Trump administration sought to grant the necessary cross-border permit, and legal challenges emerged. In 2021,

President Biden, on his first day in office, canceled the cross-border permit, effectively ending (for now) the

Keystone XL pipeline.

Environmental concerns matter when discussing issues related to economic growth. However, how much should

economists factor in these issues when deciding policy? In the case of the pipeline, how do we know how much

damage it would cause when we do not know how to put a value on the environment? Would the pipeline's benefits

outweigh the opportunity cost? The issue of how to balance economic progress with unintended effects on our

planet is the subject of this chapter.

In 1969, the Cuyahoga River in Ohio was so polluted that it spontaneously burst into flame. Air pollution was so
bad at that time that Chattanooga, Tennessee was a city where, as an article from Sports Illustratedput it: “the
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