Over the past few months, the Keystone XL Pipeline has been talked about at lengths on this campus. However, given the massive amount of dissent and criticism of the idea, these ideas have become the social norm on campus, thus leading to people no longer feeling comfortable speaking out.  Despite what some people may think, this is not a “no brainer.” In fact, there is an argument that can be made in favor of the pipeline; one that I intend to make. The biggest benefit that the approval of the Keystone XL pipeline would have is the potential for U.S. energy independence.

Let’s face the facts: the Canadian Oil Sands will still be mined regardless if this pipeline is coming through. They will simply switch to hauling the unrefined product in trucks instead of tankers. None of the mining will be done within the United States, thus, we don’t possess a ton of control over whether the actual mining process will be done or not.  You can make the argument that perhaps approval of the pipeline will cause the process to speed up. However, at least to my knowledge, that only means that we would reach the inevitable faster, simply because the oil sands in Canada are not infinite.

Since the actual mining process cannot be helped, the only solution would be to make the best of it.  In my opinion, that would be striving for energy independence.  One could say that we are living in an increasingly interdependent world and thus independence is unreasonable or undesirable.  However, while we are living in an increasingly connected world this does not mean that energy independence isn’t something that we should strive for or at the very least consider.

Energy independence would effectively mean that the U.S. does not rely upon an importation of foreign oil or power sources. Currently, the U.S. is on the right track to that goal, as about seventy percent of our oil comes from within our own borders, a number which has gone up in recent years.  However, that means thirty percent of the oil we use comes from foreign countries, with a few of those countries having not so great records in terms of human rights.

For example, while Canada provides us with the most amount of foreign oil, we still rely upon countries such as Venezuela, a country that has had numerous human rights abuses over the past ten years.  Diplomatically, this means that if the Pipeline were approved, then we would have increased autonomy in how we act on an international level, since the U.S. could import Canadian Oil from our neighbors to the north.  While we would still be relying upon foreign oil to a degree, we would be trading with a country that is not only our ally, but also does not violate human rights like Venezuela. Thus, if we wanted to push for more stringent protection of human rights, we could do so without worrying about Venezuela or Saudi Arabia (who imports 13 percent of our total oil consumption and who also has a negative human rights record). I’m not saying that we exercise this ability, but simply that option would now be on the table.

Another more recent example of this idea stems from the current Ukrainian Conflict.  One of the reasons that European countries aren’t stepping in to defend the Ukraine is because Russia supplies them crude oil (thirty-four percent of the crude oil imports to the E.U. is from Russia). With that amount of dependence Russia can basically hold that over their heads to prevent any European country from stepping in.  If the U.S. had more energy independence, we could potentially work with our allies to alleviate a foreign power through providing the E.U. with crude oil, in this case Russia.

Clean energy is obviously something that we should be striving for and stepping up as leaders as a country.  At the same time, there is value in being autonomous and independent when it comes to energy.  We cannot help it if the Canadians dig into their oil sands.  What we can do is use it to benefit people who need their basic rights protected.