional emissions, i.e., more than are already being emitted in transporting crude from America’s other suppliers in Mexico, Venezuela and the Middle East. This, of course, is a far cry from the far more dramatic goal of actually decreasing global carbon emissions, or working toward weaning the world off its dependence on coal and oil.
Keystone XL defenders argue that if the pipeline weren’t to expand, oil producers would find other markets for their products, which would produce even more emissions. This argument evades even the semblance of responsibility for environmental concerns (although I was perhaps being naïve when I thought that an industry might willingly embark upon a policy aimed at its own obsolescence).
What I find interesting in this conversation — from Obama’s clearly stated reservations to Keystone XL’s defenders — is that “good for the environment” is code for “not too much worse than what we’re already doing to it.”
In any discussion about energy, oil and natural resources, environment and the economy are pitted against each other like boxers in the ring, where only one can be victorious. We can see this in the half-hearted gestures of Keystone XL defenders, who have sort of shrugged and argued that since the oil has to get to some market somehow, this is the best way to do it.
I’m sure my determined cynicism about the environmental impact of the Keystone expansion smacks of hypocrisy to some, given how much time I spend lamenting the fact that our anemic economy is killing new grads. There are real economic opportunities in Alberta, it’s true: It’s common for women my age to watch our male friends and boyfriends go to the fields, in almost any capacity, and make a killing while we stay home and dream about paying off our loans one day 20 years down the road.
We can no longer afford to think of this as a zero-sum game: We need both a healthy economy and a healthy environment, and not the kind of “healthy” that can be expressed as: “Well, we’re not causing too many more emissions, so yeah, you could say it’s good for the environment.”
How do we get there? It’s unclear. There’s no one clear path forward, and it will take creativity, ingenuity and courage. It will also take a refusal to settle for the empty rhetoric of “not significantly increasing emissions.”
We need to do better than simply “less worse.”
