The Fight over Pipelines
In a podcast episode for ClimateOne, RFF Fellow Daniel Raimi presents a balanced perspective in a discussion about oil and gas pipelines.
It’s no surprise that pipelines have become flashpoints in the debate over America’s energy transition. But Daniel Raimi, a fellow at D.C.-based Resources for the Future, says it’s difficult to quantify the impact of one pipeline on overall fossil fuel use and climate disruption.
“And any individual pipeline will have fairly modest effects on global and national gasoline prices in the United States. However, the local effects both environmentally and economically of pipelines can be really significant,” Raimi says.
“Burning fossil fuels in the United States was recently estimated to cost 300,000 excess deaths,” Raimi says. “And so, we know that there are challenges of the transition, but we are almost certain across the economics and policy community that the damages from letting climate change continue at the pace that we are currently at is unacceptable.”
