- We need to be energy independent of the Middle East
- We need to create jobs
- We need to do more for the poor
As Ronald Bailey tells us at Reason.com:
The 1,700-mile Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta, Canada, would daily transport more than 500,000 barrels of oil derived from oil sands to the Gulf of Mexico. The U.S. already imports about 2 million barrels of oil per day from Canada. Since the pipeline crosses our border the president has the responsibility to decide if it is in the national interest. President Obama under pressure from the environmental lobby punted on approving the pipeline - bravely putting off his decision until after the elections in November. In December, the Republicans in Congress passed legislation that required the president to make his decision by February 21st. Apparently, he now has.The pipeline would have increased the amount of petroleum we buy from our friends and reduced our dependence upon foreign markets. Its construction would have created 20,000 jobs directly and thousands more indirectly. It would have kept low the cost of fuel - gasoline, home heating fuel, etc. - which would have been a great benefit to those most vulnerable to rises in energy costs. Low fuel cost means that every other thing we buy would be cheaper than it otherwise would be. This would have been a special blessing to the poor.
So, why did the president decide we weren't going through with it? How is constructing the pipeline not in our national interest. Mr. Obama claims that it's because there wasn't enough time to study the environmental impact, but this is hard to credit. They've been studying this pipeline for three years. Here's Bailey again:
Proponents of the pipeline point out that the project is shovel-ready and would create 20,000 construction jobs. In addition, the pipeline has passed environmental muster twice already. And the company has agreed to re-site a portion of the pipeline in order to allay exaggerated fears that a leak from it might harm the Ogallala aquifer.Some have complained that tar sands oil is particularly dirty and we shouldn't be putting its combustion products into the atmosphere, but this claim is also hard to place any confidence in. The pipeline will still be built, and the oil will still be burned but now instead of building the pipeline to connect the wells with refineries in the Gulf coast the pipeline will be built to the Pacific and the oil sent by ship to China where it will be burned with far fewer environmental safeguards than had it been burned in the U.S.
Whatever the liabilities and risks of the pipeline are they don't seem to outweigh the benefits of more jobs, more energy independence, and cheaper fuel. So why did the president turn down these benefits and kill the pipeline?
Economist Robert Samuelson of the Washington Post, a newspaper which strongly supports this administration, pulls no punches:
President Obama's rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico is an act of national insanity. It isn't often that a president makes a decision that has no redeeming virtues and -- beyond the symbolism -- won't even advance the goals of the groups that demanded it. All it tells us is that Obama is so obsessed with his re-election that, through some sort of political calculus, he believes that placating his environmental supporters will improve his chances.Samuelson isn't done excoriating the president for what he sees as pure folly and detrimental to our national interest. There's much more in the column, and anyone interested in the issue really should read it.
Aside from the political and public relations victory, environmentalists won't get much. Stopping the pipeline won't halt the development of tar sands, to which the Canadian government is committed; therefore, there will be little effect on global warming emissions. Indeed, Obama's decision might add to them. If Canada builds a pipeline from Alberta to the Pacific for export to Asia, moving all that oil across the ocean by tanker will create extra emissions. There will also be the risk of added spills.