http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/rex-murphy-will-it-be-paris-or-calgary-mr-trudeau
Rex Murphy: Will it be Paris or Calgary, Mr. Trudeau?
Rex Murphy | February 8, 2016 | Last Updated: Feb 8 5:49 AM ET
What will it be, Paris or Calgary? That is the question.
Are the commitments made so energetically and with such a show of elan in Paris superior to the need to give support and relief to the oil industry in Calgary? Indeed, the commitments made in Paris run counter to the needs of Calgary (let Calgary here stand for all Alberta). One cannot make huge pledges to reduce carbon emissions one week and wax all enthusiastic about giving federal support to pipelines intended to carry Alberta oil the next. The two agendas are simply not compatible.
Thus, the debate over pipelines is not about the pipelines themselves, as there is really only one question that a debate over pipelines has to answer: will they be safe? With the technologies and expertise already available, that’s a question accessible to an “evidence-based” inquiry. It is not one that takes years or introduces novel concepts like “social license,” or requires the stamp of approval from herds of mayors.
If pipelines are not safe, they should not be built. If, however, they are safe, and can be proven to be so within the limits of human scientific competence, then all other questions disappear. Safety is the social license. It is the political license. It is the economic license. Thus, there is no call for any other direction of inquiry once that fundamental question has been answered.
Translation: denying the pipeline burnished his administration’s own green credentials. The symbolism was more important than the facts of the project itself.
If, however, the goal of the federal government is to be a “leader” in green politics, if reducing carbon emissions is its desired passport to winning the outside world’s esteem, then saying yes to pipelines is not a response grounded in the evidence concerning how safe they are. Rather, it is contingent on the outside world’s response to such an approval.
What will UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon say? What will the luminaries of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change think? What will the Leonardo DiCaprios, the Neil Youngs and the Bonos of the world think if this fresh, green government, if it were to allow one of the proposed pipelines to take shape?
They would be heart-struck down to their caring boots, and disillusioned with the new, greener Canada. They would revive the harsh rhetoric of Canada as a vicious “petro state.” Young would compose a ballad about Hiroshima. David Suzuki would sink into another sulk and call for various imprisonments. I do not think it would be safe to call on Green Party Leader Elizabeth May.
So all the talk about revised National Energy Board (NEB) guidelines may reasonably be seen as a kind of political hat trick designed to give the illusion that these pipelines have a hope of ever being approved. Deep down, however, the lines are drawn and the real position has already been declared. It follows U.S. President Barack Obama’s pattern of doing exactly the same thing. After seven or eight years and multiple studies that all advocated for the approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, Obama, on the very eve of the Paris summit, announced he was turning down the project. And please note his stated, highest-priority reason: the decision reflected America’s determination to be a global leader in the fight against climate change. His own words are: “Frankly, approving that project would have undercut that global leadership.”
John Kerry, his secretary of state, said the same: “The critical factor in my determination was this: moving forward with this project would significantly undermine our ability to continue leading the world in combating climate change.” Translation: denying the pipeline burnished his administration’s own green credentials. The symbolism was more important than the facts of the project itself. Because activists, as the Guardian noted, had made Keystone a “totemic issue” — i.e., one of value for its symbolic quality — the U.S. president had to turn it down.
And that’s where Canada is now. It has precisely the same ambition: to be seen as a world leader against the speculative horrors of a warming future. Under the auspices of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government, how we look on the world stage trumps the interests of the country itself. It’s better to be pleasing in Paris than caring in Calgary.
Even if Energy East were to survive the new NEB regulations, the cabinet could still turn it down. That was Trudeau’s position this week. It’s all a shadow dance. There is no appeasement of the forces against Alberta energy. Killing the oilsands is their goal, and killing the pipelines under any guise — safety, social license, upstream emissions — is the sly path to killing the oilsands
Combine that with the Liberal’s zeal to be seen as the greenest global government, and there is really no hope down the road. There is no debate. The decision is made, but for now it is merely waiting for a more opportune time to make itself known.
National Post
Editted to add link.
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