Source: Cancel All the Pipelines | The New Republic
Without congressional action, the Biden administration’s planned Day One revocation of the Keystone XL permit will be an important but temporary victory.
JIM WATSON/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Some good news can’t wait. On Sunday, the CBC reported that canceling federally issued permits for the Keystone XL pipeline will be part of President-elect Joe Biden’s Day One agenda. In theory, the pipeline could be dead by Wednesday afternoon, when prior presidents have been prepping for inaugural balls. (The balls have been canceled this year.)
Like the dissolution of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline last summer, Keystone XL’s imminent demise is a major victory for Native and environmentalist organizers, who’ve stood against the controversial pipeline extension since the beginning. But it’s also a symbol of a larger set of dilemmas. With Representative Deb Haaland soon to become secretary of the interior—the Laguna Pueblo citizen will be the first Native official to lead the department—there’s a good chance other permit-bearing projects will soon join Keystone XL on the chopping block. Yet for all of these, and the Keystone cancellation as well, the strange life cycle of the Keystone pipeline points to a need for broader and more long-term policies.
There is no shortage of other pipeline projects Biden and his Cabinet ought to consider canceling. In Minnesota, water protectors such as the Giniw Collective have spent the winter months risking arrest by physically blocking the Line 3 Pipeline, which is slated to cut through the reservation of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa and narrowly miss the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe’s lands. In Oregon, the Jordan Cove Pipeline is currently mired in environmental-review limbo, no thanks to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which in May declined to review requests from tribes and the state that claimed the pipeline would disturb the local natural ecosystems as well as culturally important sites for the neighboring tribal nations. And in the Dakotas, the Dakota Access Pipeline—the project that incited the Standing Rock movement in 2016—continues to ferry close to half of all oil produced in North Dakota, even as further environmental impact reviews remain uncompleted.
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