The Keystone Pipeline has just received another positive report from the U.S. State Department - its fifth in five years - but the Friday afternoon press release had barely uploaded to the State Department website when the department's spokeswoman detailed the path ahead: A 90-day review period involving eight other government agencies, then the secretary's review. And of course President Obama's final up or down decision.
Will Keystone at long last get the green light, or will it remain in limbo, regardless of how many federal studies fail to find any fatal fault with the project?
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Pipeline opponents show no signs of giving up. Here's a prediction: The next round of anti-Keystone attacks won't involve charges of polluted aquifers, carbon emissions or even -- in the memorable Mother Jones headline -- "7 Adorable Animals Imperiled by the Keystone Pipeline." It will be the pipeline's alleged threat to "sacred sites"; places where indigenous peoples prayed, buried their ancestors or, as the case may be, picked acorns.
That last item is the activity associated with a "sacred site" claimed by an Arizona tribe to stop a major new copper mine, which would almost single-handedly close the copper gap that has the U.S. importing 600,000 tons of the metal each year instead of mining its own.
Even as Arizona Representatives Ann Kirkpatrick (D) and Paul Gosar (R) reached across the political aisle to craft a federal land swap -- opening a path for the project by bringing thousands of prime conservation acres under federal control -- project opponents backed an amendment putting sacred sites under the purview of the secretary of the Interior. With little legislative language defining what a sacred site is, an unelected federal official would have largely unchecked power to put not just an Arizona copper mine, but any project, out of business.
Sound cynical? Not really. Witness Capitol Hill reporter Michael Bastach, who last fall reported that the lobbying firm hired by the Arizona tribe to implement the sacred site strategy was the very same firm that backed an Alabama Indian tribe in its effort to bulldoze another tribe's graveyard -- in order to build a casino. 24-hour slots with a complimentary breakfast -- is there any site more sacred than that?
Having given the sacred site strategy a test-run in the mining battle, get ready to see the tactic go national.
Are there sacred sites along the Keystone corridor? There are if you believe Occupy Albuquerque, which, in its handy pamphlet, "Why Keystone Sucks," trumpets that the pipeline "will bulldoze right through sacred sites." Which ones? Well that's TBD, as they say.
It shouldn't be that way. The U.S. has an existing and rigorous regulatory regime to verify the validity of sacred sites as part of the resource development permitting process. It's there for a reason: to balance competing public goods -- economic, environmental, conservationist as well as competitiveness - in order to advance the public interest. By and large, the process works, producing development projects that balance environmental and economic equities. But the anti-resource activists aren't looking for balance and refinements that make projects better. They're looking for a regulatory weapon to stop projects -- from Keystone to copper mines and beyond.
Whether a sacred sites gambit will succeed in stopping resource projects remains to be seen. But this much we know: Stopping Keystone and major mining projects will stop the creation of new American jobs and GDP, and it will stop American manufacturers from gaining access to critical metals and minerals and low-cost energy inputs that would make American companies more competitive.
As for the things it won't stop, here's a short list: It will perpetuate foreign dependence for metals and oil produced in places that often have little regard for workers' rights and human rights, and little attention to safety of people and the environment. Every barrel of Canadian oil kept out by the defeat of Keystone (and promptly piped west to the Chinese) will perpetuate America's need for Nigerian oil -- 140 million barrels per year, produced by the world's second-worst natural gas flaring regime, so prolific that its "eternal flames" can be seen from outer space -- or Venezuelan oil. Every ounce of copper kept in the ground will keep the U.S. in deficit, strengthening the global demand for copper mined by Angola, Afghanistan, Russia, DRC Congo, China -- including, quite possibly, copper mined in the Tibet Autonomous Region -- and even Iran, which has a stated goal of doubling copper production by 2015. All of them are ranked at the bottom of Freedom House's index for political freedoms.
And yet there's no project like an American project to provoke activists' ire. It's like the old saw about looking for your lost keys under the street lamp, because the light's better there. Anti-resource activists prefer to protest projects in the established democracies like the U.S., and why not? The U.S. has the best permitting process to bring petitions and lodge legal complaints, and the nicest paddy wagons to truck protesters away once their camera-ready arrests have been uploaded to YouTube. Who would be crazy enough to protest a mine in DRC Congo or the FARC-controlled jungles of Columbia? How about an oil pipeline built by Putin's favorite oligarchs or the cousin of one of Teheran's mullahs? You could get yourself tossed in prison -- or worse -- and you'd miss the chance to accept your Defender of the Earth award at the annual activist black-tie ball.
So three cheers for America's anti-pipeline, anti-mining, anti-anything activists -- from the dictators and autocrats the world over who sell us their oil and ship us their metals as we fail to produce our own. Talk global all you want, but act local -- as long as the projects you stop are in the United States.
Daniel McGroarty, principal of Carmot Strategic Group, an issues management firm in Washington, D.C., served in senior positions in the White House and at the Department of Defense.
(AP Photo)
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