The Keystone XL pipeline, under construction, will transport oil from the Athabasca tar sands in Alberta, Canada across 2000 miles of the midwestern United States and ultimately to the Gulf Coast. The State Department issued a Presidential permit in 2008. However, last week the Environmental Protection Agency gave the project its lowest possible rating, and Monday the Department of Energy raised additional concerns. Tuesday, the State Department took the rare step of delaying its final permits, at least through the end of the year.
The Gulf oilpocalypse has, perhaps, begun to focus attention on environmental security: the idea that potential harms to the environment can't be remedied by "polluter pays" fines and damages, but instead are threats to our national interest. Just as energy security asserts a national interest in keeping oil flowing, environmental security asserts a national interest in pristine skies and plentiful water for generations to come. The Keystone pipeline is one huge threat.
Canada's tar sands oil extraction is a notoriously energy-intensive, water-intensive, falsehood-intensive process. Of more direct concern to the United States is transport of the oil. It's even caught the eye of conservative Senator Mike Johanns (R-NE), who wants to be absolutely certain that what we're doing can be done in an environmentally responsible way. The pipeline passes directly over the Ogallala Aquifer, which he calls the state's most treasured resource. The EPA's only viable management strategy for groundwater pollution is pollution prevention, or "just don't do it."
Democrats have likewise begun to question whether the pipeline will "undermine America’s clean energy future and international leadership on climate change," as 50 Democrats led by Reps. Barney Frank and Jay Inslee wrote (8 pg pdf). The State Department's sudden about-face to extend time for review of the pipeline by politicians, Energy Department, and EPA may be a turning point for the project. David Sassoon of SolveClimate asks: "Is environmental security rising to become a matter of primary national interest in the wake of the Gulf oil disaster?"
The pipeline is only one potential threat to environmental security. It seems that every other day a new oil-related disaster manifests. This week, oil threatens Lake Michigan; next week, who knows? The National Wildlife Federation has compiled an exhaustive list of all the harms the oil and gas industry has inflicted on America in the last 10 years in Assault on America: a Decade of Petroleum Company Disaster, Pollution, and Profit.
Major oil spills are really only a small part of the real story. From 2000 to 2010, the oil and gas industry accounted for hundreds of deaths, explosions, fires, seeps, and spills as well as habitat and wildlife destruction in the United States. These disasters demonstrate a pattern of feeding America’s addiction to oil, leaving in their wake sacrifice zones that affect communities, local economies, and our landscapes.
Offshore, 1,443 incidents occurred in the Outer Continental Shelf waters from 2001 – 2007. Of these incidents, 41 fatalities, 302 injuries, 476 fires, and 356 pollution events were reported. Onshore, from 2000 – 2009, pipeline accidents accounted for 2,554 significant incidents, 161 fatalities, and 576 injuries in the United States. Ultimately, the reader recognizes, the petroleum industry requires the American people to assume too much risk.
The petroleum industry's toll on the American people and land is more important than mere numbers. Incidents sound almost like terrorist attacks, save for murderous intent: fireballs on Texas highways, toxic spills into Ohio rivers and Wisconsin water tables, oil splattered over the tundra of Alaska's North Slope, an underground lake of oil beneath Brooklyn, a Montana tank blaze, methane in Pennsylvania drinking wells.
The Keystone XL pipeline will bring us energy security, we're told, but it won't bring environmental security. If anything, there's a tradeoff between energy security and environmental security in any new petroleum project. Keystone XL is considered higher-than-usual risk: in the interest of saving $1 billion, it's being made of thinner-than-usual steel and will pump oil at higher-than-usual pressures. What could BPossibly go wrong? Will it be added to the list of oil disasters topped by the catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico? Or will our leaders consider environmental security as a national security interest?