Barack Obama Faces His Ecology Exam

It’s all about oil from tar sands — and about building an enormous pipeline through the middle of the United States.

President Barack Obama is facing a problem that he has already put off several times. On his desk lies a document for his signature — a document that will decide the credibility of his environmental and climate policy. It concerns one of the biggest oil industry projects, the construction of the Keystone XL-Pipeline that runs from northern Canada to Houston, Texas. Since the pipeline crosses international borders, it requires presidential approval. The pipeline will carry crude oil over a distance of some 2,700 kilometers (1,677 miles). The crude has to be heated to make pumping even possible. The crude will come from vast areas formerly covered by forest at the cost of significant ecological and climate damage. The trees have to go in order to get at the tar sands from which the crude oil will be washed with water and chemicals. The pipeline runs through national parks, crosses water reservoirs and the wheat growing regions of the American Midwest. An oil spill would be catastrophic. Critics of the plan include many prominent politicians in Obama’s own party, and opposition comes from the tightly organized American ecological movement that played a key role in Obama’s 2008 election success.

The oil industry plans to invest $13 billion in this mammoth fossil fuel project. It will pay off because as oil reserves dwindle, prices will rise. Those in favor of the Keystone project claim it will make the United States independent of uncertain foreign oil sources.

The Keystone reserves are estimated at 180 billion barrels. That’s sufficient to cover global consumption for slightly less than six years. It could last for a decade, give or take a couple of years, if the toxic oil is consumed only in North America. And what happens then?

Millions of acres of land devastated and poisoned, millions of tons of greenhouse gases pumped into the atmosphere and everything as it’s always been in order to be independent of uncertain foreign oil exporters. But it also means a U.S. commitment to fossil fuels which will result in a delay in transforming energy policy and accelerated climate change.

For the short term, Obama may focus on his re-election a year from now as well as on the usual promises of the oil and industrial lobbies, the job creation and the goodwill that can be his at the stroke of his pen. It would be “business as usual” rather than “yes, we can.”