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Barack Obama, championing the fight against climate change, drew a line in the oil sands this week: Canada's Keystone pipeline will get the go-ahead only if its backers can prove it won't make global warming worse. Readers, print and digital, dissect the news

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For Canadian boosters of Keystone XL, there is a nervous scrambling going on through the entrails of recent pronouncements on global warming (Obama Vows Action On Climate Change – June 26). This reading of signs leads those such as Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver to declare the outcome favourable – to his interests at least.

But wait: How can extraction of massive raw materials by inefficient processes, processing by equally inefficient upgraders and subsequent transport over thousands of kilometres not lead to an uptick in carbon emissions? And that's before the substances are refined, transported yet again, then combusted in the the engines of over-marketed, over-engined cars, trucks and SUVs.

Without enormous offsetting gains in efficiency, impossible in the current oil sands business model, there is no way the status-quo ante on emissions demanded by Barack Obama can be met. Indeed, if there is any point in building Keystone at all, it must be to increase the burning and impact of fossil fuel.

And I am a TransCanada Pipeline shareholder.

Anthony Clark, Brampton, Ont.

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It is time for Canada, not the oil companies, to get the east-west pipelines built. Nobody in Canada needs this double talk. This is Canada's responsibility because it is our oil, our heritage, our future. Extracting our oil, refining our oil, selling our oil to Canadians and selling the excess at world prices to new markets is a much better plan than Keystone. The time to act is now, just when the U.S. thinks they have lots of the stuff.

Kenneth Clancy, Doha, Qatar

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Even though building the Keystone pipeline may make sense for both Canada and the United States, Barack Obama should reject it. Canada has become a bad guy in the battle against global warming. Rejecting Keystone is therefore a moral decision.

A precise tally of how many extra carbon molecules come out of Keystone is irrelevant.

James Worrall, Ottawa

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Barack Obama lives in a dream world. The man can't make a decision. Let's move our oil east. Forget the Americans.

Allan Hart, Calgary

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Tens of thousands of Canadians who make up our energy industry are fully supportive of the Keystone pipeline project.

One way or the other, our product will find its way to world markets, even if we have to get it there by railway!

Joseph Fournier, Airdrie, Alta.

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Canada has to get away from its reliance on the U.S. market to sell its lumber, oil and other resources. There is a world market out there that we have been talking about for decades, but we always fall back on the United States because it is the easiest market for us to access.

Canada has to wake up and bite whatever bullet has to be bitten to decrease our reliance on the Americans. Get the darn pipeline to the West Coast built.

Gordon Jackson, Nanaimo, B.C.

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If Barack Obama does follow through on his new tougher stand, it invariably means Canadians, especially those of us in B.C., have a much bigger fight ahead of us to stop the Northern Gateway route.

Allan McRae, Kamploops, B.C.

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I dig this approach. It puts the onus on the companies to prove they can get the job done more efficiently and in an environmentally sustainable way. I just hope it has some weight to it; if we let the industry regulate itself, it will always put profit before almost anything else.

Fraser G. T. Hay, Waterloo, Ont.

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One way or another, the oil from Alberta will get somewhere, whether by rail, barge or a future pipeline. Just not necessarily the Keystone XL.

Stephen Heighton, London, Ont.

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Can a proponent of the Keystone pipeline please assure me that the energy sought tomorrow from the Alberta oil sands will not be one-tenth (or maybe one one-hundredth) the amount of energy needed five, 10 or 20 years down the road to mitigate the effects of carbon-based climate change?

Steve Feiner, London, Ont.

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So you would rather buy oil from dictatorships and countries where human rights are violated? Are greenhouse emissions more important than human rights?

Mark van den Boer, Richmond, B.C.

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ON REFLECTION More letters to the editor

Politics and sausages

Re A New Battle Brews In Tahrir Square (June 28): We all ought to know that the political process is like making sausages: messy, dirty and, at the end, rewarding.

The Arab awakening is nothing short of the European version of the Reformation. Decades of upheaval are to be expected and tolerated, with one caveat: The end result of this sausage may be of different taste, colour and size.

Elie Mikhael Nasrallah, co-author of My Arab Spring, My Canada, Ottawa

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A convenient legal 'truth'

Re Hurling Insults As History Rolls On (editorial – June 28). You present Justice Antonin Scalia's views as out of tune with the times. Even more important is the hypocrisy of his legal view. He has made his contrarian mark of challenging the concept of constitutional evolution by maintaining the supremacy of states' rights. Suddenly, when his personal views are offended, he is a supporter of federal rights in the form of the Defence of Marriage Act to quash states' rights. A truly convenient switch of judicial philosophy.

Don McGill, Toronto

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Darwin: victim of sexism?

Re Jane The Economist (editorial, June 28): Suggesting Jane Austen replace Charles Darwin on the British £10 banknote to promote gender equality is sexist. If we were to ask which author did more to create gender equality, regardless of gender, Darwin would probably prevail.

His approach to our world view shook the patriarchal underpinnings of our Christian-based social beliefs.

Let's not employ sexism when picking champions of gender equality.

Peter Page, Toronto

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Churlish view of flooding?

Re Alberta Flooding (June 28): Is it churlish to feel resentment that many millions in federal tax dollars will flow to flood relief in Alberta, while it refuses to implement a sales tax?

Then there's the irony of this happening in the jurisdiction most strenuously resisting the seriousness of climate change: Cause and effect in such events are muddy, but I suspect global warming is a significant factor in these floods.

I've had four feet of water in my flooded basement. In northern Ontario, there was no government cheque.

Brian Green, Thunder Bay, Ont.

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