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A house on stilts, toppling into the rising seas

Mooney tops McKinley, Manchin meets Hamm, Cruz loves crypto, the Cabinet visits Congress

Author

Brad Johnson
May 11, 2022

PRESENTED BY A LOVELY SWARM OF BEES

In yesterday’s elections, West Virginia Republican incumbents David McKinley and Alex Mooney were pitted against each other, as the state lost a seat following the 2020 Census. Although both are reliable wingnuts, Mooney was backed by Donald Trump and McKinley, who voted for the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the January 6th investigation, had the support of Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.). Manchin even cut an ad for McKinley, in which he touted his opposition to Build Back Better as “reckless spending that doesn’t make sense for West Virginia”:

Manchin spent yesterday hanging out with Trump-backing fracking billionaire Harold Hamm in the Capitol. I hear he is also holding up Shalanda Baker’s nomination to be the Director of the Office of Minority Economic Impact at the Department of Energy.

Tomorrow, the Chesapeake Climate Action Network and Evergreen Action is hosting a webinar to explain how we’re going to get Manchin to pass climate legislation. Sounds fascinating!.

Also be on the look-out in your inboxes for the Climate Politics Almanac preview of the May 17th primaries in Oregon, Idaho, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina, coming to your inboxes soon. The Oregon Democratic primaries include the pitched battle between Green New Dealer Jamie McLeod-Skinner and corrupt incumbent Rep. Kurt Schrader, who co-authored fossil-fuel-friendly legislation with the now-deposed McKinley.

IT’S ALSO A METAPHOR:

Australia’s elections on May 21 are hinging on climate policy, as the nation considers that on the one hand, it makes a lot of money digging up and burning coal, and on the other hand it is being turned into a deadly hellscape of floods, fires, dust storms, and dead oceans cause by the digging up and burning of coal.

The Interior Department is holding a major offshore wind lease sale for tracts in the Carolinas today. Schneider Electric has acquired AutoGrid, a leading smart-grid-technology company. California needs to make smart decisions to decarbonize its grid successfully.

DOUBLESPEAK SPECIAL: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) on bitcoin miners soaking up Texas’ fossil-fueled electricity with the biggest bitcoin mines in America:

“A lot of the discussion around bitcoin views bitcoin as a consumer of energy. The perspective I’m suggesting is very much the reverse, which is as a way to strengthen our energy infrastructure.”

The monstrous mines are headed towards using 800 megawatts of electricity, four times the electricity demand of Dallas. Texas hit a record-breaking 112°F this weekend, so everything is going great.

A BUSY DAY ON THE HILL: White House Council for Environmental Quality chair Brenda Mallory testifies before the Senate this morning.

House Oversight chair Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) marks up the Ensuring an Accurate Postal Fleet Electrification Act (H.R. 7682), which will invalidate the environmental impact statement that Louis DeJoy’s Postal Service filed as part of its contract with Oshkosh Defense to produce gas-powered postal trucks instead of electric trucks. Senate Commerce chair Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) marks up the PRECIP Act (S. 3053) to improve NOAA’s rain and snowfall estimates and the Alaska Salmon Research Task Force Act (S. 3429).

Gina Raimondo presents the Commerce budget request of $11.7 billion, which includes $6.9 billion for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a 25 percent increase. She will be grilled on Commerce’s controversial investigation of solar-panel imports, and will testify:

“We have a statute enacted by Congress that we must follow that does not currently allow us to consider factors such as climate change or supply chain. We will implement whatever the law is. If Congress decides to change the law, we will implement that.”

Lloyd Austin presents the Defense budget request of $773 billion, which includes $3 billion to “address the effects of climate change.”

Going down an order of magnitude, Marcia Fudge presents the Housing and Urban Development budget request of $72 billion, which includes $1.1 billion in targeted climate resilience and energy efficiency improvements.

Samantha Power presents (both House and Senate) the U.S. Agency for International Development budget of $29.4 billion, less than the expected next tranche of funding for the Ukraine war. Additionally, the Biden administration has made a $1.6 billion request for the Green Climate Fund.

Sethuraman Panchanathan presents the National Science Foundation budget request of $10.5 billion, including $1.5 billion for climate and clean energy research. And a team of five men present the $21.4 billion budget request for managing our nuclear stockpile and the $7.6 billion request for managing nuclear waste and test sites.

I met some friends yesterday:

A heron fishing in Rock Creek

A bee swarm in Columbia Heights

JERBS: The Sierra Club is hiring a new executive director (Oakland, no salary listed). The Sunrise Project (note, this organization is unrelated to the Sunrise Movement) is hiring a senior communications campaigner for the Insure Our Future campaign (remote, $83K -$105K). A secretive group of climate organizations is looking for a strategic communications associate (remote, $65K-$75K). The Environmental League of Massachusetts is hiring a regional offshore wind communications director to support the New England for Offshore Wind (NE4OSW) coalition (New England, $80K to $90K). The World Resources Institute is hiring both a global director of sustainable cities and a global climate director (no salaries given). The United Nations Foundation is seeking a new director for ocean and climate (D.C./remote, no salary given). The Department of Energy is looking for project management team leads for the Hydrogen Hub Development Team, the Carbon Capture Team and the Renewables Team ($178K-$204K). The Office of Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry is hiring, details in a footnote.1

Hearings on the Hill:

Thanks for subscribing and spreading the word. DMs are open—@climatebrad

1 Kerry’s office is seeking “mid- to senior-level candidates with significant experience in climate policy and international engagement” to “help develop and implement diplomatic strategies for specific regional and country portfolios of engagement, seeking to strengthen climate commitments and policy implementation by major-emitting countries.”

If you are interested in this role, please submit only a CV to [email protected]ov by May 20. Please use the subject line "CV: Ambition." For your CV, please submit as a PDF using the file naming convention "LastnameFirstname_Ambition."

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