Crude Logic: Rethinking the Keystone XL Bitumen Pipeline project Northern AB to US Gulf Coast terminals. (a bi-national climate change & energy plan for CAN & USA?) The larger problem, according to all major models of the world’s future energy use, is that in order to keep average global temperatures from rising more than two degrees Celsius—to stave off the worst effects of climate change, that is—Alberta’s oil-sands production must be stabilized or reduced. Yet oil-sands production has doubled in the past decade and is predicted to double again during the next, and expensive new pipelines and other infrastructure solidify that prediction. The Canadian government has acknowledged that it will almost certainly miss its 2020 greenhouse-gas-reduction target by a wide mark, primarily because of the oil sands’ enormous carbon footprint. “There’s a fundamental contradiction between Canada’s energy policy and its climate policy,” said Homer-Dixon. The authors of the Nature article call for a moratorium on North American oil-sands development until the U.S. and Canada have agreed on a binational strategy for limiting carbon emissions. “Reform is needed now,” they write. “Decisions made in North America will reverberate internationally, as plans for the development of similar unconvenÂtional reserves are considered worldwide.” Given the gulf between Obama and the Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, on climate policy, speedy reform seems unlikely at best. But, without it, the domestic fight over Keystone XL could be, from a climate perspective, largely symbolic. Earlier this month, when Hillary Clinton made a book-tour stop in Toronto, the CBC broadcaster Peter Mansbridge asked her about the future of Keystone XL. She declined to comment, citing her involvement with the project as Secretary of State, but said that she would “love to see” a binational climate-change plan. “Canada and the U.S. are an energy powerhouse—the decisions should not be made one by one,” she said. “There should be an over-all effort to plan how we can do everything, from coordinating our electricity grids to doing much more to fight climate change.” newyorker/online/blogs/elements/2014/06/rethinking-the-keystone-pipeline.html?printable=true¤tPage=all
Posted on: Thu, 26 Jun 2014 18:37:37 +0000
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