AS plans for the Keystone XL pipeline faltered over the last six months, its route through a pristine aquifer in Nebraska proved to be its fatal political flaw. Environmental groups had raised numerous other serious objections: Building the pipeline would lead to a rise in climate changing gases; its environmental review was tainted by conflicts of interest; extracting oil from Canadian oil sands was destroying precious ecosystems and boreal forest.

But, in the popular mind, none of these concerns stuck like the vision of a big metal pipe full of thick crude coursing under America’s pristine heartland. When President Obama himself finally denied the Keystone XL its permit last month, he focused on the 1,000-mile pipeline’s passage through the delicate Sand Hills and the Ogallala Aquifer, suggesting he might accept an alternative route.

Officials of TransCanada, the Canadian pipeline builder, seemed perplexed by the traction this particular argument gained, as they toured the United States late last year trying to salvage their ailing $7 billion project. Displaying a map showing the intricate web of pipelines that already crisscross the United States, they noted that the country has 2.5 million miles of pipeline. TransCanada’s prior oil pipeline into the United States — smaller than Keystone XL, but not small by any stretch of the imagination — had elicited barely a murmur of protest.

As energy people, the TransCanada executives were perhaps being overly rational about a reality that Americans seem determined to forget: Large-scale energy is typically produced in remote places and inevitably needs to be transported to the populated areas where it is used. That is a fact whether the energy comes in the form of “dirty” traditional fuels like coal or oil, or in the form of cleaner natural gas. It is true even if it comes in the guise of “green” electricity, generated by the sun or wind.