Keystone XL Pipeline

On January 20th, President Obama gave his State of the Union address, promising to utilize his veto if a displeasing bill reaches his desk. Nine days later, the Senate proceeded to approve the legislation to construct the Keystone XL Pipeline even though his veto is expected. The pipeline would stretch 1,179 miles and connect Alberta tar sands to existing pipelines in the Northern US to transfer tar sands crude oil to American refineries. Proponents of Keystone claim that it will pump oil money into the US economy, create thousands of jobs for Americans and shift the American oil supply westward. Environmentalists answer that the 42 thousand jobs Keystone claims to create are nearly all temporary, leaving just 50 permanent maintenance jobs, and are stressing the dangers of Keystone to North American wildlife and to the atmosphere overall.

Since crude oil extracted from tar sands is thought to produce more greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions than other types of crude, the Department of State conducted a Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) that estimated the emissions of sand crude from Keystone. The FEIS found that Keystone oil’s GHG emissions would be around 1.3-27.4 million metric tons per year, which sounds like a big number but would constitute only about .02-.4% of the US’s total annual GHG emissions. Sand crude is much thicker, though, so it needs to be heated in order to flow, and requires much more energy to refine, meaning increased carbon emissions before the oil is even used (those numbers aren’t included in the above figures). Furthermore, both the FEIS and TransCanada, the Canadian energy company set to build Keystone, agree that even if Keystone itself doesn’t go through, crude oil demand in North America will persist and Alberta’s tar sands will still be mined.

The result of a sand crude oil spill in the Kalamazoo
River in 2010. It's still not cleaned up.  

Yet even though the GHG impacts attributed to Keystone seem inevitable, it seems environmentalists are mostly concerned about the impact building Keystone would have on wildlife ecosystems and about the consequences of an oil spill on wildlife and water supply. Sure, oil spills look kind of pretty, but according to the EPA, sand crude oil is much harder to clean up than other oils because it doesn’t biodegrade and it’s far stickier. In response TransCanada promised to instate a slew of regulations and safety measures.

Parking lots covered in solar panels would be a
genius idea, wouldn't it?

As a young adult who cares about the course of the Earth’s environment, I would be much happier seeing the $8 billion dollars set aside for Keystone go to the wind and solar industry. A couple years ago this would have been a tough demand, but recently both the solar and wind sector have seen significant growth and have become much cheaper. A January 2015 study conducted by Oceana, an ocean conservation organization, tapping into wind resources off the Atlantic coast would yield twice as much energy and jobs than oil drilling.

To me it seems like a no-brainer to rain down support on the clean energy sector, even if Keystone fulfills all of its promises regarding jobs and safety. If you’re already eating a lot of junk food, the sensible thing to do would be to move away from that kind of diet to something healthier. The US is at that point now. We can continue to add more junk food oil to our energy diet, or we can spend our time converting to the kale of energy: limitless wind and solar.