My view is that you don't take no for an answer. We haven't had that [from the U.S.], but if we were to get that, that won't be final. This won't be final until it's approved and we will keep pushing forward.So said Prime Minister Stephen Harper to a New York business audience late last month, pitching, once again, for the U.S. to approve the giant Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico, enabling that land-locked province to ship its bitumen to an increasingly skeptical, if not hostile, world.It's hardly surprising that the son of an Imperial Oil executive would believe Alberta and its tar sands are a world-class treasure and Canada's economic ace in the hole. In fact, Harper actually seems dumbfounded that anyone would even question the virtue of oil pipelines criss-crossing every continent regardless of natural barriers and giant ocean oil tankers plying all seven seas regardless of hazard to reach every point on the planet.So committed are the Harper Conservatives to their view of Canada's future as an oil superpower they refuse to acknowledge the gathering portents that the sun is setting on the Oil Age. They also refuse to accept the fact that other players are as determined as they. And this time, those players intend to ensure their "no" will be the answer.The first bad portent for the Harper government is U.S. President Barack Obama. In a July interview with the New York Times, the president laughed aloud at the well-worn Keystone sales pitch of "jobs, jobs, jobs."Said Obama: "The most realistic estimates are this might create maybe 2,000 jobs during the construction of the pipeline, which might take a year or two, and then after that we're talking about somewhere between 50 and 100 jobs in an economy of 150 million working people."The second bad portent is B.C.'s First Nations. Some legal scholars believe the same confluence of forces that stalled and finally stopped the Mackenzie Valley natural gas pipeline in the 1970s could come together to stall -- and stop - the proposed Northern Gateway Pipeline to carry bitumen from Alberta's tar sands to Kitimat on B.C.'s northern, treacherous and earthquake prone coast.Gordon Christie is director of the Indigenous Legal Studies Program at the University of British Columbia's Faculty of Law. "The battle that's going to be waged in the courts for the next couple of years is going to be the duty of government to consult and accommodate with aboriginal people and I think that what's going to happen is you're going to have teams of lawyers fighting over whether there was adequate consultation," he says."And the thing about that is that it ties things up. It can't lead to an outcome where First Nations win in the sense that they get to stop the government from getting the pipeline, but they could win in the sense that they slow it down so much that people just lose interest."That has already happened once in Canada, Christie says, pointing to the Mackenzie Valley precedent."If you tie it up in courts for three or four or five years, certainly industry starts to wonder whether it's worth it and they think of other things to do to move the product. And it becomes uneconomic. A year and a half ago, I would have thought the federal government was going to push this through...But now I'm not certain or ready to predict..."Another major factor is that, far more so than even during the Mackenzie Valley hearings almost four decades ago, Canadians as a whole are sitting up and paying attention to these kinds of issues, Christie adds."People across Canada know what's going on and they have decent memories and now they can find out about things at the click of a key," he continues. "They know these hearings are taking place in central B.C., they know that there's thousands of people who are not First Nations who are opposed to the pipeline, they remember the Exxon Valdez and they are fully aware that the west coast of B.C. is not this calm body of water."Most Canadians have thought about this and it doesn't make sense," he continues. "It's a beautiful part of Canada. And the pipeline, when it's built...is going to cross hundreds of rivers and streams and go out into the ocean and there's going to be tankers. It's called the Ring of Fire around the Pacific Ocean. And while some areas are more active than others, there's no area that's really out of the earthquake zone."Another lawyer familiar with aboriginal rights says the major tool aboriginal people have to deal with governments insistent on breaking treaties to push through resource developments is time, -- time to launch one legal challenge after another."There is no question aboriginal people are able to get to court, are able to force the government and the courts to deal with them," he says. He also notes that while it's virtually impossible for aboriginal people to force anything or have a right of veto over anything, "they can generate an awful lot of publicity and they can make their voices heard and they can have blockades and if push comes to shove, they can blow up pipelines."Also, of course, they can bring lawsuits. "Lawsuits take a lot of years," he continues, "time, a lot of time, to get rid of the Harper government. And as long as there is some question, the government can't proceed."The prime minister and aboriginal people do have one vital thing in common: both are dug in and refusing to back down - the prime minister for oil pipelines at all cost; the majority of B.C.'s aboriginal people against oil pipelines at all cost.Frances Russell was born in Winnipeg and graduated from the University of Manitoba with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history and political science. A journalist since 1962, she has covered and commented on politics in Manitoba, Ontario, B.C. and Ottawa, working for The Winnipeg Tribune, United Press International, The Globe and Mail, The Vancouver Sun and The Winnipeg Free Press as well as freelanced for The Toronto Star, The Edmonton Journal, CBC Radio and TV and Time Magazine.She is the author of two award-winning books on Manitoba history: Mistehay Sakahegan – The Great Lake: The Beauty and the Treachery of Lake Winnipeg and The Canadian Crucible – Manitoba's Role in Canada's Great Divide. Both won the Manitoba Historical Society Award for popular history.She is married with one son and two grandsons and lives in Winnipeg.