It's time for a union of concerned economists to oppose the tar sands pipeline.
The Keystone XL pipeline protest movement is in its final phase. The bureaucratic processes of environmental assessment and public comment – proven to be an incestuous mess of oil companies, Clintons, the diplomatic corps, and management consultants posing as environmental assessors – are complete.
Starting in August, this movement set a tone (disciplined and serious) and bar (civil and disobedient) for popular movements on the left to raise a soulful voice, transforming passive outrage into public action. As a result, centrist environmental groups tacked left, media coverage exploded, and dissent on the left found common cause in challenging industrial oil, Wall Street hording, militarism, and failed governance. In the same news cycle, Naomi Klein, Bill McKibben, Jeffrey Sachs, and Reverend Billy preached a unitive message.
But the economic argument against the pipeline is being lost.
For years, Canada’s pressure on the United States to permit this pipeline has been full-court. The lobbying comes from the provincial government of Alberta and the federal government in Ottawa. Meanwhile, one of the country’s most influential news companies makes a hobby out of condemning anybody who questions the value of the tar sands, calling critics the “anti-modern life coalition,” “ecological hysterics,” and the “church of massive hypocrisy.”
Alberta’s tar sands ambassador, Minister of International Relations Iris Evans, visits every important municipal government south of her province’s border. Gary Doer, Canada’s social-democratic ambassador to the United States, also goes door-to-door to build the case for expanding extraction of tar sands. There are endless junkets for state and local officials (and even pseudo-officials) to travel first-class to the tar sands. Most importantly, the case is made to every company and union that this pipeline means jobs.
Too many Americans, hooked on the image of Canada as its gentler Scandinavian brother, do not grasp how intensely the current Canadian government wants this pipeline to be built. This is far from your grandfather’s Canada. Prime Minister Stephen Harper describes the country as an “energy superpower.” Canada is a resource warrior.
Now, in this late phase of the Keystone action, environmentalists led by the Natural Resources Defense Council are ramping up a campaign asking municipal leaders to oppose the pipeline. Back in March 2011, 25 mayors signed this pledge. Under ordinary circumstances, adding significantly to the petition would be hard. Today, with so many people facing permanent unemployment, it may prove impossible.
Politicians at the state and municipal level are wary of opposing any measure, large or small, that has potential to create jobs. Still, what turns this political risk into a nightmare is the widespread assumption that, one way or another, the tar sands oil will be consumed.
“If the additional supply [from the tar sands] doesn’t come here, then it will go to China,” energy analyst Daniel Yergin said in a recent interview. It’s this sense of historical inevitability – “If we don’t do it, someone else will” – that makes the Keystone opposition a non-starter for so many state and municipal politicians.
The tragedy is that, unless the case against the pipeline is made part of comprehensive energy reform – something that should have happened in the first year of U.S. President Barack Obama’s presidency – the environmental case against the pipeline remains moral and scientific. While climate change may be the greatest moral emergency of our time, even the most faithful sympathizers in local elected office cannot be seen to support an action that stands in the way of job creation, particularly if voters believe the jobs¬ – their jobs – will be going to China.
Alberta and Ottawa convinced the public of the pipeline’s utility, not through their projections of employment and profit, but by creating a situation in which everybody believes the burning of tar sands oil is predetermined. True or false, this belief cannot be wished away. As an old trade union saying goes, “You cannot reconcile two opposing points of view merely by denying one of them.”
The case for the moral tragedy of the Keystone pipeline is elegantly staked, supported by growing grassroots participation and strong voices of moral authority, including Nobel peace laureates, top scientists, environmental and religious groups, intellectuals, and writers.
But the language with which Canada is winning this contest is economic, not moral, and the environmental movement’s counter-arguments in this language are not vociferous enough. For better or worse, economists are the only group with the perceived authority to alter the view that tar sands consumption is inevitable, and to give elected officials the evidence they need to oppose the Keystone pipeline. If there is an argument to be made for a realistic alternative to the pipeline – one that paints a different economic reality and protects sympathetic politicians – now is the time for leading economic voices to make it.
Origin
Source: the Mark
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