{"id":760,"date":"2013-02-19T17:46:40","date_gmt":"2013-02-19T22:46:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ecooptimism.com\/?p=760"},"modified":"2013-07-07T16:57:37","modified_gmt":"2013-07-07T21:57:37","slug":"the-keystone-xl-pipeline-no-brainer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ecooptimism.com\/?p=760","title":{"rendered":"The Keystone XL Pipeline No-brainer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Consider this my atonement for not making it to the anti-Keystone XL pipeline protest in Washington this past Sunday. My self-serving defense was a conveniently scheduled family get together. (And how often are family events conveniently scheduled?) My admiration and thanks go to the 40,000 or so who braved the biting cold<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Excuses aside, I was there in mind if not body. The pipeline and the tar sands production it would help enable are just a thoroughly bad idea. They make no sense from any perspective, except perhaps for the few people (and I guess corporations now get included in that category) who would profit from them. Many have written about this, but I think a summarized categorical break down is worthwhile.<\/p>\n

Energy<\/b><\/p>\n

Like all post-peak fossil fuels, the tar sands have a diminishing EROEI or Energy Return On Energy Invested. In other words, as fuels become scarcer, it takes increasing amounts of energy (and money, see below) to get energy out of them. EROEI is the after-the-fact problem discovered with ethanol from corn as a fuel; it takes a lot of energy to grow and convert the corn into ethanol.<\/p>\n

The oil in the tar sands is in what\u2019s called an \u201cunconventional form.\u201d It\u2019s a very thick slurry, a tar, called bitumen. You may know bitumen as that pungent black stuff that\u2019s heated and spread on roofs. Making usable oil out of the semi-solid tar is an energy intense process, rendering the resulting energy far less productive.<\/p>\n

\"Bitumen<\/a>

Bitumen from the Alberta tar sand before processing<\/p><\/div>\n

Cost<\/b><\/p>\n

Directly related to the above, energy from tar sands costs more than many other types of energy. Why then, you ask, is it financially attractive to business? The short answer is that the deck is stacked. The combination of perverse tax incentives (incentives, usually supported by special interests, which work against the public and\/or government\u2019s interest) and the market\u2019s failure to include true costs<\/a> create the illusion of cost competitiveness.<\/p>\n

Independence<\/b><\/p>\n

The common rationale here is the expanding tar sands oil production will reduce dependence on Middle East oil sources. But because US oil demand is already diminishing due to higher fuel efficiency standards and the recession, most of the tar sands oil will end up being exported<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"exporting<\/a><\/p>\n

Environment<\/b><\/p>\n

The Canadian tar sands are located under the Boreal forest, according to Treehugger<\/a> \u201cone of the largest intact ecosystems left on the planet.\u201d The open pit mining process utterly obliterates any ecosystem that has the misfortune to have resided above it.<\/p>\n

\"Boreal<\/a>

Boreal forest before; tar sands after. source<\/p><\/div>\n

In addition to the energy required, it takes vast amounts of water to extract oil from tar sands, causing both water depletion and pollution.<\/p>\n

Most damningly, the extraction process has \u201cthree times the global warming pollution of conventional crude production<\/a>.\u201d Releasing the carbon imbedded in the tar sands, accompanied by the burning of fuel to extract it, would push the CO2 levels in the atmosphere past the tipping point<\/a>, constituting \u201cgame over\u201d for the climate in the words of NASA\u2019s James Hansen<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Canada\u2019s tar sands, deposits of sand saturated with bitumen, contain twice the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by global oil use in our entire history. If we were to fully exploit this new oil source, and continue to burn our conventional oil, gas and coal supplies, concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere eventually would reach levels higher than in the Pliocene era, more than 2.5 million years ago, when sea level was at least 50 feet higher than it is now.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So even if oil from tar sands was truly economically viable \u2013 which it isn\u2019t \u2013 it would be a huge and irreversible environmental mistake to use it.<\/p>\n

Significance<\/b><\/p>\n

An oft-used rationale for the pipeline is that Canada is going to utilize the tar sands regardless of whether the US allows building the means to transport it by pipe down to the Gulf of Mexico refineries. Perhaps, but there is no reason we should enable them to do so. And by no means all of Canada supports tar sands production; our sending such a message may encourage Canadian opposition.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, KC Golden writes<\/a> at Grist \u201cIt\u2019s a statement of principle for climate action\u2026.It\u2019s a moral referendum on our willingness to do the simplest thing we must do to avert catastrophic climate disruption: Stop making it worse.\u201d<\/p>\n

OK, so….<\/strong><\/p>\n

You may ask: where\u2019s the EcoOptimism aspect here? Since all we get from tar sands oil is a delay in the upcoming end of oil age, accompanied by the potentially disastrous (in the truest sense of the word) increase in climate disruption, wouldn\u2019t it make a helluva lot more sense to take the government and commercial investments and place them in energy efficiency and renewable forms of energy? (You know, the ones like solar and wind that both don\u2019t run out and don\u2019t screw up the climate we depend on.) The Return on Investment for these holds much higher promise, and that\u2019s before<\/i> we start to include the avoided costs of rising sea levels. It should, in short, be a no-brainer.<\/p>\n

In fact, Joe Nocera wrote<\/a> \u201cthis should be a no-brainer for the president\u201d in today\u2019s Times. Unfortunately, however, he was referring to supporting the pipeline, and the fact that he was unable to sway the \u201cboneheaded\u201d (his word) opinion of James Hansen in a conversation they just had.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d prefer to refrain from such descriptions, but if there is boneheadedness to be found, it is in Nocera\u2019s contorted logic, which ranges from fatalist statements such as \u201cLike it or not, fossil fuels are going to remain the world\u2019s dominant energy source for the foreseeable future\u201d to writing off the idea that a carbon fee could reduce greenhouse emissions by 30 percent within 10 years with a mere \u201cwell, maybe.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kind of makes you wonder about the meaning of \u201cno-brainer.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Share this:<\/h3>