One of Joe Biden’s first actions as President was to revoke the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, a move that has caused debate both within the United States and abroad. The pipeline would have allowed valuable crude oil to pass-through from Alberta to the U.S. and Canada.
Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has expressed his ‘disappointment’ with Biden’s decision, as it would have made oil more readily available across North America.
Several Republicans have come out against the move, with some senators stating that they plan to introduce legislation that could allow the Keystone Pipeline to continue construction. Many lawmakers have spoken out about the loss of jobs and the economic consequences that Biden’s first day actions could create.
Senator Mike Rounds publicly criticized the act in an interview, “Look, they’re going to pump the oil, and it’s going to go someplace. It’s too valuable not to, and we still need the oil. So, it’s either going to be shipped to other countries, including China, which has not the same type of environmental regulations that we have when it comes to the processing of that oil, or it could come back down into the United States to the specific locations where they actually know how to process it, to actually do that crude oil.”
China currently releases the most CO2 emissions into the atmosphere out of any country, over twice the number of emissions that the U.S. is responsible for. This is due to a lack of federal regulation of fossil fuels within China.
