Keystone XL cancellation a symbolic gesture

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 03/02/2021 (1324 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

ON the first day of his presidency, Joe Biden issued an executive order effectively killing the Keystone XL pipeline. Compared to the many challenges facing the new administration in Washington, this pipeline surely pales in significance. But perhaps it was targeted for just that reason — its insignificance presented a softball that the new president could hit out of the park.

After all, even though there are essentially no tangible benefits from the decision, there are also no serious impacts to cancellation, at least south of the border. Even if the projected capacity of the pipeline is never delivered to U.S. refineries, it will quickly be replaced by domestic production. The U.S. is now, thanks to shale oil, more than self-sufficient in fossil fuels.

In fact, America has become the world’s No. 1 oil producer. But of course, the iron logic of the marketplace – if there’s a profit to be taken, it will be — will ensure that the intended content of Keystone XL will cross the border, just by other means. This is because our oil can be purchased more cheaply than U.S. crude and therefore presents a profit-making opportunity.

Rail transport may be more expensive than a pipeline, thus yielding slightly less profit, but it will turn a profit nonetheless.

As to the benefits of cancellation, other than of a political nature – they don’t exist. Compared to the environmental carnage already occurring as a result of the gutting of federal environmental laws and regulations by former president Donald Trump, the environmental risk of this one additional pipeline, and the tens of thousands of kilometers of existing pipelines crisscrossing the American landscape, is negligible.

One can, in fact, argue that the major impact of the pipeline — its construction — has largely already occurred. And since our oil will get there anyway or be easily replaced by U.S. production, this in no way diminishes demand by decreasing supply and therefore contributes in no way U.S. climate-change action.

In Canada, some will see this as contributing positively to our response to climate change by substantially reducing our production of heavy oil, a major source of greenhouse-gas emissions. This is unlikely to occur, as world demand for oil will continue to be strong in the short and medium term, and if our oil continues to sell at a discount, customers will be found.

Even if our production is reduced, it will have no impact on global demand, and our own internal demand will remain unaffected since it’s not serviced by the oil sands. The emission reduction dividend, while welcome from a climate-change perspective, will create a very large economic hole that in the medium term will be very difficult to fill.

The political fallout from this possibility was evident even before the formal announcement of the cancellation. Our federal government has rushed to assure Albertans that it will fight hard to have this decision reversed; given Canada’s less-than-stellar performance on such Canada-U.S. issues as free trade and preserving the integrity of the Canada-U.S. Boundary Waters Treaty, Albertans are understandably nervous.

Why, then, is President Joe Biden cancelling Keystone XL? The most obvious answer is that he promised to do so in his election campaign. The decision is a low-cost gesture meant to demonstrate by inference that he will implement the ambitious program presented to the American people during the election.

Although the decision does little for the environment, and nothing at all for climate change, it is nonetheless of symbolic significance to the supporters of the president’s environment and climate-change platform.

Another Day One executive order initiates a process leading to the U.S. rejoining the Paris Agreement. This is also largely symbolic, as the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change has told us some time ago that even if all signatories fulfilled their (non-binding) Paris commitments and did considerably more, we are still on track for a 3-5 degrees C global temperature increase by 2100.

To stay on track to meet the Paris Agreement target of limiting global temperature increase to 1.5º C, we would have to reduce global greenhouse-gas emissions by about eight per cent per year for the next decade. The Paris Agreement is already out of date, but American participation at least signals that a major player is back in the game.

Symbols can be important, as evidenced by the very powerful symbol of the Biden-Harris swearing-in signaling that for all its hiccups, democracy still works in America. But symbols can either precede action or substitute for action. Biden will find, and probably already suspects, that making significant progress toward phasing out America’s economic and physical dependence on fossil energy will not just be difficult, but downright ugly.

Let’s hope his initial symbolic gestures will be followed by substantive action to tackle climate change. Even with U.S. leadership, the road ahead will be long and difficult. Without it, one shudders for the future.

Norman Brandson was deputy minister of the former Manitoba departments of environment, water stewardship and conservation from 1990 to 2006.