Building Keystone Would Be a Mistake

At the 2009 Copenhagen Summit, major world powers reaffirmed climate change as one of the foremost challenges facing humanity and pledged to put forth efforts to limit global temperature increase to two degrees Celsius. Since then, scientists have suggested that even that cap may not be enough to prevent catastrophic impacts. Amidst this environment of growing urgency, we were disappointed to read this past February that The Crimson supports construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. They claim that political rhetoric has polarized the issue and obscured the project’s promise of energy independence. But, as the editorial points out, the broader goal here is the fight against climate change. Rejecting Keystone XL is an essential part of that fight.

Keystone poses several environmental and climatic threats. Tar sands extraction is an enormously resource-intensive process with high energy and water costs. According to a congressional report, tar sands produce 17 percent more greenhouse gas emissions than other fossil fuels—and this is still only the beginning of the story. The project is a laundry list of environmental and human injustices; construction of the pipeline alone will destroy numerous habitats and their plant and animal residents, as well as farms in the American heartland and sacred First Nations lands. After construction, there is the constant threat of leaks and spills, which, according to a University of Nebraska-Lincoln study, are much more likely than TransCanada has claimed. The study’s projected worst-case scenario of 91 spills could damage abutting homes, spoil previously pristine land, and contaminate North America’s largest freshwater aquifer.

Pipeline supporters claim the oil will be produced regardless of whether or not Keystone XL is built, but the reality is much more complex. Tar sands development remains a possibility either way, but proponents—including The Crimson—ignore a crucial fact: Successfully stopping pipelines can raise the cost of business and make plans unprofitable, de-motivating corporations from exploiting these fragile lands. Additionally, a recent letter published in Nature Climate Change suggests that the State Department’s review “overlooked the pipeline’s potentially most significant GHG impact: increasing oil consumption as the result of increasing supplies and lowering prices.” The bottom line is that exploiting the tar sands oil through any project will exacerbate climate change.

Neither is Keystone a panacea for foreign oil dependence—despite the no-export front TransCanada is putting up, American businesses may not see much of the crude oil being pumped through the pipeline. President Obama said in 2014 that the Keystone Pipeline “is providing the ability of Canada to pump their oil, send it through our land, down to the Gulf, where it will be sold everywhere else.” Last year, 37.5 percent of the product from Gulf Coast refineries was exported; the nonpartisan, University of Pennsylvania-based website factcheck.org explains that while exact figures remain unknown, refined Keystone XL crude is likely to leave the country as well. Consequently, the pipeline doesn’t promise energy independence as The Crimson seems to believe—and even though much of the oil is apparently destined for international ports, Canadian and American people will still bear heavy environmental and health costs.

For these reasons and more, many environmentalists, residents, and First Nations peoples indigenous to the tar sands regions in Canada will oppose any future proposal to develop the tar sands just as they have fought and continue to fight Keystone. In that sense, there is nothing extraordinary about Keystone. There are hundreds of current campaigns across the continent protesting new pipeline infrastructure stretch across the continent, from the Pacific Connector on the West Coast to rallies against the Kinder Morgan proposal closer to home in Massachusetts. As a symbol of our nation’s continued dependence on dirty energy, Keystone has overshadowed these other proposed pipelines and taken on great weight. That symbolic value has proven bittersweet—it has helped polarize Congressional politics, but it has also brought the question of America’s energy future to the foreground.

That future is up to us. If we are serious about securing a clean energy future, then we have to see President Obama’s veto of the Keystone bill as a crucial step. We must do better with what we have by significantly improving energy efficiency programs. We must invest in renewable energy technologies, especially as they become increasingly cost-competitive with fossil fuels. These programs, not a 1,179-mile pipeline, are what we must look to as we strive for greater energy independence and a cleaner, more sustainable world.

C. Alicia Juang ’18 lives in Thayer Hall., Terilyn Chen ’16 is an environmental science and public policy concentrator in Winthrop Housee. Sabrina G. Devereaux ’18 lives in Lionel Hall.