Title: Keystone XL Pipeline Construction
Thesis: The project is controversial because it clearly involves some environmental risks and spillovers to nature and society while economic benefits are also hard to ignore, but the best way to deal with the issue is adopting market-oriented regulations.
• Keystone Pipeline System has been a major source of crude oil import for the U.S. in recent years. According to The New York Times, the Keystone alone supplies about a half million barrels of oil per day, which is almost a quarter of the total amount that Canada sends; Canada is the largest exporter of crude oil to the United States, supplying over 2 million barrels every day. Keystone XL is one of the extension projects to …show more content…
Canada won’t mind exporting its oil sands to somewhere else if not to the U.S.
- However, America’s growing dependence on the fossil fuels and some direct effects of the carbon emission caused by large amount of crude oil import can involve negative consequences on its people’s health, the environment and wild life, etc. inside the national border.
• Besides property-rights approach, there are other effective market-oriented measures for environmental regulations, especially marketable permits or emissions trading.
- James Cowan, the editor of Canadian Business, asserts CAP or cap-and-trade, which is one of the common types of emissions trading, as the best solution to make the project move forward with its implementation.
- As mentioned before, although it’s true that the carbon gases contributed by the Keystone XL wouldn’t have gross effect on the world climate, it certainly would on America’s own environment and society. Therefore, regulating increased carbon emissions from businesses in the fossil fuels industry is vital for both its economy and