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.
