Maybe we can drill our way out of this hole

PRESENTED BY FERAL HOGS

It’s looking like the House is going to vote on the Build Back Barely Act on Friday, once they get some kind of performative CBO score. With about $600 billion in climate programs, the BBB is much better than nothing, but it still will have to make it through fossil capital’s cooling saucer.

ACTION: Rev. William Barber II, leader of the Poor People’s Campaign, launched Moral Mondays in Washington on the steps of the Supreme Court on (naturally) this Monday, to point out that Biden promised, and the people need, not just the BBB but much more besides. And at 10 am today, he’s protesting in front of the White House.

In other extremely good news, on Tuesday, the Senate approved the nomination of climate hawk Graham Steele as assistant Treasury secretary for financial institutions. Get ready for some “macroprudential regulation” to “address key systemic risks from climate change” and let’s pop that subprime carbon bubble.

INACTION MANCHIN: Even though his party has successfully slashed child poverty by forty percent(!) Sen. Joe Manchin (D-Coal) has jumped on the Republicans’ “inflation tax” bandwagon:

Funny thing — our current bout of inflation is mostly the fossil-fuel industry’s fault.

DISASTER, EH? Now that the Enbridge Line 5 and Canadian government’s TransMountain tar-sands pipelines are operational just as he demanded, Canada’s Justin Trudeau went to COP26 to say he wants to do better. Too bad about the catastrophic wildfires, heat waves, and Biblical floods that have been chewing up British Columbia since. On the upside, the fossil-fueled storms have knocked out TransMountain. On the downside, Vancouverites have to go through the United States to reach the rest of Canada.

Louisiana is disappearing into the Gulf of Mexico because of its oil and gas industry—both from the rising greenhouse seas and from drilling-induced subsidence. So one might think that Louisiana politicians would make industry pay up to restore its oil-soaked coast. In Southerly, Sara Sneath reveals in excruciating detail how “the Louisiana delegation has appeared more interested in letting the oil and gas industry off the hook than they have in finding revenue to pay to protect the coast.”

In case you’re wondering what Joe Biden is doing about this: Today, the administration is holding the largest auction of the Gulf of Mexico for oil and gas exploration in history, because a Trump judge says he gotta. Musk harder!

Today in Hill Hearings:

• House Science at 10, fusion research

• House Natural Resources at 10, markup of fish, wildlife and renewable energy bills

• Senate EPW at 10, nomination of Martha Williams to be Fish & Wildlife Service director

• Senate Small Business at 2:30, disaster assistance bills

Bonus Science Fun: Feral Hog Invasions Leave Coastal Marshes More Susceptible to Climate Change.

Okay, we’ll leave it there for today - subscribe today or ping me @climatebrad.

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p.s. I’m now reading Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency: War Communism in the Twenty-First Century by Andreas Malm (thanks to the D.C. Public Library). If you’ve read it or have another book recommendation, let me know.