When co-founder and former leader of Greenpeace, Patrick Moore, wrote that he had “come out in favor” of the Keystone XL Pipeline, he did so on the grounds that petroleum-based fuels sustain modern civilization.
As Moore, explains:
There are more than one billion automobiles and millions more buses, trucks, trains and aircraft that cannot operate without oil. Without oil, economies and civilization in general would come to a virtual standstill.
From the perspective of sustainability, where aspects of environment, economy and society work in balance with one another, decisions that bring civilization to a virtual standstill are obviously to be avoided.
Petroleum-based fuels and lubricants make possible the movement of people, and delivery of goods and services, only achievable in a modern industrial civilization.
When environmental organizations such as Greenpeace expend enormous resources and political influence to prohibit projects such as the Keystone XL Pipeline, they are choosing to stifle all of the good made possible by industrial progress, and actively restricting humanity’s ability sustain itself.
If any supporters of Greenpeace are worried about threats to humanity, they should question the continued assaults on oil–the lifeblood of industrial civilization–and ask themselves just how sustainable human life would be without it?
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