One of the first of the 17 executive orders that Joe Biden signed on day one of his presidency was to revoke the permit of the Keystone XL pipeline, halting construction.

Carrying roughly 800,000 barrels of crude oil a day from Alberta to the Texas Gulf Coast, the 1,700-mile pipeline was to pass through Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas and Oklahoma. It was first commissioned in 2010, but the pipeline was blocked by the Obama administration in 2015. President Trump reversed the Obama order and allowed it to continue.

Biden’s decision will cripple a U.S. economy already staggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. Since going into service in 2010, the Keystone pipeline has generated $81 million in property tax revenues in Canada and $419 million in the country. It was expected to contribute $3.4 billion to U.S. gross domestic product and $2.4 billion to GDP in Canada.

Also in his first day, Biden ordered a ban of new drilling permits for U.S. lands and water. The American Petroleum Institute estimates the drilling ban will cost the economy $700 billion and kill nearly a million jobs by the end of next year.

The Trump administration, meanwhile, had achieved its goal of making the nation energy independent. Becoming less reliant on unstable Middle Eastern countries for oil benefited all of society.

The argument by leftists that the pipeline would worsen man-made climate change does not stand. According to scientists, pipeline emissions would have a global temperature effect of about four ten-thousandths of a degree Celsius by 2100, and have no detectable impact on sea levels and other climate phenomena.

The liberals argue that even though the climate impacts of stopping pipeline would be very close to zero in the U.S., the actions would have a global impact. But the scientists say that the total greenhouse gas emissions would be very small - about 0.3 percent of the world total. Without the pipeline, the heavy oil must be transported by rail or truck to the northern or eastern refineries. As the railroad volume grows, overall safety will decline, and economic costs - as well as CO2 emissions - will rise.

According to The Wall Street Journal editorial board, the Obama State Department found five separate times that the pipeline would have no material impact on greenhouse gas emissions since crude would still be extracted and that shipping by rail or tanker would result in 28-42 percent higher CO2 emissions and more leaks.

Along with the environmental issue, there is the direct impact on individual workers. Fox Business reported the pipeline project would have created 11,000 jobs and $1.6 billion in wages. This includes good-paying union jobs which Biden assured his environmental policies would be creating.

The National Review editorial board also warned about how the pipeline reversal could affect American businesses in the long term. “Surely, in a continental nation as vast as ours, with an economy as complex as ours, it shouldn’t be possible for one man serving a short term in a temporary elected office to undo years of work and billions of dollars in investment. This is pure foolishness, and it will cost us.”

Biden’s decision to block the pipeline is based more on politics and less on science and common sense. Those on the right see it as a payback to climate change advocates and supporters of the green energy agenda for their election support.

Guy Williams, who has worked in the industry for 53 years and would have been a pipeline inspector on the project, said Biden’s shutdown order was “like a kick in the stomach that knocks the wind out of you.”

Biden’s kowtowing to those on the far left or to a cancel culture fraternity laser-focused on blotting out the legacy of Donald Trump makes the American worker and the consumer the big loser.

By Jim Zbick | tneditor@tnonline.com