A veto for the environment?

On Tuesday, the Orange County Register ran an editorial about the Keystone XL Pipeline entitled, “A pipeline to jobs.”  Unfortunately, it had nothing to do with employment.  In fact, the word “jobs” never appeared in the editorial.  Instead, the paper attacked President Obama’s opposition to the project based on raw politics. 

In the Register’s words, the president “… has cast his lot with environmental hysterics like former hedge fund billionaire Tom Steyer, whose ‘friends and allies’ oppose the pipeline project.”  What does that have to do with jobs?

{mosads}Here in Orange County, Calif., we have confronted the need for jobs against the need to protect the environment several times.  In the mid-1980s, Orange County rejected the Reagan administration’s plan to expand offshore oil drilling along the coast.  I know, because the cities of San Clemente, Laguna Beach, Newport Beach and Huntington Beach joined with the Orange County Board of Supervisors and hired me to coordinate the region’s “No on Offshore Oil Drilling” campaign. 

The arguments in favor of offshore drilling then were similar to those in support of the Keystone Pipeline now.  First, jobs would be created building the rigs and second, America’s energy independence would be enhanced by finding new sources of oil.  Thankfully, a determined coalition of local Republican and Democratic lawmakers were able to join forces and push back against the Reagan White House.

Another example of balancing jobs vs. the environment occurred in the early 1990s when Laguna Beach residents taxed themselves in order to purchase land from The Irvine Co. along Laguna Canyon Road/Hwy. 133.  Back then, it was no secret the largest development company in the county wanted to build hundreds, maybe thousands, of homes in the hills adjacent to the road. 

There’s no question many jobs would have been created building those homes; but, there also is no question about the long-term environmental impact that development would have had in the canyon.  Clearly, the Orange County Building Industry Assn. would have preferred the former but, thanks to many forward-thinking people in Laguna, the project never got off the ground.  The bond measure local residents passed to buy the land means those hills never will be developed.

The Keystone XL Pipeline bill that President Obama just rejected had all the earmarks of projects Orange County residents rejected in the past.  My hope is the president’s veto was the result of the same kind of analysis we conducted years ago, not his bending under the weight of current political pressure.

Freidenrich writes from Laguna Beach, Calif.  He served as a congressional staff assistant on Capitol Hill in 1972.