There were two scientific studies this week that set the ongoing Keystone pipeline battle in sharp relief.
One was a reminder of just how crucial this fight is. A secret report delivered to the Canadian government's chief bureaucrat showed that changes in tarsands mining methods, which the industry claimed reduced the amount of carbon emissions, were actually "three times as emissions intensive" and that damage to the environment would be both "significant" and "irreversible."
That's one reason the EU moved closer last week to preventing the import of tarsands oil to Europe, and it helps explain why the White House continued to stand strong against Congressional efforts to force a permit for Keystone -- as the president's press secretary pointed out (in a pointed tweet) the administration's new fuel efficiency standards for cars would save more oil than the pipeline could deliver in 45 years.
But the second study made clear to tarsands opponents -- if it hadn't been already -- that this was only one battle in a much larger fight. A new study from a pair of British Columbia scientists shows that there's a lot of carbon in the tarsands -- but a lot more yet in the planet's coal deposits.
If you burned all the tarsands we know about now, you'd raise the planet's temperature more than half a degree -- i.e., half again as much as the global warming we've already seen, which has been enough to make the seas 30% more acid and cut Arctic sea ice 40%. But if you burned all the coal we know about it, the temperature would go up 15 degrees.
At a certain point, I suppose, it doesn't matter -- most scientists think anything more than two degrees Celsius puts us into a zone of extreme danger, and we're already halfway there. Fifteen degrees would be just gilding the lily. Still, it makes it clear that even if, as NASA's James Hansen has said, burning the planet's unconventional fuels like tarsands would mean it was "game over the for the climate," stopping that burning won't be enough. We also have to address the most obvious, conventional forms of energy -- coal, especially. It was the first kind of fossil fuel we learned to burn, 300 years ago. And we've got to kick the habit.
Which is why, even as the political gamesmanship over the Keystone pipeline rages on (with the GOP at the moment making the absurd claim that this export pipeline will lower U.S. pump prices), we've got no choice but to take on other battles. 350.org has been embroiled these last weeks in the fight over a massive new coal plant in Kosovo; closer to home, plans were just announced for a truly massive new coal port in Washington State that would take eight mile-long coal trains a day from the Powder River Basin of Montana and Wyoming and ship them straight to China.
We've got to stop projects like this, just as we united to fight Keystone. In fact, we've got -- as soon as possible -- to stop fighting bad things one by one. We don't have enough fingers to plug every hole in the dike; we need to change the basic underlying economics, by charging the fossil fuel industry for the damage carbon does in the atmosphere instead of just letting them continue to use the atmosphere as an open sewer for free.
The fact that there's more coal than tarsands doesn't change the math of the Keystone debate. As the scientist who did the study pointed out, this is "not a get out of jail free card" to the tarsands industry, and added that he also opposed the proposed Gateway pipeline to Canada's Pacific coast.
But it is a powerful reminder that we don't get to rest in a fight that we're still losing, a fight that has many fronts but only one central tenet: the future of the earth depends on keeping carbon underground.
Follow Bill McKibben on Twitter: www.twitter.com/billmckibben
Rocky Kistner: Far From D.C., Michigan Residents Fight Their Own Tar Sands Pipeline Battles
What that post made me realize is that the strategic goal of the deniers may be to avoid any binding agreement to limit carbon emissions, because that would signal to the market that the $trillions in proven future reserves is suddenly valueless. It can never be burned, so it can never be converted into money.
Rather than avoiding a slow erosion of their profits, they are avoiding a sudden reversal of fortune in the markets. And setting up the world for another stock crash in the process.
How does everyone see this TransCanada extension from OK to TX? Shouldn't it be protested on condition that there be legislation to stop the cross-border part of it for the indefinite future?
For those who wish to get away , the should be free to do so, but they also need to realize that they have been subsidized and have not born the true cost of that isolation.
I mean, if burning carbon and dumping it limitlessly into the atmosphere is some sort of inalienable right--and atmosphere we all must share--than YOU are infringing on MY property rights, aren't you? Don't I have the right to an atmosphere free of your pollutants?
And so what if you have to conserve energy. I mean, no one is sawing off one of your limbs. You'll live, and you'll live just fine.
This isn't about conservatism or liberalism. This is about people who have been brainwashed by the media arm of our corporate masters, and at the top of that heap is Big Oil and Big Coal. Deratin people just lap up the baloney shatted out by Hannity and Limbaugh and company, without any further thought process.
We spend 80 billion a year on military research and development. What if we spent a fraction of that money on developing, researching and implementing alternative energy sources and reducing fuel dependency in our transportation systems? The resulting innovations could be exported the world over, securing our economic vitality, just as our carbon based innovations have been in the past.
I get really angry when people accuse climate change supporters of being anti-capitalist and anti-business. We aren't. The move from a carbon based economy is going to have to happen sooner or later, we just want the US to lead the way and secure its place as a technological innovator and economic powerhouse in the inevitable new economy.
Food and fuel inflation is not helping us or our fixed income parents.
You are right in that our system is based on cheap energy and it will be difficult for many to adapt. However, he price of fuel is going to go up regardless of what we do. The rise of China and India has created so much more demand that pretty soon they will use more oil and coal than we do.
Keep up the good work!
Additionally, any study ever performed on the impact of higher efficiency standards have all shown an increase in consumption as efficiency causes prices to be reduced over time.
So, I ask you, why do you hate our home the Earth so much?
I really don't believe that this is a fact. This President has never supported private property rights and that was not his stated reason for disallowing the pipeline.
The author probably meant to say 30% less alkaline.
Sad to say its not so silly. It's an unfortunate result of increasing CO2 in the air.
I can't vouch for Bill's math, but the principle is correct.
Remember high school physics and "partial pressure" of gases? The CO2 is "pushed" into the oceans. They absorb about 1/4 of the CO2 in the air.
CO2 and water make a weak acid that dissolves buffer (like the calcium carbonate in clam shells). Same sort of process that creates caves in limestone rock.
Also recognize that the pH scale is logarithmic, so a 1 pH point change is a tenfold change.
Don't take my word for it - read what our NOAA experts have to say - http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/Ocean+Acidification
Sincerely, Jay
P.S. my PhD research was in physical chemistry.
This pipeline will undoubtedly deliver SOME oil that will be refined and exported as refined products. But it will not be used to deliver oil that will be exported as oil and it will not be used to deliver oil that is refined and exported as refined products -- in a high enough proportion to be labeled an "export" pipeline. I defy you and anyone else to produce any evidence to the contrary.
You are correct too on the point that our East Coast States get their oil from the International Market. In case of an emergency, then the oil in Texas can be routed, by us.
Your defiance about this peripheral issue is telling. Who cares if we have more oil if the planet becomes uninhabitable? Who cares if we get some more exotic technology to refine sludge if it despoils earth until we can't grow crops any more? (Actual quote from a refinery engineer: "This Canadian stuff is what we used to scrape out of our tanks to discard.")
Really, is there no "big picture" consciousness here?
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/23/eu-tarsands-idUSL5E8DN93120120223