President Barack Obama announces his administration has rejected Keystone XL

Flanked by Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden and Sec­re­tary of State John Ker­ry, Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma announced today that his admin­is­tra­tion has — after a lengthy and repeat­ed­ly delayed review process — reject­ed oil giant Tran­sCanada’s appli­ca­tion to build the Key­stone XL pipeline across the U.S.-Canada border.

“Now, for years, the Key­stone [XL] Pipeline has occu­pied what I, frankly, con­sid­er an over­in­flat­ed role in our polit­i­cal dis­course,” said the Pres­i­dent said in his open­ing remarks. “It became a sym­bol too often used as a cam­paign cud­gel by both par­ties rather than a seri­ous pol­i­cy mat­ter. And all of this obscured the fact that this pipeline would nei­ther be a sil­ver bul­let for the econ­o­my, as was promised by some, nor the express lane to cli­mate dis­as­ter pro­claimed by others.”

Despite his pro­fessed belief that Key­stone XL would not have been “the express lane to cli­mate dis­as­ter” the Pres­i­dent acknowl­edged that approval of Key­stone XL would have hurt seri­ous­ly inter­na­tion­al efforts to com­bat the cli­mate crisis.

“Amer­i­ca is now a glob­al leader when it comes to tak­ing seri­ous action to fight cli­mate change,” Oba­ma said. “And frankly, approv­ing this project would have under­cut that glob­al lead­er­ship. And that’s the biggest risk we face — not acting.”

Pro­gres­sive lead­ers across the coun­try praised Oba­ma’s decision.

“This is a big win. Pres­i­dent Obama’s deci­sion to reject Key­stone XL because of its impact on the [Earth­’s] cli­mate is noth­ing short of his­toric — and sets an impor­tant prece­dent that should send shock­waves through the fos­sil fuel indus­try,” said May Boeve, the Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of 350.org.

“Just a few years ago, insid­ers and experts wrote us off and assured the world Key­stone XL would be built by the end of 2011. Togeth­er, ranch­ers, trib­al nations and every­day peo­ple beat this project back, remind­ing the world that Big Oil isn’t invin­ci­ble — and that hope is a renew­able resource,” she point­ed out.

“But the win against Key­stone XL is just the begin­ning, because this fight has helped inspire resis­tance to a thou­sand oth­er projects. Every­where you look, peo­ple are shut­ting down frack­ing wells, stop­ping coal export facil­i­ties, and chal­leng­ing new pipelines. If Big Oil thinks that after Key­stone XL the pro­test­ers are going home, they’re going to be sore­ly surprised.”

“We stood our ground and today Pres­i­dent Oba­ma stood with us, the pipeline fight­ers,” agreed Jane Kleeb, the Direc­tor of the grass­roots group Bold Nebras­ka.

“Tonight landown­ers can final­ly go to sleep know­ing their fam­i­ly is safe and sound,” Kleeb added. “Our unlike­ly alliance showed Amer­i­ca that hard work and sci­en­tif­ic facts can beat Big Oil’s threat to our land and water.”

“Pres­i­dent Obama’s deci­sion is coura­geous and his­toric,” said Nebras­ka ranch­er Randy Thomp­son, also affil­i­at­ed with Bold Nebras­ka. “He did what was right in the face of a total­ly mis­guid­ed and unre­lent­ing effort by the Repub­li­can par­ty and Big Oil to shove this pipeline down our throats. His­to­ry will defend Pres­i­dent Oba­ma and our descen­dants will for­ev­er be indebt­ed to him.”

The admin­is­tra­tion’s rejec­tion of Key­stone XL per­haps not coin­ci­den­tal­ly came with­in hours of the swear­ing in of new Cana­di­an Prime Min­is­ter Justin Trudeau, who won a stun­ning man­date in last mon­th’s Cana­di­an fed­er­al elections.

Trudeau, who guid­ed the Lib­er­als back into the major­i­ty after they were rel­e­gat­ed to third par­ty sta­tus four years ago, had empha­sized he would not allow U.S.-Canadian rela­tions to dete­ri­o­rate in the event that the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion reject­ed the pipeline, unlike his pre­de­ces­sor, Con­ser­v­a­tive Stephen Harp­er, an ardent Tran­sCana­da boost­er, who hint­ed he would­n’t take no for an answer.

