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Building the Keystone XL pipeline, to speed the flow of crude from Canadas oil sands to refineries in Texas, would be game over for the climate, says NASA-scientist-turned-climate-activist James E. Hansen. Heeding Hansens words, environmentalists have sworn to stop the project, which requires U.S. government approval.

Yet large, bipartisan majorities of the House and Senate support Keystone XL, as does 60percent of the American public, according to the latest USA Today poll.

Today, it is still on hold, because Tuesday night 41 Senate Democrats voted against ending debate on a bill to green-light Keystone XL, thus thwarting what might have been a disastrous exercise of democracy.

In short, the filibuster may have just saved the planet, at least for now.

Or so it must be believed by Keystone XLs opponents even though they include some of the same people who decried the filibuster, not unreasonably, as an obstructionist, anti-majoritarian evil when Republicans employed it against President Obamas health-care reform, cap-and-trade and other progressive legislation.

Majority rule is not the only progressive principle some progressives seem ready to sacrifice on the anti-Keystone altar.

Remember the corrupting influence of money on politics? Billionaire Tom Steyer has spent millions on TV ads backing environmentalist Democrats and trashing the pipeline itself, thus purchasing outsize influence in the White House and the Democratic Party.

On issues as critical as climate change, we will take action and work within the system that weve got until we can change it, Steyer pragmatically told Forbes magazine.

Most of the time, liberals tout the job-creating potential of critical infrastructure projects, based on the indirect multiplier effect that even short-term construction can have on economic growth.

For Keystone XL, though, different rules apply. We are instructed, by Daniel Weiss of the Center for American Progress, among others, that the $8 billion project will create only 3,900 direct one-year construction jobs and a mere 50 permanent ones. Forget the 42,000 jobs that a State Department analysis said would be supported by the project.

Read more:
Lane: Liberals are violating their principles on Keystone XL