ClimateSpeak

Long knives, Part II

I’ve held off on doing this post for more than a week now. Insider backbiting is tremendously entertaining, but it leaves the spectators (and the scribe) feeling somewhat tawdry for enjoying it a bit too much. That said, it is indeed fun, so here goes.

As readers of this blog know, I have played a minor supporting role recently in the worsening catfight between the climate policy world’s two most prominent bloggers – the New York Times’ Andrew Revkin and the Center for American Progress’ Joe Romm. Revkin has positioned himself as a centrist and an advocate of the breakthrough technologies camp, while Romm is an avatar of the more liberal camp that advocates an immediate broadening of regulations mandating the use of energy-efficiency technologies.

Their rivalry has become bitter, with Revkin dissing Romm and Romm returning the favor in spades. 

Last week, Revkin posted a new attack on Romm (and, briefly, me). The subject was the back-and-forth debate over a study by the California Council on Science and Technology earlier this year. Revkin pointed to a new research study published last month in Science, The Technology Path to Deep Greenhouse Gas Emissions Cuts by 2050: The Pivotal Role of Electricity. Revkin claimed it offered further proof of his position that California and the United States should put top priority on a massive infusion of government funds to clean energy R&D projects. His essay (and associated video excerpts) focused on Romm, Romm and more Romm. 

Revkin goaded Nathan Lewis, the head of a federal R&D program on breakthrough technologies for fuels from sunlight, into painting Romm as a quasi-Luddite:

... it’s different than people [i.e. Romm] who would tell you that we have all the technology we need and we just need the political will and let’s be done with it. That’s not what any technically knowledgeable panel concludes.

You can see Revkin's arteries nearly bursting with anger:

One thing Romm forgets (or chooses to ignore) when he tries to rebut me is that I’m not debating him; I’m consuming his arguments, along with output from a host of people directly involved in energy research and analysis.

I'm not debating you, I'm consuming you! Oohhh.

But beyond the schoolyard putdowns, let's look at the actual results of the new Science study. Like the California Council study, it concludes that new technologies are indeed needed to reach the ultimate goal of 80 percent reduction from 1990 levels by 2050. But both also seem to agree that stiffened energy efficiency rules and other regulatory policies can reach more than 50 percent reduction by 2050. Here is the breakdown of emissions reductions projected in the Science study:

• 28 percent: energy efficiency, especially from the buildings sector.
• 27 percent: low-carbon electricity generation, such as renewable energy, nuclear power, and fossil fuel-powered generation coupled with carbon capture and storage.
• 16 percent: electrification of cars, space and water heaters, and industrial processes that consume fuel and natural gas.
• 15 percent: measures to reduce non-energy related CO2and other greenhouse gas emissions, such as from landfill and agricultural activities.
• 14 percent: various unrelated technologies and practices such as "smart growth" urban planning, biofuels for the trucking and airline industry, and rooftop solar photovoltaics.

How much of all that reflects technologies that are not currently existing, in the pipeline or to be expected under current levels of R&D funding, and how much would require markedly greater levels of funding? The study doesn't say.

That's the crucial question, of course. It's the crux of the dispute between the Revkin camp and the Romm camp, and it hasn't been answered fully by anyone. But the Science study does offer a reasonable conclusion that broadly supports Romm's conclusions: while R&D breakthroughs are needed for the long term, the first step in any coherent strategy for emissions reduction must be stricter energy efficiency regulations, which in turn will help drive the development of new technologies:

Infrastructure deployment and technology investment require coordination. (…) we found that achieving the infrastructure changes described above will require major improvements in the functionality and cost of a wide array of technologies and infrastructuresystems, including but not limited to cellulosic and algal biofuels, CCS, on-grid energy storage, electric vehicle batteries, smart charging, building shell and appliances, cement manufacturing, electric industrial boilers, agriculture and forestry practices, and source reduction/capture of high-GWP emissions from industry.

Not only must these technologies and systems be commercially ready, they must also be deployed in a coordinated fashion to achieve their hoped-for emission reduction benefits at acceptable cost.

(...) The logical sequence of deployment for the main components of this transformation is energy efficiency first, followed by decarbonization of generation, followed by electrification. This transformation will require electrification of most direct uses of oil and gas. 

