Obama’s Dilemma: The Keystone XL Pipeline Decision

Sometime this year, United States President Obama is expected to finally decide the fate of the controversial energy project, the Keystone XL Pipeline, which has lingered in limbo since 2008. The project is slated to shuttle crude oil from the oil sands in western Canada to the American Midwest and then on to Gulf Coast refineries.

There is no shortage of media coverage on the issue, but what is the quality of that mountain of coverage, and how are the vociferous opponents and proponents of Keystone XL using the news, opinion, and social media to shape public opinion on the pipeline?

These two questions were at the heart of a recent Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) panel, "Obama's Dilemma: How the Media Influence Public Debate on the Keystone XL Decision," sponsored by the Belfer Center’s Environment and Natural Resources Program (ENRP). "This issue has captured a lot of the attention" of those who follow environment, climate, energy, or U.S.-Canadian relations, said ENRP director Henry Lee.

The quality of the media coverage was first tackled by panelist Michael Levi, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who studies the intersection between energy, environment, and foreign policy. Levi is the author of a new book: The Power Surge: Energy, Opportunity, and the Battle for America's Future.

Levi noted that many reporters still frame the pipeline's fate around the same oversimplified dichotomy: Will it boost energy security, jobs, and the economy or will it damage the environment and climate?

Such articles embrace the "he said-she said" approach, he said, playing up the drama, pitting experts from the two advocacy sides against one another, and generally omitting the underlying facts and analysis that would help contextualize the distinctions between the opposing views on the Keystone XL pipeline.

Panelist David Keith, a Harvard professor of public policy and applied physics and one of Time Magazine’s 2009 "heroes of the environment," talked about how key pipeline players, whether from industry, government, science, or activism, have used the media to their advantage. "The media has done an excellent job of being spun by both sides," said Keith.

Offering a journalist's perspective was the third panelist, Elana Schor, a Greenwire energy reporter and MIT 2012-2013 Knight Science Journalism Fellow who has written extensively about the science and politics of the Keystone XL pipeline. Schor agreed that people central to the pipeline debate have often manipulated the media by creating compelling news events almost guaranteed to garner coverage—citing environmental groups' White House protests and arrests as the most successful on this front. However, she shifted the blame to the pressures of the current 24/7 news cycle and fewer resources available to news media outlets. Many reporters are working with impatient deadlines that do not allow the time necessary to weed out all conflicting facts from opinions.

Moreover, the media is "incentivized to cover a great, sexy political story," particularly with President Obama and the White House at the center of the decision, she added.

One controversy not carefully covered in the media, however, is the American versus Canadian divide on the issue. Keith, a Canadian environmental scientist and entrepreneur who splits his time between Cambridge and Calgary, said that many government leaders and citizens there believe that the key to getting American environmentalists off their back on Keystone is by showing how much "other nice green stuff" Canada is doing, such as investing in solar power. If Canada is viewed as green, then they believe it may be easier to get U.S. support for the Keystone pipeline, said Keith.

"But I don’t think it makes any difference to the opponents," he said. The U.S. environmentalist movement does not see this as a tradeoff and its attention is unwaveringly set on the pipeline, said Keith and Schor. So there is a "complete disconnect," he said, with the two sides often talking right past each other.

Science journalist Cristine Russell, an ENRP senior fellow and HKS adjunct lecturer who teaches a course on "The Media, Energy, and Environment," moderated the lively panel discussion.

All of the seminar panelists agreed that pipeline opponents had blown the projected climate change hazards of the project out of proportion and that the direct impact on greenhouse gas emissions of the crude oil carried by the Keystone XL pipeline was relatively small compared to existing energy sources.

Levi said that the "wells to wheels" emissions of the Canadian oil sands would produce between 5 to 20 percent more greenhouse gas emissions than a typical barrel of oil. Assuming the oil sands carried by the pipeline are replacing regular oil, it would mean less than a tenth of a percent increase in global emissions, said Levi. If the oil sands carried by the pipeline do not replace regular oil use but supplement it, he said that the estimated increase in global emissions would be less than one percent.

"This is not as a matter of substance a world-changing thing," said Levi.  The direct climate change effects of Keystone XL are "too small to be considered" serious, said Keith.

Instead, said the speakers, the Keystone XL controversy has become an important symbolic issue much larger than the pipeline itself—it is a proxy for America’s stance on climate change, jobs, and the economy; the future of the fossil fuel industry; and doing business with Canada. No matter the outcome, President Obama will appear to be turning his back on one of these issues—or, at least, some members of the media will certainly paint him that way.

That is unless the President can strike a deal. Levi, Keith, and Schor all said that it appeared likely that the pipeline will be approved, but at a price that may still benefit the environmentalists' larger agenda in other arenas. Will the Obama administration take stronger action under the Clean Air Act against coal-fired power plants, which still pose significant health hazards from air pollution? Will updated, transparent pipeline safety regulations be supported too?

Only time will tell how President Obama will resolve his Keystone XL dilemma.

Zahra Hirji is a master's candidate in the MIT science writing program who recently took "The Media, Energy, and Environment" class at HKS

Full Video of Panel Discussion: