Old hobbits die hard: Why pundits poo-poo the Keystone fight, and why they’re wrong

Last week, the political writer Jonathan Chait wrote a short piece for New York magazine titled “The Keystone Fight is a Huge Environmentalist Mistake.” Others have already well rebutted the argument and summarized the debate. What I would add is that Chait has provided us with an excellent example of what I have come to think of as One Ring syndrome. At a very deep level, we would like to think that unpleasantly large and murky political issues can be resolved by a single action or policy — preferably along the lines of throwing the one magic ring that controls all other magic rings back into Mount Doom from whence it was forged.