George Goodman, Williston

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” After four years under President Trump and a few weeks into new President Biden’s term, this opening line from Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities may accurately depict their two terms for everyone, with half the people seeing it one way and the other half the other way. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

President Biden can help heal the division by aligning his policies and actions with his former moderate self and continuing to fight to protect the rights of everyone, including Americans now under attack for non-leftist views.

A good start would be to allow completion of the Keystone XL Pipeline, planned to transport oil from the Alberta, Canada oil sands and from the Bakken halfway to refineries on the Gulf Coast. Biden’s Executive Order cancelling the Pipeline relies primarily on a 2015 determination by then President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry. But since then, President Trump approved and permitted the Pipeline in 2019, substantial construction on it has already been completed, and energy resources and technologies have changed. Elections have consequences, including the election of President Trump in 2016.

In the absence of a new environmental impact statement (“EIS”) supporting its cancellation, President Biden should allow the Keystone XL Pipeline to be completed. If in the future concrete alternative energy sources are developed and proposed that are so environmentally superior to the Keystone XL Pipeline as to displace it, then the Keystone XL Pipeline could be ordered shuttered, but only after an EIS is prepared to confirm and support that action. Such EIS should consider possible adjustments such as increasing the percentage of Bakken crude shipped through the pipeline.

Courts have ordered an EIS to be completed for the Dakota Access Pipeline, to evaluate its environmental impact. Likewise, an EIS is needed to evaluate the environmental impact of cancelling or shuttering the Keystone XL Pipeline, versus the known alternatives.