In case you missed it, today’s Globe and Mail features an op-ed by 350.org founder Bill McKibben entitled Keep Alberta Oil in the Ground. In the article, McKibben specifically mentions an Economy Lab post of mine on the Keystone XL pipeline debate. I have also run some similar numbers on this blog here and here.
In a related post by McKibben in the Guardian, you will also see that he has become fond of quoting Alberta’s Energy Minister Ron Liepert. He writes, “don’t think that the Canadians will automatically find some other route to send their oil out to, say, China. Native tribes are doing a great job of blocking a proposed pipe to the Pacific; Alberta’s energy minister said recently that he stays up nights worrying that without Keystone his province will be ‘landlocked in bitumen.’ Without the pipeline, said the business pages of Canada’s biggest paper, Alberta oil faces a ‘choke point.'”
High stakes indeed. I hope to be able to write a response in the Globe in the coming days.
Bill McKibben has done himself a great disservice by swallowing the “James Hansen is God” garbage hook, line, and sinker. Bill has turned his burning desire for a Utopian climate where all his outdoor pursuits are steeped in perfect weather conditions into a mindless regurgitation of the attention seekers’ endless prattle about the end of the world. The only person more impressed with Hansen than McKibben is Hansen himself.