After seven years of heated rhetoric from both conservatives and environmentalists, President Barack Obama officially announced Friday that he has rejected the Keystone XL pipeline.
Although experts predicted it would lead to an inconsequential bump in global emissions, the pipeline became a focal point in America’s struggle to grapple with carbon dependency. Its rejection continues Obama’s recent push to cement his environmental legacy following this summer’s new regulations to limit greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.
The pipeline was proposed in 2008 to transport oil from Alberta’s tar sands in Canada to refineries in the gulf of Mexico. The extraction of oil from the tar sands has drawn protests from environmentalists and locals due to the process, which requires strip mining that results in toxic runoff and the destruction of segments of Canada’s Boreal forest. Additionally, the production of oil from the tar sands creates about 17 percent more carbon pollution than that from normal sources, according to the U.S. state department.
The proposed pipeline drew broad opposition from Democrats and public figures, including former Vice President Al Gore, who called it “ridiculous,” the Dalai Lama and Neil Young, who held a concert with Willie Nelson to bring attention to the proposal and controversially claimed that a strip-mined Alberta “looks like Hiroshima.”
Proponents of the pipeline shrugged off environmental concerns and focused on the economic impact. In the depths of the Great Recession, job creation predictions climbed into the hundreds of thousands. Newly-elected House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., lamented Obama’s announcement.
“This decision isn't surprising, but it’s sickening,” Ryan said in a statement following the announcement. “By rejecting the pipeline, the President is rejecting tens of thousands of good-paying jobs.”
Actual job predictions were much lower. Experts concluded the pipeline would create about 42,000 temporary construction and hospitality jobs over two years, followed by 35 permanent jobs.
Obama made it clear that the pipeline would not be a “silver bullet for the economy,” and also cautioned against heated environmentalist rhetoric. The added emissions from the pipeline would have contributed to less than 1 percent of the U.S. total.
Secretary of State John Kerry conceded that the pipeline’s demise is merely a symbol of America’s growing determination to lead on climate change.
“The reality is that this decision could not be made solely on the numbers - jobs that would be created, dirty fuel that would be transported here, or carbon pollution that would ultimately be unleashed,” Kerry said in a statement. “The United States cannot ask other nations to make tough choices to address climate change if we are unwilling to make them ourselves.”
