Delay in approving the Keystone Pipeline is causing a lot of smoke and heat but casting little light. Republican wet dreams of garbage out, cash in notwithstanding, there is precious little reason for haste in completing the questionable project.

"While Keystone was delayed, other projects increased the flow of crude south. Average U.S. imports of Canadian crude rose to a record 3 million barrels a day in August, a 48 percent increase from five years earlier, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration data," as reported in Bloomberg News. That increase is about 1.3 times the amount of oil that would flow in Keystone.

The only people affected negatively so far are investors in Trans-Canada Corp., owners of the pipeline project. My take is that US citizens owe them no favors and should not anoint them as big winners in the world energy market.

As to the tar sands, like the Arctic these are fragile ecosystems whose energy content is not currently needed. It would be much smarter to experiment with small systems to improve technology in anticipation of future need in decades or centuries to come than to rush to extract the resources using current clumsy and destructive methods. All fossil fuels will eventually be consumed, but even if you believe (moronically) that there is no pollution problem, it's pretty hard to make a case that haste will not make waste.