Keystone XL pipeline is essentially dead!!!

This.  Is.  Huge.  What we have just witnessed is true democracy at work.  As of several months ago, the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline was all but certain to be approved.  The company who's behind the project, TransCanada, was even in the process of moving pipeline pieces to the proposed route as of last week.

Then, today, Barack Obama announced that the proposal needed to go back to the State Department for a thorough re-assessment of the impacts of the pipeline.  This will delay any decision for more than a year, and if done to the standards requested by Obama, should result in tossing out the pipeline plan.  Obama specifically cited the need for the environmental assessment to include climate change effects if the tar sands are tapped (the effects would be catastrophic, fyi).

So what brought about this seismic shift, when the State Department was weeks away from recommending approval?  People power.  In September, 1253 people were arrested for protesting the pipeline in front of the White House.  Then, on Sunday, over 12,000 people surrounded the White House with signs reminding Obama about his campaign promises to take on climate change.  Dozens of congressmen and congresswomen wrote to Obama about their concerns.  Nine Nobel Peace Prize winners declared their opposition to the pipeline.  College campuses around the country held rallies against the pipeline.  And Obama listened to us.

Something is better than nothing

Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman wrote a piece for New York Times Magazine last week on the economics of climate change solutions (see article here).

It's a very good overview of the approaches our government is debating in regards to climate change policy, i.e. cap-and-trade vs. emissions tax. He also discusses the politics of inaction and pessimism surrounding these issues, laying out the economics of action vs. inaction. I find this very important considering that opponents like to talk of the prohibitive costs of the proposed policies to the US economy without considering the deferred costs that will occur without said policies. Lastly, Krugman throws his support behind immediate action on a large and fast scale. The technology and economic analysis are all ready to go, and now political will is all we are waiting for.

In the vein of pessimism that Krugman discussed, some responses to Krugman's article criticized him for not having realistic, attainable goals and for expecting too much from our political and market-place sectors. In assessing these criticisms, political blogger Kevin Drum of Mother Jones takes a tone that I find inspiring and spot-on. It's easy to say that it's too difficult to try these recommended actions, but what other choice do we have?

"I think it's too easy to be overwhelmed by the scope of the climate change problem. It's unquestionably fantastically difficult, and any sober look at human nature, developing country growth, and capital stock inertia suggests that we're going to have a very hard time meeting our most ambitious goals. But there really are pretty feasible ways of getting a lot of the way there, and if carbon pricing and other programs motivate the next Thomas Edison to invent something remarkable a year or a decade before it might have otherwise happened, who knows? That might get us the rest of the way.

And if it doesn't? Well, look: three degrees of temperature increase is still better then five degrees. Six inches of sea rise is better than 12 inches. A hundred million dead is better than a billion dead. This stuff is worth doing even if it's not perfect. After all, what is?"

- Kevin Drum, Mother Jones

To read the rest of Kevin Drum's post, click here.