KEYSTONE XL: The pipeline from Hades

By Will Parry

The determined intervention of scientists, public figures and rank-and-file environmentalists has delayed for a full year a decision on the horrific Keystone XL pipeline, intended to run its oily 1,700-mile course from the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, across sensitive U.S. aquifers to the Gulf of Mexico.

On November 6, the activists, twelve thousand strong, took the pipeline issue directly to the White House. In possibly the largest civil disobedience in U.S. history, 1,250 were arrested. President Obama, who will make the ultimate decision, then announced that he will defer action until early 2013.

The best scientific opinion says Obama’s decision could well determine whether our planet survives as a viable habitat for most living creatures.

Among those arrested at the White House was James Hanson, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Hanson, who has focused his work for decades on the impact of fossil fuels on the environment, is considered a foremost authority on global warming.

Hanson has a blunt two-word summary for the significance of the campaign to block the Keystone XL pipeline: If the pipeline is built, it’s “Game over” for the environment, he says.

Obama’s one-year delay was a major victory, said Bill McKibben, the legendary founder of the grassroots campaign “350.org,” which has coordinated 15,000 “save the planet” rallies in 189 countries over the past three years. The “350” refers to the maximum number of parts per million of carbon dioxide a breathable atmosphere may tolerate.

McKibben cited an October poll of “energy insiders,” conducted by the National Journal, that found “virtually all” of those polled expected easy approval of the pipeline. TransCanada, the would-be builder, was moving huge quantities of pipe across the border and seizing land by eminent domain. The mighty propaganda engine of the petroleum industry was in high gear. The fix was in. The deal was done.

Except it wasn’t. Not yet. A year of titanic struggle is in prospect, with the environmentalist legions arrayed against the riches of the petroleum industry and its vast network of stooges in Congress, the media and the regulatory agencies.

The industry is transfixed by the gleam of gold in the tar sands of Alberta. To seize it, they must build the pipeline from Hades.

The U.S. Department of Energy reports that in 2010 humanity (especially the U.S., China and onrushing India) pumped more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than at any time since the start of the industrial revolution – 564 million tons more than in 2009.

That’s more CO2 than in the worst case scenario outlined by climate experts just four years ago.

“We’re talking more greenhouse gases than have entered the Earth’s atmosphere in tens of millions of years,” says McKibben.

Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency, says that without an effective international agreement to staunch greenhouse gases within five years, the door will close on preventing a potentially disastrous rise in the planet’s temperature.

To keep that door open, ministers and mothers will lie down in the path of bulldozers. Earth’s children are at risk. We’ll have more –- much more – to say on this subject. Our next article will deal with the tragic downstream effects of BP’s Gulf oil spill.