Obama vetoes world access to cheap oil
- By Mitchell Blatt
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E-mail China.org.cn, February 28, 2015
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President Obama's dithering over a crucial U.S. oil pipeline is bad economics and bad politics. |
Oil is what drives our modern world. From powering things to making synthetic materials, plastics, pesticides, and everyday materials, it lubricates all aspects of civilization. With 90 million barrels of the stuff used daily across the world, it's hard to imagine life without it.
This, therefore, makes President Barack Obama's decision to veto construction of the Keystone Pipeline all the more confounding.
Obama cited environmental concerns and said he would await the results of a review, which he has delayed indefinitely. Yet the project has already been under review for six years, with numerous assessments produced. With the impact being dependent on multiple variables and unknown future circumstances, each of the reviews reached different conclusions.
The U.S. State Department review found that there would be little excess carbon emission, while the Stockholm Environment Institute projected that emissions could be four times higher than State Department estimates.
However it turns out, we have no ability to precisely determine the impact. Waiting another year won't make the predictions any more accurate. With so much analysis available now, Obama should be able to decide. If he thinks it will be too environmentally destructive, he should deny the construction permit rather than disingenuously pretending he is still considering it.
However, the pipeline is much needed, and some level of pollution is unavoidable from any energy discovery and production. The only way to completely avoid oil spills and carbon emissions and other environmental damage is to stop using oil in any form. And imagine the disruption to life that would cause!
There are no mass market alternatives to crude oil of the kind Keystone offers. Electric cars are expensive and can't travel beyond a few hundred kilometers in one trip without battery recharging.
Anyway, electric cars still require electricity for operation and, in 2013, only 13 percent of U.S. energy production came from renewable sources; by 2040, only 25 percent of world energy production (and 15 percent of consumption) will be via the renewable option, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
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