Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) insisted April 21 that his support for construction of the Keystone XL pipeline reflects “a very practical approach.”

“I know that that product is coming to America one way or another, either by rail or by road,” Manchin said during an Axios webinar. On the first day of his administration, President Joe Biden revoked TC Energy’s permit to build the 1,200-mile pipeline, which would transport up to 830,000 barrels per day of Western Canadian crude oil from Hardisty, Alberta, to Steele City, Neb.

Manchin, chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy & Natural Resources, cited the February 2015 explosion in Mount Carbon, W.Va., of a CSX Corp. train hauling shale oil from North Dakota that forced hundreds of families to evacuate. The 19 rail cars that caught fire each had capacity to hold 30,000 gallons of crude.

“The KXL pipeline should be built to deliver the product to the American market in a much safer mode of transportation than rails or roads,” he said.

Manchin also emphasized the global nature of climate change and how mitigation efforts cannot be limited to North America.

“If you eliminate every morsel of fossil being used for energy in America, you wouldn’t change hardly anything in climate because the rest of the world has an appetite, more so now than ever,” he said, adding the solution must be the development of innovative technology so that fossil fuels can be used without emissions of greenhouse gases, rather than cut out hydrocarbons altogether.

“Elimination is not the way to go,” Manchin said. “Innovation is the only we that we can help Mother Earth and the climate.”

Specifically, he is a backer of the push toward carbon capture and sequestration technology.

“If you want to do one thing for climate and Mother Earth, then carbon capture and sequestration is the thing that needs to be done as quickly as humanly possible,” Manchin said. “That’s why we put $35 billion for research and development in the Energy Act last year.”

A carbon tax, on the other hand, is a non-starter for the senator.

“The bottom line is, if you’re not going to fix the problem, why do you want to tax people?” he asked. “Putting a higher tax on something is not going to fix it unless you want to tax it out of operation.”

Manchin is also not a fan of the non-mandatory structure of the Paris accords. “There should be some teeth to it,” he said. China, in particular, should be treated like a developed nation, not an emerging one, he believes.

“They have not done what they need to do with carbon capture,” Manchin said. “They’re the largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world. That has to be curbed, and they’re not going to do it if they don’t have to do it and there’s no penalty whatsoever.”

The West Virginia senator holds a unique position in a Senate locked in a 50:50 split between Democrats and Republicans. Without his vote, Democrats cannot get to where Vice President Kamala Harris can cast the tie-breaking vote to pass bills.

Manchin is adamant about not supporting measures to abolish the filibuster, a parliamentary tactic used by the minority to obstruct progress in legislation. He has stubbornly adhered to the concept of the Senate as a deliberative body, unlike the highly partisan House.

Among the big pieces of legislation coming before the Senate, Manchin sees infrastructure as one that should bring some areas of agreement between Democrats and Republicans.

“If we can’t come together as political parties, Democrats and Republicans, on the need for railroads, sewers, highways, transportation, mass transit, Internet connectivity, all the things we know need to be done for us to be able to compete in the 21st century economy, then God help us all,” Manchin said. “We’re in trouble if we can’t come together for that.”

But there can’t be an agreement if it includes a death sentence for usage of fossil fuels.

“I really believe there’s a pathway forward,” he said. “But not when you have differences where we’re going to eliminate all fossil, no more fossil by a certain day. That’s not going to happen. Nobody is going to follow our lead on that.”

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