Yes, the pipeline matters

Joe Nocera thinks that everyone protesting the Keystone pipeline is pretty silly. He makes a series of weak arguments, and I'll direct you to others to explain why the pipeline isn't about a U.S. geopolitical advantage, why the environmental cost of tar sands oil extraction isn't small just because Nocera says so, why activism is more important than wonky incrementalism, and why a carbon tax wouldn't make tar sands extraction more viable.

I'm more interested in Nocera's overall point: that we need to reduce demand for fossil fuels, not supply. Until demand goes way down, he argues, we still need the oil wherever we can get it.

It's a familiar refrain. But it implies, wrongly, that demand for oil is an absolute that stands in isolation from other factors. It's like how whenever I argue in favor of passenger trains, someone counters that we Americans made our choice: we like cars better. What could anyone do?