Why Keystone XL's Blockage is Good

Matt Yglesias points out, regarding the Republican-grandstanding-inspired decision by the Obama State Department to deny a permit to the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, that simply blocking infrastructure for the existing fossil fuel-based economic structure is not a very effective way to fight global climate change. He may very well be right about this, although as he admits that doesn't mean by itself that the pipeline should've been built, just that it's not a major win for environmentalists. But even granting that there's not a huge connection between blocking Keystone and blocking global warming, I'm exceedingly happy that the pipeline will be blocked, on environmental grounds. Global climate change is, quite importantly in my opinion, not a standard environmental issue. It concerns pollution truly global in origin (i.e., it doesn't matter where the pollution comes from), global in action, global in consequence, long-term. Most environmental issues are much more localized in both time and space. Keystone, in addition to whatever relationship it may have to the global greenhouse gas thing, would involve seriously contaminating one particular aquifer in the Nebraska region. A rather important aquifer, I hear. That's enough for me, as an environmentalist, to oppose the pipeline, and to celebrate the fact that the idiot Republicans maneuvered the Obama people into blocking it.