A recent report by ClimateWorks Foundation came to similar conclusions. The report, Policies That Work: How to Build a Low-Emissions Economy, emphasized 10 central policy initiatives, with a primary focus on regulatory strengthening and energy efficiency:

1. Vehicle performance standards
2. Fuel and vehicle levies
3. Energy efficiency standards and labels
4. Clean energy supply policies
5. Utility-scale energy efficiency programs
6. Industrial energy efficiency programs
7. Effectively enforced building codes
8. Properly aligned economic incentives
9. "Smart growth" urban design
10. Support for R&D and innovation

(Disclosure: I have previously done consulting work for ClimateWorks, although I am not doing so now and did not work on that report.)

The basic message of all these reports is akin to Romm's mantra: Deploy, deploy, R&D, deploy, deploy -- but all simultaneously.

Still, catfighting is more fun, and it replicates the broader centrists-vs-liberals ideological divide in environmental politics and the Democratic Party. Don't expect it to subside anytime soon.

Note: This post has been updated.

Double-stalemating the China gambit

The tar sands industry's longstanding threat to send Alberta's oil to China if it is denied the Keystone XL pipeline to the United States is looking more and more like an empty bluff.

As I wrote last month, the two proposed pipeline projects from Alberta to the British Columbia coast, Enbridge Northern Gateway and Kinder-Morgan Trans Mountain, have faced strong opposition from the B.C. public. Yet the Trans Mountain project seemed the more difficult of the two to stop, because it merely entails expansion of the existing pipeline rather than construction of an all-new line such as the Enbridge project. The Save the Fraser Declaration, signed in December 2010 by the province's First Nations, or native tribes, mentions only the Enbridge line.

No longer. Yesterday, Dec. 1, B.C. First Nations broadened their opposition to include any and all pipelines to the coast carrying tar sands crude. A First Nations press release explains:

The Save the Fraser Declaration, signed by more than 61 First Nations, bans tar sands oil pipelines throughout the Fraser River watershed. It also prohibits tar sands crude oil tankers in the ocean migration routes of Fraser River salmon. Until now, the Declaration has been used to fight Enbridge's northern pipeline plans. Now it is being recognized by First Nations as effectively banning tar sands crude oil exports on the whole coast, including the south. Adding to the chorus last week, the Union of BC Indian Chiefs - representing most First Nations in BC - passed a resolution endorsing the Save the Fraser Declaration and the Coastal First Nations Declaration, and expressly recognizing that they prohibit the transportation of tar sands crude by pipeline and tanker anywhere in BC.

The First Nations leaders also raised the ante on tactics, saying they will physically block construction if needed:

"Everyone involved — including myself — have made commitments that we'll do whatever it takes legally and otherwise," said Haisla elder Gerald Amos. "I am prepared to do as others have done before me in our communities and stand on the line to prevent any machinery moving onto the site."

As I discussed last month, most B.C. First Nations have never reached land treaties with the Canadian federal government to relinquish their historic territorial rights. These "non-treaty" First Nations enjoy significant yet vaguely-defined legal rights in Canada's legal system. Under federal law, First Nations must be granted "effective and meaningful consultation" on any project in their territories, and Canadian courts have generally defined this process in ways that give considerable powers to non-treaty First Nations. 

The upshot is that B.C. First Nations may be able to block outright any pipeline project to the Pacific -- or at least strangle it in many years of litigation. 

Here is a map of the two proposed pipeline projects, courtesy of the Wilderness Committee, a Vancouver-based environmental group:

Another death knell for Keystone XL?

As I wrote recently, the Nov. 9 announcement by Enbridge and Enterprise Products Partners that they were forging ahead with the Wrangler Pipeline from Cushing, Okla., to the Gulf Coast, seemed proof that Keystone XL would have a hard time justifying its business model.

Now comes more proof, of the whiplash headspin variety. Yesterday, Nov. 23, Wrangler's owners announced that after only two weeks they had decided to suspend the project in favor of an easier, quicker solution -- reversing the Seaway Pipeline, which currently covers the same route from south to north. The 669-mile-long Seaway line is projected to carry up to 400,000 barrels per day of crude to the Gulf Coast by early 2013.

Granted, those 400,000 barrels will only carry a small part of North America's new oil boom, which I have discussed in previous posts (most recently here). But Seaway's capacity is roughly equal to the projected volume of Keystone XL's Phase 3, which would cover the same ground and was seen as a cash cow for the longer Keystone XL route reaching north to the Alberta tar sands.

