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Manchin serves up a shit sandwich

Brian Schatz & Joe Biden: "Delicious!"

Author

Brad Johnson
September 22, 2022

PRESENTED BY DONALD TRUMP’S DREAM

The wait is over: around 6 pm yesterday, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-Coal Baron) continued his vendetta against Kate Aronoff and released 91 pages of pro-fossil-fuel “permitting reform” that were in line with the previously leaked American Petroleum Institute draft and his pledge that “this is something the Republican Party has wanted for the last five to seven years I’ve been with them.”

As it turns out, Sen. John Tester (D-Mont.) was right about the deal being a “piece of shit” in between “sliced bread.”

Ecomodernist dudes like Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) and the Atlantic’s Robinson Meyer want to talk about the artisanal sourdough of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission getting authority over high-voltage transmission siting, but not the heaping, steaming piles of mandatory fast-tracking of fossil-fuel projects ranging from the fracked-gas Mountain Valley Pipeline to offshore drilling.

Climate journalists Lee Harris and Julia Rock dug into a key provision of Manchin’s bill, finding it a fracking-industry dream, as it would compel “the president to unilaterally speed up a handful of energy projects, while requiring that at least five of them boost fossil fuels.”

After President Joe Biden took one of the first bites of Manchin’s plan, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre shared, he announced: “This sandwich is DELICIOUS!”

Maybe Biden’s bout with COVID gave him anosmia? Better get that checked out by the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council.

“Mindless approval of fracked gas pipelines was Donald Trump’s dream, so why is Congress doing this now when lawmakers know better?" asks Center for Biological Diversity’s Brett Hartl. “We don’t need to gut the Clean Water Act and other bedrock environmental laws to build out wind and solar energy."

Fortunately, some folks’ olfactory sense is still working, thanks to the efforts of thousands of climate justice activists around the country.

Fiona is now a Cat 4 storm, barreling towards Bermuda, as “more than a half million people in Puerto Rico remained without water service” and "more than 1 million customers in Puerto Rico were still without power.”

Fossil-fueled heat in the Midwest smashes records, from Wichita (100°) to Rapid City (97°).

Staten Island’s Oakwood Beach community is disappearing to the rising seas.

Fossil-fueled wildfires are killing off New Mexican fish.

Checking in on the fossil-fuel industry: JPMorgan Chase chief Jamie Dimon told Congress “that the US needs to invest in the fossil-fuel industry to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.” Sure, that’ll work.

A fire at BP’s 103-year-old Oregon, Ohio refinery killed two workers. BP is not releasing further details.

Germany nationalizes natural-gas importing giant Uniper, as the country’s decades-old bet on private energy markets and Russian gas collapses.

Senate Energy holds a hearing on batteries and energy storage.

In music news:

THE FINAL WORD: At Rep. Jared Huffman’s hearing on the Public Lands and Waters Climate Leadership Act yesterday, climate scientist Andrew Dessler explained that “adaptation” is used by climate deniers as code for human suffering, and continued:

“What the science clearly shows us is that the Earth is warming, humans are to blame for the warming, and the magnitude of future warming is going to be extremely large.”

Hearings on the Hill:

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

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