You are asking, in essence, if Alberta (better late than never) exercises common sense and helps raise the cost of using way UNDERPRICED carbon to a level above the ridiculously and economically disastrous low level that it is now, will the U.S. approve a pipeline that would never have been proposed had a sensible carbon price been established two decades ago when the science of climate change and the policy implications became clear to intelligent and educated people.

..........................................

Let's be clear: The colossally historic blunder of hugely underpricing and heavily wasting the planet's natural carbon energy capital, fossil fuels, for which generations to come will condemn OUR generation's denial, apathy, recklessness, and selfish myopia, is a global problem. No country or region has handled this well. Alberta is not worse than most other places in this respect. The impact of any one area (such as Alberta) acting alone is trivial compared to the GLOBAL action that is called for by sensible and informed economists.

..........................................

That said, two wrongs do not make a right, and righting one wrong does not give moral license for committing a second wrong. Subsidizing and fostering addiction to the fuel that (we know from VERY solid science, for MORE than two decades now) is already wrecking the global climate and doing great damage to the global economy and will do so, and increasingly for decades, and if we do not wise up soon, for CENTURIES, to come, is wrong. A too little and too late correction of that wrong, would be no excuse for acting to undermine that correction by helping exploit a new and costly portion of the trillions of tons of fossil fuel that are economically better (for us and future generations) left unburned.

..........................................

http://www.aip.org/history/climate/timel...

.....

http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index...

.....