If two savvy pipeline operators didn't see enough potential volume on that route to make money from both Wrangler and Seaway, why would Keystone XL make money on that route? This has nothing to do with the many environmental concerns about Keystone, but it could be a game-changer nonetheless.

Now for the hard part -- Wrangler Pipeline

With the Keystone XL blocked for the time being, environmentalists will have to decide whether they will make a second all-out effort to stop another conduit for tar sands oil -- the Wrangler Pipeline.

Wrangler has received much less publicity than Keystone XL because it goes nowhere near the tar sands in Alberta. The proposed 500-mile line would extend from the oil storage center at Cushing, Okla., to the cluster of refineries near Houston.

Map: WranglerPipeline.com

The line, to be owned by Enbridge, is projected to be operational in mid-2013, moving 800,000 barrels per day. It would do much of what Keystone XL would have done -- eliminate the bottleneck of oil at Cushing and move it to the Gulf refineries, after which it can be either exported or fed into the U.S. domestic supply chain. The net result would almost certainly be to facilitate an increase of tar sands production.

For environmentalists, Wrangler is likely to be more difficult to stop than Keystone XL. The pipeline route does not cross any sensitive environmental areas, such as Nebraska's Sand Hills. Because the pipeline will not cross an international border, it will not require a presidential permit. It will need permits from a variety of state and local authorities, such as the Oklahoma Corporation Commission and the Texas Railroad Commission, which are strongly supportive of the oil industry. All three members of the OCC and all three members of the TRC are Republicans.

As Reuters reported recently, the pipeline would complete an important link for the ongoing increase in North American oil production:

While previous proposals for a big link between Cushing and the Gulf Coast have struggled for commercial backing, Enbridge already transports the majority of Canadian oil exports as well as a substantial chunk of North Dakota production.

These producers are looking for premium markets away from Cushing and Enbridge is offering it.

Thus, the second part of the Wrangler project, Enbridge's Flanagan South pipeline. Flanagan South essentially doubles the capacity of Enbridge's existing Spearhead pipeline that runs from the Chicago area to Cushing.

This will be the key to pulling even more oil sands crude into the U.S. market as well as shifting rising production from the Bakken formation in North Dakota to more-profitable destinations.

Environmentalists' best chance is if landowners en route object to Enbridge's exercise of eminent domain and forced pooling to take control of the pipeline route. As I wrote several weeks ago, TransCanada had already sparked opposition from Texas landowners because of the company's heavy-handed use of its legal rights to grab land for the Keystone XL right of way.

The Wrangler Pipeline website helpfully explains:

A pipeline right-of-way is a strip of land that is usually between 30 to 125 feet wide.

(...) When evaluating various route alternatives, the preferred route attempts to follow existing pipeline and utility routes to the extent feasible. The Wrangler Pipeline will often be adjacent to (but not within) these existing rights-of-way, and Wrangler Pipeline project representatives will need to obtain a separate permanent easement agreement from affected landowners as well as obtain temporary construction work space from landowners and in some cases additional workspace from the holder of the adjacent utility or pipeline easement to minimize impacts.

Street cred and victory narratives

As the Keystone XL victory parties continue, some critics are questioning whether it was the protesters who won or the Nebraska Republicans. Who really defeated the pipeline?

While we will have to wait for a while to get the insider's version of how the administration made this decision, it's highly likely that a major factor was the demand of Nebraska Republicans -- from Gov. Dave Heineman to the unicameral legislature -- that the existing route through the Sand Hills be discarded.

As a Los Angeles Times article puts it, "The state has, in effect, turned into a massive prairie sand trap for the $7-billion project."

Some of the pipeline's supporters are now trying to spin the decision as having little to do with the environmentalist campaigners. As Andrew Leach, a professor at the University of Alberta, writes:

Today’s decision was about Nebraska, landowners, and people not wanting an oil pipeline in their backyards.  According to the State Department briefing, “what (the Review is) really looking at is an approach that would minimize or avoid the Sand hill region of Nebraska,” and, in answer to a question of whether GHG or other impacts of oil extraction would be considered, that, “the purpose of the review that we’re going to be doing is specifically to look at the alternative routes through Nebraska. It wouldn’t be broader than that.” The words Canada (apart from TransCanada), Alberta, oilsands, tarsands or climate do not appear in today’s briefing, and GHGs are mentioned just that once.