Oba­ma revealed dur­ing his remarks that he had called Trudeau — also a backer of Key­stone XL — to noti­fy him in advance of the decision.

“And while he expressed his dis­ap­point­ment, giv­en Canada’s posi­tion on this issue, we both agreed that our close friend­ship on a whole range of issues, includ­ing ener­gy and cli­mate change, should pro­vide the basis for even clos­er coor­di­na­tion between our coun­tries going for­ward,” said the President.

“And in the com­ing weeks, senior mem­bers of my team will be engag­ing with theirs in order to help deep­en that cooperation.”

Canada’s busi­ness estab­lish­ment and big media denounced the decision.

“It’s offi­cial. The Key­stone XL pipeline has become col­lat­er­al dam­age in a war of per­cep­tions. The tor­tu­ous saga of the cursed pipeline mer­its its very own and very long chap­ter in the annals of Canada‑U.S. rela­tions,” wrote Kon­rad Yak­abus­ki for The Globe and Mail, Canada’s news­pa­per of record.

“Clear­ly we’re dis­ap­point­ed in today’s deci­sion,” said Steve Williams, head hon­cho at Sun­cor, anoth­er large Cana­di­an oil company.

“I am very dis­ap­point­ed that one pipe, near­ly a metre wide, is being asked to bear all the sins of the car­bon econ­o­my,” said Cal­gary May­or Naheed Nen­shi, speak­ing as though the pro­posed Key­stone XL pipeline is a per­son (which it isn’t).

“This is very dif­fi­cult for the Cana­di­an oil and gas indus­try,” said for­mer Tran­sCana­da CEO Hal Kvisle, who con­ceived the pipeline.

But pro­gres­sive Cana­di­ans were thrilled.

“The Coun­cil of Cana­di­ans cel­e­brates the defeat of the Key­stone XL pipeline,” wrote CoC polit­i­cal direc­tor Brent Pat­ter­son. “We trav­elled to Wash­ing­ton, DC on at least three occa­sions to join protests against the pipeline, includ­ing call­ing on the Cana­di­an embassy in August 2011 to demand that they stop lob­by­ing for the pipeline, par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Sur­round the White House action in Novem­ber 2011, and the For­ward on Cli­mate protest in Feb­ru­ary 2013.”

“By the time Mr. Trudeau took over the file from Harp­er, it was clear­ly too far gone for him to do any­thing about it. Now, if he’s seri­ous about forg­ing a new rela­tion­ship with Oba­ma and the US, he would do well not to shed a tear over Key­stone and to move on to more impor­tant mat­ters,” wrote Damien Gilliss.

Pew Research report­ed last month that it found a plu­ral­i­ty of Cana­di­ans opposed — that’s right, opposed — to the Key­stone XL pipeline (48%) when it sur­veyed denizens of the coun­try about the issue. 42% of respon­dents said they favored the pipeline’s con­struc­tion. Giv­en that most Cana­di­ans are not in favor of Key­stone XL, its demise is unlike­ly to cause much con­ster­na­tion out­side of Canada’s equiv­a­lent of the Belt­way, and out­side of oil-rich and tar sands-reliant Alberta.

We at NPI feel this deci­sion was long over­due and very much nec­es­sary. Key­stone XL was in nobody’s best inter­est. We’re cer­tain­ly glad to see it nixed. This is a coura­geous deci­sion by Pres­i­dent Oba­ma that calls for great celebration.

But we’re also mind­ful that there are many oth­er bad pipeline projects that the oil indus­try wants to see built. Fur­ther activism and orga­niz­ing in both the Unit­ed States and Cana­da is need­ed to defeat those bad projects too.

POSTSCRIPT: Globe and Mail colum­nist Paul Kor­ing, who works out of D.C., opines that the tim­ing and log­ic of the admin­is­tra­tion’s deci­sion had lit­tle to do with Cana­da and every­thing to do with U.S. cred­i­bil­i­ty on the world stage.