President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President,
I am writing to you now because I, and every one I know, have a vested interest in a decision you are about to make regarding the Keystone XL pipeline.
To introduce myself, I am a Canadian family physician with several decades of advocacy around health in the broadest sense of the word.
I know your office receives thousands of pieces of mail – and every other form of communication – each and every day. I know that, as a result, there is only a small chance that you will read this yourself. So I am taking the liberty of copying this into the public space, in the hopes that doing so may strengthen my case in your mind.
Please understand that this does not constitute any disrespect for you, or for your office. It simply speaks to how deeply concerned about this matter I really am.
Before I get into the pipeline issue, let me say how filled with admiration I am that you aspired to, and then ran, and then, against so many historical odds, succeeded in being elected to the office of United States president. I admire your courage, determination and steadfastness in doing so, despite a national setting still beset by the evils of racism, and most particularly in a time of such great global turmoil when, in the phrase first proposed by MIT professor Thomas Kuhn, a paradigm shift is very much upon us.
The transition from dominating the planet to becoming its responsible stewards could not be more visible and obvious than in these times, and you have been directly engaged in some of the most intense efforts that are preparing us for that transition. Like so many US presidents before you, these processes have turned your hair a distinguished grey – a small signal of how demanding the tasks facing a US president can be, and also how caustic and invasive the forces that surround a person playing that role can be. You are embedded in a large team of advisors and friends, and you have a very gifted partner and what I can guess is a warm and supportive family.
Nevertheless, many of the daily demands and pressures you feel and have to deal with are felt and dealt with alone.
May I say, on that note, that your determination to bring into force the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act – which will be affectionately known forever as “Obamacare”, and rightly so, because you are the person most responsible for its existence – has resonated enormously with me as a physician, and with most of my fellow Canadians. If you were to accomplish nothing else during your tenure as president, that one achievement alone will stand as an enduring and deeply positive legacy of your time in office.
Obamacare is an enactment that will permanently (the Tea Party notwithstanding) elevate the physical, mental and social well-being of US citizens in a very fundamental and necessary way. I sense that the at times rabid, ideologically-driven opposition to Obamacare – like the intense opposition to Medicare when it was introduced in Canada – will vanish into the dustbin of history in a few years, and your name will be lauded for this accomplishment for a very long time.
Please forgive me for this quite discursive beginning to my letter. I come from a chatty family. And I don’t write to the US president very often (you’ll be relieved to know!), But as I started typing, I realized that there are a lot of things that I wanted to get off my chest.
Now, however, let me get back to the reason I am writing to you today.
There are intense, unremitting pressures on you to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, which has been proposed to run from the Canadian Tar Sands to the Texas coast, taking diluted bitumen or “dilbit” from this country to refineries in Texas, and from there overseas for international sale.
I ask you – I implore you – to resist those pressures, and use your veto power to stop this plan from going forward. If you have to use your veto power a dozen times to block this ill-advised and strictly unnecessary project from going forward, then I implore you to do use your veto power a dozen times. You are the last and the only person in the United States who can morally and legally stand up to the vested interests that, for their own narrow reasons, desperately want this pipeline to go through.
The forces arraying in favour of this pipeline are vociferous and relentless – but they are also questionable.
For one thing, my Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, has invested much time and many taxpayer dollars in relentlessly and aggressively promoting this venture, and he and his senior ministers continue their campaign to this day.
You should know, however, that Mr. Harper is steadily losing the support of even some of his staunchest and most loyal supporters, including members of his own political circle, as he advocates for Keystone. He is losing their support because of his close personal links to the Tar Sands and the fossil fuel industry in general, but also because of a growing recognition, among Canadian voters, of the strikingly undemocratic ways he is behaving.
The credibility of his position is declining, too, as awareness grows, by leaps and bounds, of the direct link between fossil fuel use and global warming. Coupled with the built-in volatility of the fossil fuel market, and the damaging effects this volatility is currently having on the Canadian economy, Mr. Harper’s position is increasingly recognized as unhelpful.
But the locus of the most aggressive and at times outrageous advocacy for the Keystone XL pipeline has arisen within the borders of your country. Most of it is tainted by unmitigated and sometimes deliberately camouflaged conflict of interest.
The infamous Tea Party, created solely by the tobacco industry and the Koch brothers, and a dominant force in the Republican Party, has led the ideological combat for the pipeline. (I’m sure you’re aware that the Koch brothers are the biggest investors of all in the Tar Sands?)
Behind the scenes, partisan public relations consultants like Richard Berman have boasted of their skill in using millions of dollars of fossil fuel money to promote industry interests through specially created front groups, while making the sources of these dollars completely invisible.
The State Department’s Final Environmental Impact Statement on the Keystone was prepared by a consultant with strong and long-term ties to the fossil fuel industry. Perhaps for that reason, while acknowledging that the project would increase global greenhouse gas emissions and hence accelerate global warming, the report did not contain any calculations of how much it would do so.
You may be interested to know that a brilliant Canadian analyst did so, and adduced clear evidence that the pipeline leads straight towards a 6 degree rise in global temperature, and conflicts squarely with the goals you and your staff have set out for a safe climate future for Americans and for all of the planet.
Leading climate scientists in your country and around the world have spoken eloquently, passionately and in great detail about the need to limit greenhouse gas generation. Consequently one of your presidential predecessors, Jimmy Carter, has publicly spoken out against the Keystone XL. A group of Nobel Laureates has also rejected the Keystone XL project.
The Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki Moon, has called for more action on climate change, and the UN’s IPCC report has stated that greenhouse gas emissions are already causing irreversible damage to the world’s ecosystems.
Churches are speaking out about the need to limit climate change with Pope Francis taking a particularly strong stand.
The business sector is also affirming the concept of stranded assets – fossil fuel reserves that cannot be extracted if we are to avoid rampant climate change. Divestment from the fossil fuel industry is making increasing sense to economists and even to the World Council of Churches. Fossil fuel company shares are declining in value despite massive industry subsidies.
Most important of all, however – and the main reason why I am begging you to maintain your opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline – is that this industrial project, which you have pointed out is superfluous to US energy needs, will do a rank disservice to future generations.
In the largest climate change march ever, in New York in September of last year, 50,000 students formed a column 10 blocks long, speaking out about their wish for a liveable future. Meanwhile, California is already dessicating, while Miami is beginning to drown.
Your daughters, along with the children in my family, and children all over the world, will be affected by what we choose to do today, for good or for ill. Approving the Keystone XL pipeline will mean business as usual – even though the “usual” is long past. It will leave the task of addressing the transition to a new economy – already mapped out in energy terms by scientists at Stanford – to a successor.
You've never struck me as being that kind of person.
Dismissing the Keystone Xl pipeline will be a bold stroke that sets the course of your nation, and the world, towards a future in which peace, prosperity and well-being can be the lot of all children in every part of the world.
I say, once again, in the strongest of terms: please veto the Keystone XL pipeline.
I apologize for going on at such length on this matter. I am grateful that I live in a country which, like yours, allows me to speak out on an issue that I care deeply about. I am grateful that I am able to address these remarks to a United States president who is pragmatic, informed and free of ideology enough to hear my remarks with a sympathetic ear.
I thank you for your attention.
Sincerely,
Warren Bell MD