The Keystone XL project

Being that it is the year leading up to a presidential election, so it's very difficult when it comes to making decisions on big, controversial projects such as the Keystone XL pipeline. President Obama has just delayed a decision on the project until after the election (I guess some political strategists would say that's a smart idea, others would not). (The Huffington post has a good article about the issues surrounding the pipeline project.) The delay has threatened to kill the project entirely, which for environmental groups, is a victory. On the other side, labor groups are furious, because the project had the potential to provide as many as 20,000 jobs. Now the company behind the project, TransCanada, has offered to reroute the pipeline into a less sensitive area, when previously they had refused to do so.

This is a common issue in environmentalism and industrialism. Which is more important- saving the environment, or saving the economy? I think it's important to keep ecosystem functioning at it's highest (see my post about ecosystem services for more on that). However, given the current state of the economy, I think it's important to get people back to work. I'm curious to know if it's at all possible to make a compromise- is it feasible to do the project with the smallest environmental impact? Can the company invest money into reducing the impact?

I will be following up with a summary on the environmental impact statement done by the EPA.