Forward on Climate: No to Keystone XL

The largest climate rally in the history of the United States took place on February 17, 2013. Tens of thousands of protestors from all over the U.S. and Canada gathered in Washington D.C. in a rally organized by some of the largest environmental organizations including The Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defence Council and 350.org. Although the rally was titled Forward on Climate and the mission was to call attention to climate change, the main focus was to pressure President Obama in the final weeks before he makes his decision on the Keystone XL pipeline. The TransCanada pipeline is expected to carry Canadian tar sands oil from Alberta to Texas is expected to create billions of dollars of revenue for the Albertan oil sands and the Canadian economy.

President Obama had originally rejected the pipeline’s initial design in the midst of re-election. But the final decision has not yet been reached and rests solely in Obama’s hands. Keystone XL has become the centre point of the battle between environmentalists and oil companies. Obama’s decision will decide the future for energy in the U.S. but will have huge impacts for Alberta’s oil sands and Canada as well.

Environmentalists aren’t the only ones pressuring Obama. Earlier this month TransCanada President, Russ Girling personally travelled to D.C. to lobby for Obama’s approval of the project. Clearly, the stakes in this decision are high for everyone. The Canadian government is attempting damage control as they realize just how severely they miscalculated the pressure from the environmental movement. The morning after the rally, John Baird, Canada’s foreign affairs minister took the time to take a few jabs at the Obama administration and claim that Canada is well on its way to its emission reduction targets. Of course the statement is laughable coming from the only country that was called out during the Rio+20 summit for their absolute refusal to act on climate change. Canada consistently places in the bottom for rankings on their climate action plans and let’s not forget that the Harper government pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol less than a year ago. Baird’s statement was based less on facts and was more of a reactionary recourse to detract attention away from Canada’s “dirty” oil.

While Obama can still choose which side he wants to take in this issue, the Canadian government has already made their decision clear. Their ultimate goal is improving Canada’s short-term economic growth through increasing investment in Alberta’s oil sands regardless of the long-term impacts of these decisions. For the environmental movement the Harper government has represented an immoveable blockade and any attempts to petition them will merely result in being labelled as “foreign radical groups.”

But the same cannot be said of the Obama administration. During the election Obama won brownie points over opponent Mitt Romney by merely naming climate change as an issue he wanted to tackle. Such is the world we live in. But post-election many of the environmentalists who helped elect Obama are now pushing to hold him to his inaugural promise to act on climate change. Obama has been paying lip service to the environmental movement for a while now but his actions have yet to live up to his words. The Keystone XL decision is a major one not just for the future of the environmental movement or the oil companies but for Obama’s legacy as well. No longer needing to worry about re-election, Obama’s biggest excuses from his first term of office are now invalid. Approving the pipeline would be an easy decision as the resulting jobs and short-term economic growth in the U.S. would allow Obama to ride out at least the first-half of his second term. But the resulting environmental impacts, not just from the pipeline but from the continual expansion of the oil sands, and the inaction on climate change will leave a stain on Obama’s legacy that will become hard for him to erase. In the end, his decision will speak volumes for whose interests Obama’s truly represents: the average middle-class American citizen whose support brought him to power or the corporations or lobbyists who have millions of dollars at their beck and call to influence his decision.

Environmentalists have coined what they now refer to as the ‘Keystone Principle.’ Although Keystone is just one pipeline, and its resulting effects may not have a huge impact on climate change, approving the pipeline would represent a huge investment into the continued expansion of the oil sands and a reaffirmation that the U.S. government plans to continue to rely on fossil fuels as the main source of energy moving forward. But environmentalists, scientists, and a significant proportion of the general public agree that climate change is too serious of an issue to ignore. If we are serious about exploring alternative sources of energy and working towards a future where we don’t rely on fossil fuels then we cannot make billion dollar investments in pipelines that will carry oil. This of course is a fact that fossil fuel companies want to keep under the radar.

350.org, one of the groups organizing the rally have done the climate math and come out with 3 crucial numbers for the future of the planet. 2° Celsius is the maximum amount that scientists believe we can raise the temperature of the earth without causing irreparable damage. So far we are at 0.8 degrees. The second number is 565 gigatons. That’s how many more gigatons of CO2 we can burn and release into the atmosphere while hoping to keep temperatures beneath the 2° mark. If we continue to burn CO2 at current rates, we will reach that limit within 16 years. And the final number: 2795 gigatons. That’s the amount of CO2 contained in our existing, proven fossil fuel reserves. That’s the amount of CO2 we would release if fossil fuel companies burned through all the coal, oil and gas they have. That’s almost 5 times higher than the limit scientists have placed. Needless to say, if we burned through all of that, and for fossil fuel companies that is the plan, we would be well beyond the 2° mark. In case I haven’t made it clear yet, this puts fossil fuel companies at cross purposes with anyone interested in the planet’s future. And that is why we must say to billion dollar investments in the fossil fuel companies. We need to send fossil fuel companies a message: our planet’s future is more important than their bottom line.

Obama’s decision is expected in a few weeks time and in the meanwhile, environmentalists, the oil industry and possibly Stephen Harper himself are waiting with bated breath. As my sister put it, this may represent the ultimate battle between the environmentalists and the oil lobbyists or to put it more succinctly, between good and evil.