Four years ago, Bill McKibben got himself and more than 1,000 climate change activists arrested in front of the White House while protesting the Keystone XL pipeline that would transport oil from Canadian tar sands to the United States. After years of inconclusive environmental studies, debates about the economic impact of the pipeline, political posturing by Republicans and Democrats and even a last-ditch attempt by TransCanada to game the system, President Obama finally killed the pipeline on Nov. 6.

The 1,700 mile pipeline that would have facilitated the flow of some 800,000 barrels of oil between Canada and the United States became a hot-button issue on both sides of the border after McKibben’s 350.org and several environmental groups turned it into a rallying cry for the climate change and environmental justice movements.

Obama announced his rejection just a few weeks before the U.N. summit on climate change began in Paris. “Ultimately, if we’re going to prevent large parts of this Earth from becoming not only inhospitable but uninhabitable in our lifetimes, we’re going to have to keep some fossil fuels in the ground rather than burn them and release more dangerous pollution into the sky,” he said.

For politicians, Obama’s rejection was a symbolic gesture towards his climate change policies and the legacy he intends to leave behind. The environmental effect of rejecting Keystone, after all, is small potatoes compared to the sweeping EPA regulations that the administration announced this past August as part of the Clean Power Plan.

For environmentalists, the death of Keystone XL was symbolic, too. It was, finally, at long last, a grassroots victory against the well-funded, heavily influential fossil fuel industry.

However, as 2015 is projected to be the hottest calendar year recorded in human history, one thing is clear: Keystone XL may be a thing of the past, but climate change is still very much a part of our future.