Bill McKibben on Obama’s Keystone XL Rejection: ‘The Tide Is Starting to Turn’

On Friday afternoon, President Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry and Vice President Joe Biden gathered in the Roosevelt Room at the White House to announce the administration had rejected a request by the oil company TransCanada to construct the Keystone XL, a pipeline designed to carry crude oil from the Alberta tar sands through the Midwest to the Gulf of Mexico, where it could be shipped to world markets.

The pipeline wouldn’t create jobs, or lower gas prices, or increase America’s energy security, Obama said. The pipeline had turned into a symbol, with outsize of influence on the political conversation, and approving it would send the wrong message: that America was not serious about combating climate change.

“America is now a global leader when it comes to taking serious action to fight climate change. And frankly, approving this project would have undercut that global leadership.  And that’s the biggest risk we face — not acting,” Obama said Friday.

The words were welcome ones to environmentalist Bill McKibben, who spent the last four years leading the campaign against the Keystone XL pipeline (and writing about it for Rolling Stone).

McKibben spoke to Rolling Stone from Fort Wayne, Indiana, where he had just given a speech about climate change.

With the fight over Keystone finally over, McKibben reflected on its start: the moment he heard NASA’s leading climate scientist, Jim Hansen, say that if the pipeline went through, and the world burnt through the oil located in the Alberta tar sands, it would be “game over” for the planet.

“That was the first time for me, and I think for most people, there was this sudden realization that there were profound limits to business as usual, and we had run into them. And that’s the message that, in the end, carried the day,” McKibben says. “From Jim Hansen’s lips to President Obama’s ears — though it took four very long and difficult and magnificent years to get there.”