One of President Biden’s first acts in office was to revoke the permit for construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline, which was supposed to carry heavy crude oil from Canada to the refineries that process it.
You can be forgiven if your first thought was, “Wait a minute — wasn’t that pipeline already built years ago?” The answer is that it really should have been built a decade ago. Unfortunately, though, it became a cause celebre for the far Left, and now, it is impossible for any Democratic president to do the right thing and allow construction to go forward.
This thousand-mile pipeline was supposed to double the capacity of just one of the many existing oil pipeline systems in the United States that move oil from production sites ultimately to the refineries that will process it. Among other things, this pipeline would have helped obviate the inefficient and dangerous movement of petroleum products by train, which has been known to result in massive explosions.
Despite the ridiculous expectations of the extremists opposing it, the further delay of Keystone XL will not in any way affect global temperatures or carbon emissions. But Biden is counting on the fact that these activists aren’t very smart. All he has to do is show with actions like this one how much he supports the cause. Never mind the 190,000 miles of existing pipelines moving liquid petroleum products across the U.S.
In reality, the continued burning of fossil fuels does not depend and has never depended upon how much oil is extracted from the ground. Rather, the determining factor is how much consumers demand and how much they choose to burn. But one can hardly gain ground with a political movement whose message is to blame ordinary people for destroying the planet. The lie that blames the energy industry is far more convenient, as it lets one choose Big Oil as a ready-made enemy that can easily be blamed for an apocalypse that is always just a bit too far over the horizon to see with clarity.
Incidentally, this is the key flaw in the lawsuits filed in various states against oil companies for causing global warming. It is the consumer who chooses to burn the fuel, causing all carbon emissions. If the fanatics wanted to sue the people or organizations responsible for global warming, they would have to sue everyone who owns a car or a gas range.
This is not leadership on Biden’s part — it is demagoguery. It is a lie-filled piece of red meat for his base at the expense of fact and reality. There is no scientific basis for choking off the oil supply, the lifeblood of the U.S. economy. The idea that the U.S. can reduce global emissions with a few small tweaks, even as China is putting hundreds of new coal-fired electrical plants online, deserves to be dismissed with derisive laughter.
The world needs American energy. That applies not only to the world’s poor, but also to those vulnerable to toxic world politics situations. The fracking revolution, the explosion of American energy production, has provided Europe with a way to liberate itself from Vladimir Putin’s clutches.
Biden has just shown that he will not be the leader who oversees this liberation. It is a pity.
