Last week the State Department released its assessment of the Keystone XL pipeline, and it was quite awkward for President Obama, who wants to appear solid on environmental issues while also helping the economy. Specifically, the State Department report said that the construction of the pipeline would create 42,100 jobs, and that it would not significantly increase greenhouse gas emissions. Thus the government’s own report pulls the rug out from the critics urging Obama to kill the project. In this post I’ll walk through these two issues of jobs and emissions, from an economic perspective.