Why the KXL pipeline should not be approved

The EnergyCollective recently published a post (Why Should the Obama Administration Approve the Keystone XL Pipeline?) by John Miller.  His post, as the title indicates, analyzes various aspects of the KXL pipeline in depth and comes to the conclusion that the benefits are greater than the costs.

I disagree.



I posted the following comment to his post:

Six or eight presidents in a row have talked about getting off our "addiction to oil."  And that was before we truly understood the magnitude of the climate crisis.  As with any addiction, one must make an initial commitment.  The first cigarette not smoked; the first drink not taken.  Why start now?  After all, one single additional cigarette doesn't make any difference in the long run, does it?  And, shoot, I'm feeling a bit stressed today, and that one cigarette will help me deal with that better.  I'll stop tomorrow.

Likewise with our addiction to oil.  So far, we have never said "no" to any oil field; to any pipeline.  We just keep feeding our addiction.

So the point is not that we can rationalize or justify on an incremental basis any particular pipeline or refinery or oil field.  You've done a fine job of that with this post, in fact.  The point is that at some point we have to say, "No."  If we can't say no to this particularly ugly, dirty source of carbon emissions, then we probably can't say "no" at all.

That's what troubles those of us who are most concerned about climate change.