Admiral Akbar is a Democrat

The boreal forests are listening to Andreas Malm

Author

Brad Johnson
May 18, 2023

PRESENTED BY A VERY DAMP SQUIRREL

Yesterday, Hill Heat pointed out that the Republican “deal” on permitting reform—give them fossil-fuel pipelines now in exchange for a electric transmission later—was, and I quote myself, “almost amusingly insulting.”

As Maxine Joselow reports, Congressional Democrats agree:

“They must think we’re really, really stupid. I mean, that’s not a serious proposal,” Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), who chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus’s task force on permitting, told reporters.

“Let’s be serious,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), one of the most vocal climate hawks on Capitol Hill, told The Climate 202. “The idea that we’re going to do your stuff first, and my stuff later, is just not how politics works.”

HOW TO BURN UP A PIPELINE: “Wildfires burning across western Canada have forced thousands of people to evacuate their homes and have prompted some oil and gas companies to curb production as blazes approach pipelines.”

FLOOD IN DROUGHT: “Floods have caused almost a quarter of a million people to flee their homes after the Shabelle River in central Somalia broke its banks and submerged the town of Beledweyne, even as the country faces its most severe drought in four decades.”

This morning, the Senate Finance committee chaired by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) holds a hearing on the energy tax incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act, with BlueGreen Alliance’s Katie Harris, former Assistant Secretary for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Daniel Simmons, center-right wonk Philip Rossetti of R Street Institute, and Pittsburgh business advocate Patty Horvatich.

BP Products North America “will pay a $40 million penalty and install technology to control releases of benzene and other contaminants at its Whiting oil refinery on the Indiana shoreline of Lake Michigan,” Biden administration officials said Wednesday.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission holds its monthly meeting today, with plans to approve several more fracked-gas projects. Climate activists have gathered to protest the fossil-fueled FERC.

Politico is hosting an “energy summit” in the afternoon with Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), White House economist Heather Boushey, Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, New Mexico governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, DOE Loan Programs Office Director Jigar Shah, and many other clean-energy luminaries. The summit is PRESENTED BY fossil-fuel utility Southern Company, famed for financing climate denial for decades, and tar-sands and natural-gas pipeline company TC Energy, which has just finished cleaning its latest megaspill from the Keystone Pipeline. Be sure to check it out!

Finally: Burning Man cofounder Will Roger Peterson is kind of a schmuck.

Hearings on the Hill:

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