Visuals of crude oil swamping an all-American suburb could not have come at a worse moment for advocates of the Keystone XL pipeline. With the Obama administration expected to decide the pipeline’s fate this summer, and politicians on both sides of the border revving up the rhetoric, the breach brought home the “not in my backyard” argument — literally.
The Mayflower spill is not overwhelming, compared to other recent pipeline breaks: an estimated 10,000 barrels, which did not leak into any major body of water. In contrast, a 2010 pipeline breach saw 20,000 barrels pour into Michigan’s Kalamazoo River, with an estimated cleanup cost in excess of one billion dollars. In 2011, 28,000 barrels leaked from a pipeline near the Cree community of Little Buffalo, Alberta, the largest spill the province had seen in 36 years, closing the local school for several days.
And as with every spill, the environmental costs have to be weighed against the benefits oil pipelines have brought, and will continue to bring: a cheap energy source which enables a high quality of life for hundreds of millions of people. Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver stated that the Canadian government “strongly supports the Keystone XL pipeline because it would advance our mutual interest in attaining North American energy security and create jobs in both countries.”
But for Keystone’s opponents, the event represents a watershed moment. Ed Markey, Democratic Congressman from Massachusetts, intoned: “Whether it’s the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, or … (the) mess in Arkansas, Americans are realizing that transporting large amounts of this corrosive and polluting fuel is a bad deal for American taxpayers and for our environment.”
North of the border, still miffed at NDP leader Thomas Mulcair’s “treasonous” trip to Washington three weeks ago, the federal Tories have much to lose if President Obama rejects Keystone. The pipeline represents not just an economic, but a political lynchpin of their long-term national strategy: displacing the power centre of Canada westward. Its failure would also put the final nail in the coffin of the Northern Gateway pipeline, which has been inexorably squeezing shut over the past year as opposition to the project mounts in British Columbia.
Some believe the Conservatives might have an easier time surmounting the Arkansas spill if Canada was still regarded as a green champion, instead of a laggard. That’s the thesis of Rick Smith, former executive director of Environmental Defence, now executive director of the Broadbent Institute. He told iPolitics, “This government is reaping what it sowed. In the first years of its mandate, it earned Canada an environmental black eye on the international scene. After it attained a majority, it decimated environmental protections to advance its resources agenda. The result is that nobody believes Ottawa when it says pipelines pose little to no threat to human health.”
Why would the Harper Tories, who tend to take the long view on policy matters, act in such a short-sighted way? It’s true that most conservative voters — indeed, most Canadian voters — don’t put the environment at the top of their priority list, especially since the recession of 2008. But that doesn’t mean the government needed to relegate the portfolio to Siberian status, or stand athwart history — and every other nation in the world — on issues like the recent withdrawal from the U.N. Treaty on Desertification.
This government’s greatest failing — and Achilles heel — may be squandering the opportunity to converge environmentalism and conservatism. Over the past nine years, the Tories could have taken Canadian environmental policy in a whole new direction. They could have championed market-based conservatism in areas from land preservation to fish stocks. They could have encouraged energy conservation through market pricing. They could have initiated consultation processes on projects such as Northern Gateway that were more than just “for show”, to give people the sense that their views were actually being heard.
Such actions would have allowed Ottawa to take other legitimate decisions, such as withdrawing from the failed Kyoto Accord, with more credibility, and maintain Canada’s image as an environmental leader — even an innovator. And the Tories wouldn’t have been kowtowing to their ideological adversaries, but listening to one of their own: former Reform party leader Preston Manning, who has been sounding the call for green conservatism for almost a decade now, most recently at the Manning Centre’s annual networking conference in March 2013.
Instead, the Conservatives staked their battle lines on the tired model of the economy vs. the environment, assuming that in the current uncertain climate, the economy was sure to win. Now they risk losing their bet, in the oil-soaked backyards of suburban Arkansas.
Original Article
Source: ipolitics.ca
Author: Tasha Kheiriddin
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