Obama, Keystone XL, Canadian Green Perspectives and the Rest of Us

[dewline]

A friendly acquaintance of mine (and several others on my friendlist here at LJ) recently posted some interesting observations about the possible consequences of Obama's decision on the Keystone XL pipeline project.

I suspect that Alex is right on several points here, but I'd be interested in your perspective on his POV. Anyone?

Comments

[spross.livejournal.com]

Personally, I think May raised a very valid point. Why don't we process it here in Canada? Then if they want to buy it. We can sell it reap a double profit. Both in jobs, and marketing oil.

[dewline.livejournal.com]

Have you read John Ralston Saul's A Fair Country? I suspect that in that book he nails down the main cultural/psychological reason why our government and corporate leadership at present refuses to consider pursuing the possibility: the belief within their ranks that we are not and should not aspire to be a "real country".

Too complex?

[ed-rex.livejournal.com]

I'm sceptical that the psychological explanation is necesssary to explain the phenomenon in most cases, probably this one included. I think that quarterly profit projections are enough to explain the preference for shipping raw materials out of the country over doing the processing here.

Re: Too complex?

[dewline.livejournal.com]

It's possible that you're right, and that I'm over-analyzing the situation here. The numbers you refer to may feed a bias already operating at a near-instinctive level, though.

Wishing I had more information to work from here, but I'm too far from the core of the "onion".

Re: Too complex?

[ed-rex.livejournal.com]

Actually, I think I stated my case too strongly. I do think Saul is right about the psychology. I just don't think it's the dominant factor in the case of the tar sands from the corportate point of view, but it's hard to explain the lack of political will to push for value-added without it.

Ah.

[dewline.livejournal.com]

I suspect you're right on this point.

Echoes of the NDP, circa 1975

[ed-rex.livejournal.com]

My subject-line is not meant to disparage May; she's right now, as the once-socialist NDP was right so many years ago. Canada has far too often been satisfied to emulate our forefathers as hewers as wood and shippers of oil — it's a wonder we're even half as comfortable as we are.

I think it's rather revealing that an environmental analysis comes 'round to the old socialist insistence that we ought to perform the value added tasks as well as just exporting natural resources.

May impresses me more all the time.

Re: Echoes of the NDP, circa 1975

[dewline.livejournal.com]

She may be a more natural ally to the New Democrats than ever the most recent leadership was willing to admit, much less make use of. One of Mr. Layton's flaws, much as I admire what he did with what he had available to him.

One more reason to keep close watch on the competition to pick his successor.

Re: Echoes of the NDP, circa 1975

[ed-rex.livejournal.com]

She might be more natural to the NDP, yet she was a minister in the Mulrooney government. And yet — and strange as it is to say about someone leading a fifth party as its only sitting member — she strikes me as a principled pragmatist, however much that might sound like an oxymoron.

And just what does the NDP stand for any more, other than wanting things to be nice? I was appalled when the NDP joined in the chorus for the war on Libya, as if they had lost all their historical memory. And May? She had the courage to stand up and speak against it.

Re: Echoes of the NDP, circa 1975

[dewline.livejournal.com]

The Conservatives had their motives, and everyone else who felt it proper and necessary had their own set(s) of reasons. I figured that the referral to the International Criminal Court by the UN Security Council may have provided a "fig leaf" for what happened, but it's set a precedent for future ICC arrest warrant operations to build upon. A double-edged sword, sure, but not necessarily a bad thing.

Re: Echoes of the NDP, circa 1975

[ed-rex.livejournal.com]

In the very long run, that fig leaf may help to build a genuinely impartial criminal court, but for now, it remains mostly a tool of the imperium — and I do think that's a bad thing.

How many countries to "we" wreck for the ones we save?

I happened to be on Parliament Hill sometime last year when I caught a glimpse of the Glebe's Paul Dewar speaking to a crowd urging a NATO attack on Qadafi as if he somehow believed (and he probably did) that, this time, the bombing would really be Humanitarian.