Obama Administration Rejects Keystone

Today the Obama administration officially rejected the controversial Keystone XL pipeline after seven years of review. Sponsored by the Canadian government, who under former Prime Minister Harper’s leadership sought to export Alberta’s Tar Sand oil to the Gulf of Mexico, the State Department concluded that the pipeline is no longer in US interests. 

This may not come as too much of a surprise, as due to high natural gas production in the US and low oil prices worldwide, the US is not as desperate as it once was seven years ago to obtain oil. Besides the economic factors, the Tar Sands oil is extremely heavy and difficult to extract. Meaning that potential spills could be a public relations and natural catastrophe in the US. Moreover, the heavy-crude oil would have spewed much more carbon emissions than conventional oil, leading to potentially higher sea-level rise, warmer weather, and more natural disasters in years to come.

View of how Tar Sand extraction affects the environment. Source: fragileandwild.com

Republican outcry will likely be seen as a response to the rejection, especially next Tuesday when the GOP candidates face each other once again at the Fox Business debate. Furthermore, this decision by the Obama administration will also serve as motivation to world leaders this December, as they will meet in Paris to discuss and limit climate change.

 

However, more is expected from developed countries, particularly Canada, which will have to decide what to do with the Tar Sand oil already extracted. Will they invest in clean energy instead? Or will export the oil to China as they have said before? Whatever the decision, the US is firmly standing up against carbon pollution and giving hope to environmentalists that world leaders will agree to a formidable climate change agenda this December 2015.

References:

http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/06/politics/keystone-xl-pipeline-decision-rejection-kerry/

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/07/us/obama-expected-to-reject-construction-of-keystone-xl-oil-pipeline.html?_r=0

The Addiction of a Lifetime

Since forever, we have learned about all the world’s grievances. Poverty, water scarcity, racism, the list goes on and on. However, there is one to pay particular attention to.

Climate Change. 

A lot of you may ask why? Well, Naomi Klein, a Canadian journalist and author of This Changes Everything, gives us a pretty good explanation. 

It starts with her struggle to understand our complex and ever-changing climate. What world are we leaving to our future children? Will they appreciate the beauty of the Great Coral Reef off the Australian coast? Will they see the beautiful animals roaming Africa’s savannah?

Her explanation of the ongoing Keystone XL pipeline debate gives the reader a good understanding of the local fight in the US and Canada. 

To give a little background, the Tar Sands in Alberta, Canada, are much more difficult to extract than conventional crude. They are Bitumen, a type of fossil fuel that is much more carbon intensive. The burning of bitumen, as you can imagine, would lead to more emissions, more sea-level rise, to more storms, and so on. Besides, the method of extraction is extremely damaging to the surrounding environment. Just take a look for yourself below. 

Published by onearth.org

To turn the page a little, Klein also talks about the curious fact of lower emissions by developed countries. It turns out that due to free trade rules, more manufacturing is being done overseas. This means emissions produced in making a product are instead factored in either at that the site of production and not where they end up – usually the developed countries.

Additionally, the transport of these products causes additional emissions, as tankers move across oceans to deliver their merchandise. Do these emissions get factored into a country’s annual rate? Absolutely not. So this means that while developed countries’ emissions may be going down by recent reports, they may actually be the same or rising.

Lastly, Klein exposes the work some big environmental groups in the United States do. Particularly with The Nature Conservancy, she states that a purchase of a prairie reserve in Texas with donation money from ExxonMobil resulted after a few years in drilling permits to extract oil.

This has caused the endangered prairie chicken – which was the supposed to be protected by The Nature Conservancy – to disappear from the site, as a New York Times article recently stated.

Losing our addiction to cheap and dirty energy is turning out to be very difficult. Unless presented with reliable and affordable alternatives, our governments will continue to cave in to corporate interests and elections to maintain coal jobs and the like. Informing ourselves of the local struggles against oil extraction and of our governmental policies on the environment are the right step to ending our ever-damaging addiction.

Link to NYT article on The Nature Conservancy:

Group Earns Oil Income Despite Pledge on Drilling