Industrial Disease

A climate-disaster continuing resolution; Whitehouse's last hurrah

Author

Brad Johnson
December 18, 2024

PRESENTED BY THE SULTANS OF SWING

With 2024 about to fade to black, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La., no relation) released his continuing resolution to keep the federal government running through March, with $100 billion in aid for victims of fossil-fueled climate disasters, including $31 billion for farmers. Of course, the climate-science denier Johnson repeatedly insisted that the “dire straits” of the droughts, floods and storms of our poisoned climate on our one world were “acts of God,” and “not man-made disasters”:

“A couple intervening things occurred, we describe them as acts of God. We had these massive hurricanes in the late fall, Helene and Milton, and other disasters. We have to make sure that the Americans that were devastated by these hurricanes get the relief they need.”

Posing as an angel of mercy, Johnson made an argument for love over gold:

“This is a small CR that we’ve had to add things to that were out of our control. These are not man-made disasters. These are things the federal government has an appropriate role to do. I wish it weren’t necessary. I wish we didn’t have record hurricanes in the fall. I wish our farmers were not in a bind so much that creditors were not able to lend to them any more. We have to be able to help those who are in these dire straits.”

Johnson couldn’t admit that climate pollution is why it never rains.

“You put all those factors together, droughts and all the other conditions, you have a lot of family farms and ranches and people who supply the food for the country in dire straits right now.”

Hand in hand with Johnson, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.), said the chamber plans to pass a bill to get the “government funded” and ensure that “we take care of disasters and our farmers here in America,” while bashing the Biden-Harris administration for “waging an all-out war, an attack on American energy.”

Apparently, Biden is killing “American energy” with kindness.

As Joe Biden pointed out in a essay published today in The American Prospect, “I also encouraged oil and gas companies to take their record profits and invest in more production. Today, American energy production is at record levels—including record oil and gas production.”

In contrast, the extremist Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) argued the CR is money for nothing: “The Swamp is using farmers and victims of natural disasters as pawns to fund an over-bloated pet project filled disaster.”

This morning, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) wrapped up his chairmanship of the Senate Budget Committee with his 22nd hearing on climate change’s threat to the United States economy. He presided over a presentation of his staff’s devastating investigation of the national housing insurance crisis: Insurers are abandoning homeowners at frightening levels in regions threatened by sea level rise, rising hurricanes, droughts and wildfires—which is, admittedly, most of the nation. California, the Gulf Coast, the Carolinas, Cape Cod, and Oklahoma are especially hard hit.

Non-renewal rates reported by insurers to the U.S. Senate Budget Committee.

Non-renewal rates reported by insurers to the U.S. Senate Budget Committee.

Here’s a link to the big piece by Chris Flavelle on Sen. Whitehouse's investigation, which uncovered a lot of information insurers didn't want to share.

Whitehouse has wielded the power of chairmanship more powerfully than any other senator in recent memory, certainly for climate.1

Red Kite

The Democracy in Power event last night was amazing; Sandeep Vaheesan’s love for democracy and the power grid were evident and shared by the crowd, including Ruthy Gourevitch, Lukas Ross, and Janet Redman, among many other lovely humans. There is little better than finding your people for the long fight ahead.

[playing poker] FRIEND: I’m all in ME: [yearning for this type of commitment since we first met] me too, man, I’m all in too FRIEND: um, a pair of kings ME: you bet we are

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1  To be fair, Joe Manchin (I-Coal) was a very powerful Energy & Natural Resources chair, but primarily in making climate change worse.

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