The Keystone XL pipeline border crossing will not receive the approval it needs from the Executive Branch of the US government. This kick to the economic shins of two great nations, more probable now than ever despite a bipartisan vote for approval June 18 in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, provides important context to pronouncements on climate change by President Barack Obama.
In the Obama administration, climate change extremism dominates decision-making on energy. Strong evidence of this is the Natural Resources Defense Council's influence in the Environmental Protection Agency's June 2 proposal to slash carbon dioxide emissions of existing power plants. The NRDC essentially wrote the framing document for EPA. After the agency published its proposal, the NRDC president called for elimination from the energy mix not just of coal, chief target of EPA's greenhouse gas regulations so far, but also of all fossil energy and for strengthened requirements for renewable energy and energy-use efficiency.
Unachievable ambitions
The NRDC's ambitions are unachievable. The US can't conserve and subsidize itself away from reliance on oil, natural gas, and coal because it can't repeal the laws of physics and economics. Because practical oil and gas professionals understand this, they tend to ignore hopeless idealism. They need to pay closer attention.
Although the political agenda of NRDC and other such groups will succumb to reality before achieving its aims, it can distort energy policy severely in the meantime. The agenda has stymied Keystone XL, after all. It has elicited from the US government a willingness to sacrifice investment, employment, energy security, and relations with a friendly neighbor to a gesture sought by activists yet inconsequential for the climate. And the activists will demand more. Indeed, every policy question involving hydrocarbon energy nowadays provokes reflexive pressure to produce and consume less in deference to environmentalist fear about climate change.
Response to climate change should be on the menu of energy-policy options—but not the only dish. In pursuit of balance, the oil and gas industry must address flaws in the case for futile sacrifice. It should challenge the president himself when he spouts nonsense on the subject, as he did June 14 in a university graduation ceremony at Anaheim, Calif.
Surrounded by inexperienced youth, Obama didn't bother to act presidential. He mocked people who disagree with him over climate change, calling them "deniers" and saying some of them "reject scientific evidence" while others "duck the question." He even tried to end discussion, saying, "The overwhelming majority of scientists who work on climate change, including some who once disputed the data, have put that debate to rest." To support this claim he made glancing reference to the assertion that 97% of scientists think human activity drives global warming. In fact, that number, from a literature review, applies only to the one third of a sample of abstracts in which authors took a stand on the question. To the other two-thirds, debate apparently remains open. Without that context, repeated reference to the 97% share of a minority sample amounts to deception.
'Continuing debate'
Obama's own science advisor disagrees with him about the supposedly resting debate. In a video on the White House web site, John Holdren says, "As in all science there will be continuing debate about exactly what is happening." Holdren goes on to predict continuation of a recent pattern of "extreme cold in the mid-latitudes and some extreme warmth in the far north," which he attributes to global warming. Fair enough. Yet new research from the University of Exeter reaches the opposite conclusion. That one exception is enough to refute this categorical claim by Obama in Anaheim: "The climate change deniers suggest there's still a debate over the science; there is not."
Obama offered sound advice when he urged graduates to "push back against the misinformation." But the misinformation most needing resistance comes from his administration. It's steering the US toward too many energy mistakes.