All this is partly true, but it misses the larger political reality. Whatever the exact proportions were in Obama's decision, it's undeniable that the cards would not have fallen the way they did without the visionary, risky effort by Bill McKibben, the Sierra Club and many others to make Keystone XL a make-or-break litmus test.

Yes, the enviros were blessed by extraordinary luck, sailing into the middle of a perfect storm of Nebraska Republicans and State Department bungling that helped them grab victory. But it was a triumph nonetheless. And in human history, winning is what counts, no matter how accidental or messy it may have been or how narrow the margin of victory. 

A very similar dynamic played out at the Seattle summit of the World Trade Organization in 1999. Environmental and labor groups made a huge effort at mobilizing street protests, which led to a wildly excessive police crackdown and the collapse of the summit. Let's remember these scenes, which transfixed the world:

Photo: Steve Kaiser

The so-called Battle of Seattle was widely viewed as a bellwether event, and it was indeed just that. The summit's collapse led to a major stalling of the free trade impetus and ideology, endowing the anti-free-trade camp with an aura of power and influence that it still enjoys to this day. 

Yet in Seattle and afterward, the real cause of the breakdown in consensus on free trade was the spreading spider-web of cracks in global capitalism. The economic self-interest of old and new capitalist blocs was no longer identical, as tectonic faultlines opened between the United States, Europe, the so-called BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) large emerging nations, as well as the smaller and poorer nations. 

The dynamic with Keystone XL could be the same. The environmentalists won a major victory, aided by a perfect storm, and they now have a huge amount of political street cred. With a lot more hard work and a little more luck, they could change whole narrative of climate politics for years to come.

Energy efficiency: from long knives to straw men

The debate spurred by my Oct. 30 post about energy efficiency policies in California is generating plenty of heat, showing that even within the climate movement there's lingering resistance to government regulatory power.

As readers will recall, a major report by the California Council on Science and Technology was spun by Andy Revkin at the New York Times to downplay the need for a rapid strengthening of regulations on energy efficiency. I took Revkin to task for misstating the CCST report's main conclusions, and Joe Romm at Climate Progress ripped into Revkin with his usual caffeinated brio.

Since then, the debate has continued with long posts by Brad Plumer at the Washington Post, by Revkin again, Dan Lashof of the Natural Resources Defense Council, David Roberts at Grist, Matt Hourihan at the Information Technology Blog and Gar Lipow at Grist (updated below). Here are my take-aways:

Brad Plumer makes some substantive points. He supports my contention that a strategy of strengthened government regulations focused largely on energy efficiency, which the CCST report says could attain a 60 percent emissions reduction by 2050, would be a big deal:

First, let’s put those numbers in context. If California did manage to slash emissions 60 percent below 1990 levels by 2050, that would be a mind-boggling shift. And, as former Union of Concerned Scientists clean-energy director Alan Nogee points out, California’s per-capita emissions are already much lower than many other parts of the United States, due to scant coal use and strict building codes. There are fewer “easy” cuts left to make. If California can cut emissions 60 percent with existing technology, other states could presumably do more.

But he also notes that the CCST report's calculations for a 60 percent reduction rely on widespread electrification, which is itself a climate challenge:

As the CCST found, the most feasible way for California to cut emissions would involve doubling its electricity use. Buildings would get heated with electricity rather than natural gas. By 2050, some 60 percent of cars would have to be plug-ins rather than combustion-powered. And all that extra electricity would need to come from clean sources. That’s a dilemma. If the state relies too heavily on wind and solar, it’ll be difficult to balance fluctuating supplies when the wind’s not blowing or sun’s not shining. The state might have to burn natural gas to balance the load, causing it to miss its targets.

Something else will be needed. Maybe Californians will rekindle their love affair with nuclear power — the CCST found that 30 new reactors could provide two-thirds of the state’s power in 2050, though that means figuring out how to deal with the waste and alleviate public fears. Or perhaps engineers will find a way to capture carbon-dioxide from coal and gas plants and stash it underground. But that’s still a ways off. The same goes for storage technologies and smart grids to smooth out wind and solar supplies. Solar already has a lot of potential as is — happily, electricity use tends to peak when the sun is shining — but higher levels of solar (say) will require new ways to store that energy for darker hours.

