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Good Grijalva!
plus: Cop City, Vaca Muerta, and sulfuryl fluoride
Brad Johnson
April 19, 2024
PRESENTED BY LEAPING LEPTOSPIROSIS
It’s Friday, I’m going to let the hard-working Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) press shop take the lead on all the good Earth Day actions being made by the Joe Biden administration this week. Grijalva, the ranking member on the House Committee on Natural Resources, is the most powerful voice for environmental justice in Congress. Sadly, Grijalva announced earlier this month he is undergoing treatment for cancer, but he’s not letting that stop him fighting for all of us.
Here’s Rep. Grijalva on the U.S. Department of the Interior’s final rule to protect more than 13 million acres from oil and gas drilling in the western Arctic and its decision to nix the Ambler Road, a proposed industrial mining road that would have been constructed through 211 miles of the Brooks Range and Gates of the Arctic National Preserve:
“With today’s actions, President Biden and Secretary Haaland are making clear that they have listened to the many Alaska Native communities who want to see the Arctic and their traditional way of life protected.”
Rep. Grijalva on the Bureau of Land Management’s final Public Lands Rule, which will better balance the agency’s multiple-use mandate by putting conservation on equal footing with oil, gas, and mineral extraction on our public lands:
“The Public Lands Rule is a win for the American people who overwhelmingly want to protect our nation’s rich natural and cultural heritage and ensure a safer, healthier climate future for our children and grandchildren. Oil, gas, and mining companies have had the upper hand on our public lands for far too long.”
Rep. Grijalva on the BLM’s final rule to strengthen financial assurance requirements for offshore drilling, fourteen years after the Deepwater Horizon disaster:
“For too long, insufficient financial protections have allowed Big Oil to let their equipment sit idle off our coasts — or worse, let them walk away from their cleanup responsibilities altogether — creating untold risks for coastal communities and growing cost burdens for taxpayers.”
The Democrats on the Natural Resources Committee are a tight crew—in addition to Grijalva, the committee includes leading climate hawks Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Mike Levin (D-Calif.), Joe Neguse (D-Colo.) and Nydia Velázquez (D-N.Y.). Huffman, AOC, and Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-Calif.) sent a letter yesterday asking the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management to stop “rubber-stamping offshore oil drilling projects by skipping over meaningful environmental reviews.”
The Cop City defendants are done being silent. Several of the 61 activists brought up on RICO charges for trying to protect the Atlanta forest from a giant cop-training facility share their stories with The Nation’s Oliver Haug.
“The government punishes folks who work for a more just and kind world—we need more folks to know that. Even when all you want is a world where cops don’t hurt the people they are supposed to protect.”
“Our activism is out of love and care for the world, not out of wanting to see it die—that’s a projection on the part of the prosecution because they want to see our people die, they want to see our trees die. They are pushing a world of death. I want to speak to the fight for life.”
Credit: Ludovic Bertron
Global warming is helping increase life-threatening rat pee infections in Gotham.
Even though the International Monetary Fund, which has been holding its annual meeting in Washington D.C. this week, talks a good game about climate change, in reality it’s pushing debtor nations like Argentina deeper into fossil-fuel dependency. IMF is pushing Argentina hard to subsidize the fracking of its Patagonian Vaca Muerta region.
The IMF’s International Monetary and Financial Committee is chaired for the next three years by Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed Al-Jadaan, starting today, so we can guess how that’s going to go.
Seth Borenstein interviewed Azerbaijan environment minister Mukhtar Babayev, who will chair this year’s global climate talks in Baku, Azerbaijan. Babayev, a longtime state oil official, is in DC for the IMF and World Bank meetings this week. For the second year in a row, the UNFCCC talks will be hosted by a petrodictatorship. So we can guess how that’s going to go.
The plastics industry heats the world four times as much as air travel.
California leads the nation in emissions of the potent greenhouse pollutant sulfuryl fluoride, thanks to aggressive termite fumigation efforts.
Thanks for subscribing and spreading the word. If you’ve got job listings, event listings, or other hot news, I want to hear it. Connect with me—@[email protected], @climatebrad on Threads, and @climatebrad.hillheat.com on BlueSky.
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