Sep 19, 2013 3 min read

Warring forces are gathering in Washington, D.C., this week to battle over a number of issues, including the Keystone XL pipeline extension, which would carry heavy crude oil from Canada’s tar sands to refineries in the Gulf Coast.

Approval for the Keystone XL from the State Department has been held up for five years, a period during which proponents and opponents of the pipeline have portrayed the project as either: 1) the greatest step the United States can take toward energy independence, or 2) the greatest threat to global climate and health. One would think from all the attention focused on the Keystone pipeline that it would be the first of its kind, but of course it’s not. There have been arteries and veins of oil and gas pipelines under our feet for many years; they are the most efficient way to transport the stuff.

So, why has this become such a contentious issue? It would not be so if this nation had a energy policy. But we don’t; instead, we have politics.

We have members of Congress, some of them bought and paid for by giant oil corporations, trying to tie Keystone approval to a routine funding bill to keep the federal government operating. House Republicans are looking at a vote soon to raise the government’s $16.7 trillion borrowing cap on their own terms by pairing it with a basketful of conservative priorities, including a renewed assault on the Affordable Care Act and a mandate to build the Keystone XL.

And then we have environmentalists making pipeline approval the red line President Obama must not cross, and urging him to turn away from oil as an energy source. Some zealots argue that the pipeline is a tipping point, its construction hastening global warming.

The Keystone pipeline will not make us energy independent, as some proponents claim, but it will make North America more competitive as a supplier in the world market. Because the U.S. uses so much energy, we need much more than oil to be independent. We need to develop all our energy resources, particularly the clean ones that will do less harm to the world we live in.

Though extracting oil from tar sands may be dirty and our continued dependence on oil destructive, oil is still a critical part of our way of life and economy, and will be for some time. Pipeline opponents should consider that nearly 25 percent of the world’s gasoline- and diesel-burning vehicles are owned by Americans. About 250 million vehicles are registered in the U.S., and all but a miniscule percentage of them run on fuels derived from oil. Furthermore, millions of homes are heated by oil, and everything plastic – from auto parts to zippers – is made from oil.

A national energy policy would chart our course toward independence from foreign oil and other energy sources; the development of clean sources of energy, from the sun, wind, tides and heat from below the earth’s surface; and reduction of toxic gases and pollution from energy production. But it is crazy to suggest that oil production should not be part of such a policy.

A decision on the Keystone pipeline is long overdue, and with no national energy policy for direction, there is no convincing argument for the Obama administration to deny Canada its most efficient method of transporting its oil to market.