Andy Revkin's follow-up to his earlier column principally consists of reposted responses from Alan Nogee and Thomas Crowley. I couldn't figure out the point of Crowley's rambling piece, while Nogee basically supports Joe Romm. Among Nogee's comments is this:

... the analysis provides strong support for “deploy, deploy, deploy” being the top priority, since it shows we can get 3/4 of the way to the 80% reduction targets with existing technology, even in the challenging California case. 

In his follow-up, dated Nov. 2, Revkin promises "more amplification coming soon from me, Nate Lewis, Jane Long and others." I'm looking forward to his post.

Dan Lashof, who is director of NRDC's climate and clean air program, echoes Nogee's comments about the 60 percent strategy being a necessary starting point. He delicately positions himself above the fray, lamenting the "rancorous and somewhat silly debate." Then he delves deep into the weeds to make a few worthwhile clarifications, such as the role of natural gas as an emissions-reducing strategy for the short term but not the medium or long terms.

David Roberts, in contrast, doesn't really engage with the issues. While he usually is a top-notch reporter and analyst, in this post he sets up a straw man argument, claiming that Romm and I believe that "it's all about deployment." He then swats down his straw man with a pox-on-both-houses wave, saying the "debate seems pointless."

For the amount of attention it gets, you'd think that settling this debate is the crucial first step in developing a policy plan or a political strategy. You'd think the "enough technology" question must be answered before anyone can move forward. But as I see it, pretty much nothing hinges on the answer. Indeed, I find the whole debate baffling and confounding.

After Roberts finishes smashing his straw man, he settles down and more or less admits that the "deploy, deploy" strategy is correct. As he notes, "Even the most enthusiastic fans of deployment acknowledge the need for innovation."

Yes, that's true -- Romm, I and others are arguing that what's important is to use government regulatory authority to push the deployment of existing carbon-reducing technologies. This deployment push will itself provide market signals that will drive innovation by the private sector -- which, multiplied by government investment in clean energy R&D, will help push further carbon reductions throughout the economy.

In contrast, many of the "breakthrough technologies" crowd have ignored or outright opposed government regulatory strategies for energy efficiency, instead advocating  investments in long-term, futuristic technologies and espousing the muddled centrist ideology known as High Broderism (after the late Washington Post columnist David Broder).

The International Energy Agency's Nov. 9 release of its new World Energy Outlook report should prove once and for all that waiting for a technological Godot to arrive is not a feasible strategy. As Joe Romm points out about the IEA's projections, "Those who counsel waiting for breakthrough technologies are urging us on a path that is unsustainable, irreversible, potentially catastrophic, and economically indefensible."

Matt Hourihan at the Information Technology Blog swings back and forth and lands finally in the breakthrough camp. His post concludes: 

We are much better off optimizing our innovation system to deliver technologies that can be sold wherever there are burgeoning populations attempting to climb out of energy poverty. Incremental innovation, through deployment, no doubt has a role to play. But if deployment is our lead strategy, we never get where we need to go.

This should be no surprise because the blog is sponsored by the Innovation Technology and Innovation Foundation, a Washington advocacy group funded largely by the tech industry. 

* Update: I just noticed Gar Lipow's post earlier today on Grist, in which he identifies himself with the pro-regulatory "glass is 100% full crowd." He argues that the CCST study underestimates the potential of existing low-carbon technologies because it focuses only on those that can be deployed through California state policies. In this way, Lipow writes, the study ignores technologies that need national implementation, such as a renewables-powered grid requiring interstate long-distance transmission.

Stick a fork in Keystone XL

As I wrote here two days ago, there were emerging signs that the Obama administration was planning to punt the Keystone XL decision until after next year's election. Now comes a one-two-three punch to confirm what I wrote. The Associated Press and Reuters each ran articles today quoting an unnamed "U.S. official" -- who, given the context, could be State Department but I would wager is more likely White House.

This is how policy wars are often fought and decisions made inside U.S. presidential administrations -- by coordinated leaks that are intended for the widest possible distribution (in this case, AP and Reuters simultaneously) to telegraph a message to the opposing camp that the party line has changed and it's time to fall in line.

This message has come through loud and clear to the nation's main oil industry lobbying group, the American Petroleum Institute. In a nervous press release issued today titled, "API: Denying or delaying Keystone XL is reckless policy," API complained:

Each delay has bred nothing but more delay which is standing in the way of safely moving vital energy for American consumers and the overall economy.  .... If a decision is not made in 2011, the President will have failed to fulfill a promise of creating jobs and strengthening our energy security. We hope that he does not go back on his word.

... When the House passed legislation requiring a decision on Keystone XL by November 1 with an overwhelming bipartisan margin, the administration claimed it was "unnecessary" because the State Department was committed to making a decision on the project by year's end.  We again call on the President to stick to his word.

Update 11/10/11: As I predicted, the State Department has fallen in line with the White House decision to punt the whole thing until post-election -- at which point TransCanada may have already pulled the plug, or the administration may decide to kill it off. State has just issued a press release confirming that it will conduct a new review of the pipeline route in Nebraska. The most important part is this:

Based on the Department’s experience with pipeline project reviews and the time typically required for environmental reviews of similar scope by other agencies, it is reasonable to expect that this process including a public comment period on a supplement to the final EIS consistent with NEPA could be completed as early as the first quarter of 2013. After obtaining the additional information, the Department would determine, in consultation with the eight other agencies identified in the Executive Order, whether the proposed pipeline was in the national interest, considering all of the relevant issues together. Among the relevant issues that would be considered are environmental concerns (including climate change), energy security, economic impacts, and foreign policy.

At Tar Sands Action, the environmental coalition opposing the pipeline, Bill McKibben has claimed a (qualified) victory. His new post today is appropriately titled, "Big news: We won. You won." Check it out. It's not often that progressives and environmentalists get to say this.

Oil! ... again

For a quick view of just how fast and sudden the new U.S. oil boom has been, check out the video below, courtesy of the U.S. Energy Department. I've written about the boom previously on this blog, here, here and here, and in the San Francisco Chronicle, but the video makes it so much more simple and dramatic. 

And for those of you who are secretly itching for a piece of that oil boom action yourselves, well you're in luck because Chevron is hiring.

Just mosey on down to Bakersfield, California, next week, and drive right up to the Four Points by Sheraton Hotel. The Chevron job fair ad says the company is hiring "experienced Reservoir Engineers, Production Engineers, Petroleum Engineers, Facilities Engineers, as well as Development Geologists." It adds, "Your career could take you to locations as diverse as: Africa, Asia-Pacific, Eurasia, Europe, Latin America, Middle East, North America."

Stalling for time in U.S. and Canada

Given the amount of heat that environmentalists are putting on President Obama over the Keystone XL pipeline, it's political common sense that Obama might want to stall for time. Why anger supporters and/or powerful interest groups by making a decision in the middle of a hard-fought campaign? Why not just punt it until after the election?

Seems like that's what he may be planning to do.

As I wrote a week ago, the pipeline opponents' street protests have received a big boost from the insider hardball being played by Sen. Bernard Sanders and Rep. Earl Blumenauer. The two lawmakers, joined by 10 others,  requested an internal legal review of the State Department's handling of the project. Sanders revealed today that the State Department's inspector general has agreed to carry out the request, as explained in the IG's letter dated Nov. 4. The process of conducting such a review is likely to take months.

In addition, the Los Angeles Times reported that Obama is considering asking the State Department to carry out an Environmental Impact Report on a possible new route for the Keystone XL that would avoid the Ogallala Aquifer, as Nebraska politicians are demanding. It's important to note that EIRs of this sort typically are encyclopedic door-stoppers that total hundreds of pages. Their preparation involves whole armies of consultants, cumbersome public meetings and multiple layers of bureaucratic review. The process could require a year or more, potentially driving up the pipeline's price by hundreds of millions of dollars and leading TransCanada to throw up its hands.

In Canada, meanwhile, delays are the order of the day for two proposed pipelines from the tar sands to the Pacific Coast.

Last month, Kinder Morgan Canada began soliciting bids for a doubling of the capacity of its existing Trans Mountain pipeline, to enable delivery of tar sands crude to Asia-bound tankers at the port of Burnaby, near Vancouver. 

However, the proposal has run into stiff opposition from Vancouver-area politicians and environmentalists who fear that supertankers could cause oil spills in Vancouver harbor. On Sept. 30, the Union of B.C. Municipalities passed a resolution urging the National Energy Board, other federal authorities and Port Metro Vancouver to subject the proposal to the "highest degree" of environmental review. Lawsuits seem inevitable to block the necessary dredging of the harbor to allow passage of the larger tankers. 

Just a few days later, a new public opinion poll showed that only 31 percent of British Columbians support the expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline.

