What Harper should learn from pipeline debacle

For Canada’s Conservative government, there are two lessons in Barack Obama’s surprise decision to delay the international pipeline slated to deliver Alberta tar-sands oil to American refineries.

The first is that, politically, the environment still matters. Prime Minister Stephen Harper may have successfully ignored environmental critics at home. But, as the U.S. president’s abrupt reversal on the Keystone XL pipeline demonstrates, such critics still wield considerable clout in countries that Canada is desperate to do business with.

The second is that continental energy integration — a long-standing dream of both the Conservative Party and its allies in the oil industry —

is neither as simple nor advisable as it might seem.

Throughout his time in office, Harper’s approach to climate change has verged on the contemptuous.

He quite legitimately sneered at the hypocrisy of previous Liberal governments that paid lip service to greenhouse gas reductions but did nothing.

Yet, at the same time, he did his best to sabotage global efforts aimed at curbing the carbon dioxide emissions that most scientists predict will lead to catastrophic weather changes.

That was most evident at the 2010 Copenhagen conference, when the Prime Minister publicly allied himself with those trying to derail international efforts aimed at curbing climate change.

At home, he got away with it. When the ballots were tallied, climate change didn’t matter that much to Canadian voters.

The economic slump gave Harper even more leeway. While many Canadians may not like the environmental costs associated with heavy oil extraction in Alberta, they recognize that the oil sands (or tar sands as they used to be called before industry deemed the term pejorative) represent a bright spot in an otherwise bleak economy.

Spinoffs from the massive extraction efforts reach into Ontario and beyond.

Which perhaps explains why opposition to Keystone XL was so muted here.

Not so in the U.S. The tar sands may account for just 5 per cent of Canada’s greenhouse gases now. But, as Ottawa’s own environment department has reported, they are also the fastest growing industrial source of carbon emissions in the country.

According to Alberta’s Pembina Institute, the Keystone pipeline was slated to raise oil sands production by 50 per cent and emission levels by even more.

Technically, the pipeline foundered on its planned route through an ecologically sensitive part of Nebraska. Technically, it is just being delayed.

But the real reason is that it was slated to carry tar sands oil.

In the end, Obama calculated that thumbing his nose at the environmental wing of his Democratic Party now might cost him next year’s presidential election.

Will he resurrect the pipeline if he wins that contest? That’s not clear.

Which brings us to the second lesson of Keystone. Since the introduction of free trade in 1984, Conservatives have been trying to forge ironclad continental energy pacts with the U.S. — agreements that would tie Canadian oil, gas and even hydro-electricity directly and intimately into the American market.

East-west energy links were downplayed in favour of north-south ones. TransCanada Corp., for instance, which built the first Alberta to Quebec natural gas pipeline in the 1950s, is now responsible for the Alberta to Texas Keystone conduit.

To the right, it seemed a no-brainer. We have the energy; the U.S. needs it. What right-thinking American could prefer Arab oil to Canadian oil?

The answer, it seems, is that many do. The U.S. is a complicated country with its own political imperatives. American interests do not always coincide with ours. It is foolish to assume otherwise.

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Source: Toronto Star