Henry Jekyll
Aug 8, 2017 · 1 min read

This is how the market operates. The Keystone Pipeline would be (and might be) built if it were profitable — which is to say if there were sufficient demand for the extra oil. But we are already awash in oil and natural gas to a degree that even those who didn’t declare “the end of oil” at the end of the last century or early in this one never envisioned, so the price has dropped and it isn’t economically realistic to build the sucker.

Barack Obama ignored the State Department’s report that the pipeline wouldn’t affect global CO2 levels and would lead to fewer oil spills and fewer accidents than the current ways of bringing Canadian oil to market. Fine. There’s something to be said for symbolism. But his executive order was just one lost election away from being undone, and there you have it.

Still, the thing seems dead, and if it is, it is because the market killed it. If you want it to stay dead, stop playing “resistance” and actually kill it. Put your money into alternative fuels. Buy solar panels or put up a windmill. Buy or lease an e-car (stodgy old GM has a good one that’s far cheaper than any of Tesla’s models). Buy stock in alternative energy companies. You can probably afford at least some of that, so do it. Capitalism is a dynamic system that you can use to your advantage. The pipeline will never get built if there’s no demand for its product.

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