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"    The world will not be improved by another screed about global warming that calls everyone who doesn&amp;#039;t believe just as I do stupid. We are so polarized that absolutely no one is persuaded by that sort of thing.  What do I believe?  I believe in science, as most Americans used to. And the science is irrefutable, now more than ever about the warming earth and its causes. And I believe that our polarization and paralysis is literally killing us. So to understand the thinking of those most intimately involved in the fight over the future of the earth&amp;#039;s climate \u2014 for my feature &amp;quot;Keystone,&amp;quot; in the new issue of Esquire, about the tar-sands pipeline planned to extend from Alberta, Canada, to Port Arthur, Texas), I went to Alberta and Washington and Port Arthur. I wanted to know: Who are these people? Are they conscientious? Reasonable? Blas\u00E9 about the future habitability of the only planet we&amp;#039;ve got?    Now Lee Terry is a reasonable man. A Republican congressman from Nebraska, where the local politics of the pipeline come to a head, he exudes good humor and looks like a high-school math teacher. Lee Terry is not the kind of conservative who thinks global warming is a hoax, of which there are fewer these days anyway. When it comes to the national politics of this, he supports increased CAFE standards for higher car mileage and wants to move big trucks over to natural gas. In the earmark days, he snagged money to establish a solar engineering degree at his alma mater. He favors zero-emissions nuclear and clean-coal technology, though he admits that less coal is probably best. &amp;quot;I own a Ford Fusion hybrid,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;So I try to live the life of using less oil.&amp;quot; He knows that the stuff the Keystone XL is bringing down into the States \u2014 is bringing up out of the earth \u2014 isn&amp;#039;t harmless. He knows this is not all politics. &amp;quot;It is a heavy crude,&amp;quot; Terry admits. &amp;quot;To extract it, to refine it, you&amp;#039;ll emit more carbon than sweet crude. That&amp;#039;s a fact.&amp;quot; Campaigning for election, he continued, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m gonna follow where the science goes. If the environmental study says it&amp;#039;s safe, that&amp;#039;s where I&amp;#039;m going to be.&amp;quot; Terry fought to get onto the House energy committee because he was concerned about energy security, the idea that we&amp;#039;re in hock to the Middle East for the stuff that keeps our very engines running. But he&amp;#039;s also supported investments in wind and solar. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m the renewable Republican in our committee,&amp;quot; he jokes. &amp;quot;Does that mean you get re-elected every year?&amp;quot; He laughs. &amp;quot;Not necessarily! And it doesn&amp;#039;t make friends with some of my Texas friends.&amp;quot; But Terry turned out to be one of the pipeline&amp;#039;s biggest supporters. The way he sees it, the EPA&amp;#039;s environmental assessment approved the project and a supplemental assessment seconded the endorsement. The EPA didn&amp;#039;t assess global warming gases, but he argues that Keystone will actually create less carbon \u2014 because Canada is going to sell the oil one way or the other. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s not like if we don&amp;#039;t allow this pipeline that&amp;#039;s never going to be extracted and never gonna be used \u2014 that&amp;#039;s a fallacy. In fact, China would love to own all of the oil sands in Alberta.&amp;quot; Given that reality, he says, our refineries have the finest carbon controls in the world. These are the choices responsible people have to make, he says. &amp;quot;I mean, are we just gonna flip the light switch and say, no more fossil fuels today?&amp;quot; Terry calls himself &amp;quot;light green.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;You know, there&amp;#039;s some like Joe Barton \u2014 he&amp;#039;s the purist as a Dallas Texan, about oil and gas, and does not believe in the evidence that man&amp;#039;s use of this fossil fuel is the cause for global warming. My belief is, &amp;#039;There&amp;#039;s an argument here on the true impact of man, especially use of fossil fuels, but shouldn&amp;#039;t we have a responsibility of doing the best we can to reduce it?&amp;#039; Why can&amp;#039;t we make this the most energy-efficient, eco-environmentally friendly pipeline in history? Why can&amp;#039;t we make it as good as we can get it as opposed to, &amp;#039;Let&amp;#039;s not do it?&amp;#039;&amp;quot; And then there are the scientists. Scientists like NASA&amp;#039;s James Hansen and Princeton&amp;#039;s Michael Oppenheimer, like the scientists who wrote a letter to President Obama last year raising a specific alarm about Canada&amp;#039;s tar sands. These scientists are convinced we are in a state of clear and present danger. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m not spending my life on this because it&amp;#039;s an interesting curiosity,&amp;quot; Oppenheimer told me. &amp;quot;I think this is a problem is among a very small handful of problems that need to be solved, and if not solved correctly will lead the human endeavor in the wrong direction.&amp;quot; Well, Terry says, lots of scientists with PhDs say we&amp;#039;re in a period of global warming, but other scientists are putting more importance on fossil fuels and human behavior, as opposed to a natural warming cycle. Still, his position remains: Let&amp;#039;s reduce carbon as much as can. &amp;quot;But to sit there and say, &amp;#039;Let&amp;#039;s just shut it off now and that&amp;#039;s gonna force the new green economy,&amp;#039; well, yeah, you&amp;#039;re right, but do we really wanna go through a decade of pain until we get there?&amp;quot; But what is the scientific basis for rejecting the consensus scientific view? If 97% of the scientists who specialize in this field agree, how do justify listening to the 3% who think laetrile cures cancer? &amp;quot;Is it really 97 to 3?&amp;quot; Terry asks. &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t think so.&amp;quot; Yes, it is. I keep thinking about another of the many scientists I interviewed, at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, Richard A. Houghton \u2014 an oceanographer who&amp;#039;s thinking about moving away from the ocean because all the data he can see shows the waves inevitably crashing against his own house. Houghton has devoted his life to this and Lee Terry has not. The overwhelming majority of all scientists agree with Houghton and not Terry. Is Terry just guessing? Does his whole pose of hard-nosed realism come down to something as wispy as &amp;quot;hopefully the worst won&amp;#039;t happen?&amp;quot; Terry pauses. He doesn&amp;#039;t answer right away. Then he says, &amp;quot;Well, that&amp;#039;s probably a judgment call. But it comes back to, &amp;#039;Are we gonna do this instantaneously, or are we going to have a plan?&amp;#039; And it has to be a long-term plan. And it has to be realistic.&amp;quot; He&amp;#039;s a reasonable man, and he makes good arguments. Yet in many ways that&amp;#039;s the most frightening sign of all: &amp;quot;Realism&amp;quot; now requires even the most reasonable Republican to ignore not only the overwhelming scientific consensus but also the fact that it has been tabulated by pollsters and widely reported in the media. This is not all politics, but there are still politics. MORE COVERAGE ALL WEEK ON THE PIPELINE AND THE END OF THE WORLD &amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt; Follow The Politics Blog on RSS and on the Twitter &amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a15192/xl-pipeline-pros-and-cons-11446071/>