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A White House fashion show spread

Author

Brad Johnson
September 14, 2022

PRESENTED BY PAMAPROMAS

The youth climate movement showed up at the White House’s Inflation Reduction Act party to protest Manchin’s racist dirty energy deal.

Sorry, I don’t actually have any sweet merch on offer, but it can be yours as a side reward for years of participating in direct action in the climate movement. Representatives of the youth climate movement like the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance’s Adrien Salazar and Sunrise Movement co-founders Varshini Prakash and Evan Weber showed up for the White House Inflation Reduction Act lawn party to fight Joe Manchin’s (D-W.Va.) dirty side deal—wearing shirts with the message “No Fossil Fuels” and “No Racist Dirty Energy Deal.”

To my eyes, the shirts looked even better than Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-Mass.) teal blazer, Sen. Ed Markey’s (D-Mass) pearlescent mauve tie, or Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse’s (D-R.I.) anchor-decorated tie. Apparently afraid of a tongue-lashing from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), these erstwhile Green New Deal champions have remained silent about the Manchin deal.

Wealthy white-dominated Democratic-environmental groups are now, at least on paper, aligned with environmental justice organizations in stopping Manchin’s deal, and are speaking out in increasingly sharp language. Jamal Raad, executive director of Evergreen Action, said in response to the White House celebration:

“It’s no secret that the IRA contains provisions that perpetuate harm in the communities most impacted by toxic fossil fuel extraction and the climate crisis. So as we celebrate all that is good in this law, we know we must keep fighting to expel the parasitic influence of the fossil fuel industry from our politics and to ensure that the next climate bill that we pass delivers for those who have suffered the most. That must begin with defeating the toxic side deal that would fast-track the Mountain Valley Pipeline over the objections of Appalachian frontline communities.”

Lisa Friedman delves into the future of the Louisiana Gulf Coast, where new oil and gas drilling is now mandated by the IRA. “The new law condemns communities like Houma, which are already dealing with storms made more intense by climate change, to continued reliance on oil and gas drilling,” she writes.

And the Biden-backed Manchin plan to further weaken environmental review of fossil-fuel projects will only expand the sacrifice zones.

But the campaign to mobilize the public against this Big Oil power grab is strapped for cash. If only the movement had the money needed to spend to mobilize calls to the White House and Congress and organize protests. What’s that? This just in from Timothy Cama:

Climate Power, along with the League of Conservation Voters and the Natural Resources Defense Council, spent about $2.4 million on the ads thanking Democrats, often with a focus on lawmakers who are at most at risk in the midterms.

Climate Power, LCV and Future Forward USA Action teamed up for a $10 million “educational” ad campaign to promote what they see as the benefits of the Inflation Reduction Act in the weeks after passage.

Climate Power Action and LCV Victory Fund — the groups’ political arms — have put more than $12 million into efforts, including advertising and mailers, to use the Inflation Reduction Act and other policies to turn out “climate voters” — people who care about climate change but might not be inclined to vote.

LCV Victory Fund launched a $12.8 million field organizing campaign in July with a focus on climate, and has since incorporated the Inflation Reduction Act into its organizing. . . EDF Action — the political arm of the Environmental Defense Fund — reworked an existing nationwide television ad about the law to thank Democrats and Biden for passing it into law. The campaign as a whole, including earlier versions, cost just over $1 million.

Some organizations are on full alert, bird-dogging members around the country. Rep. Don Norcross (D-N.J.) told Food & Water Watch activists who pressed him that he hasn’t taken a stand against the Manchin deal because he doesn’t think it will get into the continuing resolution, which is frankly a less plausible explanation than the $56,600 he’s received this cycle from electric utilities.

“Without ambitious action, the physical and socioeconomic impacts of climate change will be devastating,” claim the World Meteorological Organization, United Nations Environment Programme, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, World Meteorological Organization, United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, Global Carbon Project, and the UK Met Office in a joint report. Or… we could get rid of science?

The official Pakistan flooding death toll reached 1,481 on Tuesday, with 54 more people dying in 24 hours. Following wildfire and drought, torrential rains have caused flash floods and mudslides that swept away cars and buried buildings in southern California. “As smoke plumes rise into the skies, alerts for hazardous air quality are in effect in parts of Oregon, Washington state, Idaho, Wyoming and Montana. A special weather statement about hazardous air quality was also issued in east-central California and western Nevada.”

Thousands of households in Colorado with smart thermostats found them locked at 79 degrees during a heat wave by their power company Xcel Energy when a coal-fired power plant went down.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Office of Inspector General on Tuesday announced a probe into the recent water emergency in Jackson, Mississippi’s capital city.

The rising waters of the San Francisco Bay are beginning to inundate the toxic waste buried under west Oakland.

With the help of a local archeologist, Peruvian farmers have rebuilt a pre-Colombian dam in the high Andes to combat fossil-fueled desertification.

The first-ever climate lawsuit in Russia has been filed by a group of activists demanding that the the government take stronger action over the climate crisis.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture will invest nearly $3 billion in projects to reduce climate pollution from farming and forestry this year, up from a planned $1 billion.

The White House has released a website to help people try to navigate the thicket of means-tested tax credits and other green incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act. The Wall Street Journal’s Richard Rubin takes a gander at abstruse world of the IRA’s new corporate renewable-energy tax credit market, which any company can potentially purchase to offset their own tax liability.

Within a year or two, it could be easy for a corporation with no direct renewable-energy investment—a profitable retailer, pharmaceutical maker or high-tech company—to purchase tax credits. Because of the expected discounts, companies could earn an instant profit, paying $90 or $95 for a $100 coupon off their income-tax liability. 

Rubin offers this wry commentary: Democrats “aimed to raise corporate tax bills and prevent large, profitable companies from paying too little,” he writes. “But the tax-credit transfers open a new avenue for many of those same companies to pay less.”

Wednesday morning has an absolute smasher of Congressional hearings of interest. Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) is chairing a hearing on the role public relations firms have played in preventing action on climate change. Singer Associates, Story Partners, and Pac/West Communications were invited to testify but refused to attend. And Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) is chairing a hearing on how the fossil-fuel industry has intimidated environmental activists through lawsuits—including the wave of laws passed by 17 states to protect fossil-fuel pipelines from community protest.

More Wednesday hearings: regenerative agriculture, global food security, the collapse of banking in the Caribbean, legislation to expand Tribal lands and protect Tribal cultural sites, Coast Guard authorization, and removing barriers to union organizing. In addition, self-driving-car lobbyist Shailen Bhatt has his nomination hearing to be put in charge of the Federal Highway Administration.

Hearings on the Hill:

Climate Action Today:

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