“I'M’ NOT a tree-hugger," insists Susan Luebbe, a lifelong cattle rancher, "but if I have to buddy up with tree-huggers to stop this, then so be it." She is talking about the proposed Keystone xl pipeline, which is slated to cross her land on its 1,700-mile (2,700km) route from Canada to the Texas coast. Environmentalists dislike the project chiefly because it would increase Ameri-ca's imports of oil from the tar sands of Al-berta. Tar sands take lots of energy to pro-cess, and therefore entail copious emissions of greenhouse gases. People like Mrs Luebbe, in contrast, are against it for fear of what an accident might do to her livelihood. If the viscous mixture of bitu-men and oil in the pipeline spills on her land, she asks, "Who's going to eat my beef? I couldn't even sell this ranch."
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