A few hundred miles north, the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline project also seems to be going nowhere. The project, which would pump tar sands crude to tankers at Kitimat, a port on the northern B.C. coast, faces fierce opposition from the First Nations, or native tribes, along the pipeline's route. A joint declaration against the project, the Save the Fraser Gathering of Nations, was signed in December 2010 by 61 indigenous communities. It concluded: “We will not allow the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway pipelines, or similar Tar Sands projects, to cross our lands, territories and watersheds, or the ocean migration routes of Fraser River salmon.”

Many of these First Nations have never reached land treaties with the Canadian federal government to relinquish their historic territorial rights, in contrast to the United States, where the last Native claims were relinquished in the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971. These "non-treaty" First Nations enjoy significant clout in Canada's legal system, and they are likely to be able to block outright the Enbridge Northern Gateway -- or, at least, postpone a final reckoning for years.

The result of all these delays? The tar sands oil may remain bottled up for many years to come. Death by Kafka, not by firing squad.

All in all, not a conclusive, dramatic victory for Mother Nature, but victory nonetheless.

Keystone XL and litmus tests

Once again, thousands of protesters have rallied at the White House on Sunday to urge President Obama to reject the Keystone XL pipeline. They put on a solid showing with a clear, simple message:

 

Photo: Emma Cassidy/Tar Sands Action 

Because President Obama announced last week that he, not the State Department, will personally make the final decision on Keystone XL, this issue is shaping up as a major litmus test for Obama's relationship with environmentalists. If he approves the pipeline he will face intense criticism from greens and progressives, many of whom supported him actively in the 2008 campaign. If he rejects the pipeline, he will be attacked mercilessly by conservatives and many mainstream pundits for capitulating.

But wait -- did you say a litmus test? All the Very Serious People, as Paul Krugman calls them, and many mainstream Democrats (overlapping groups, of course), oppose anything resembling a litmus test. Such all-or-nothing tactics are seen as excessive, or unbecoming, or extremist, or something. So we should expect that in the coming months, environmentalists will be subjected to much clucking of tongues and wagging of fingers regarding the Keystone XL litmus test. They will be pressed to deny that it is a litmus test, and will be criticized if they refuse.

This will be part of the next framing narrative of the Keystone XL issue in the coming months. Understanding litmus tests, how they work and who uses them is crucial.

When used judiciously and infrequently, litmus tests are a smart and necessary part of effective politics. A party or movement that is afraid to use them is destined to be treated as a doormat by the powers that be. Small-d democratic politics is not an ivory tower. It necessarily involves lots of push and pull -- and the occasional elbow jab to the solar plexus.

Environmentalists' and progressives' general reluctance to use litmus tests is a large part of the reason why they have been treated as doormats by the Obama administration, and by the Clinton administration before that.

Conservatives love litmus tests and have used them to enormous success, while liberals abhor them. 

Below is a quick, back-of-the-envelope summary of litmus tests currently in use:

Conservatives:

• Denial that global warming exists or is caused by human activity
• Drill, baby drill
• Pro-Ryan budget
• Pro-repeal of Roe v. Wade
• Anti-union
• Pro-tax cuts for wealthy, anti-new taxes or fees
• Anti-gun control
• Anti-gay marriage

Progressives/environmentalists:

• Recognition that global warming exists and is largely caused by human activity
• Anti-repeal of Roe v. Wade
• Support for Social Security and Medicare

Get the difference? Conservatives' litmus tests tend to be numerous, aggressive and proactive, while the litmus tests of progressives and environmentalists are few and defensive.

Simply in terms of political tactics, the Keystone XL is an excellent choice to make for a litmus test. It's easy to understand and dramatic. The foreign-owned pipeline would bisect the nation, pumping dirty, high-carbon oil from the tar sands through America's prairies and farms, all the way down to the Texas coast. The visceral yet largely subconscious impact of this imagery among many patriotic Middle Americans should not be underestimated.

As Jake Schmidt noted last week on the NRDC Switchboard blog, there's one other major decision on Obama's plate -- whether to impose stiff new greenhouse gas emissions standards for power plants. This latter decision may have an even greater impact on total greenhouse gas emissions than the Keystone XL decision. But power plant regulations are hardly a bumper sticker subject, and it is unlikely to penetrate the popular consciousness. Keystone XL does all that, in spades. It is a perfect litmus test.