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The Week in Climate Hearings: The Fossil-Fueled Assault On Democracy
Project 2025, Kelcy Warren, floods and fires
Brad Johnson
September 16, 2024
Climate denier Alex Epstein on Fox Business
The physics of greenhouse pollution presents human society with the mandate of ending the burning of fossil fuels. As most people would like human civilization to continue, policies that reflect the public interest would rapidly wind down the fossil-fuel industry. But those who directly benefit from selling this profoundly lucrative, civilization-threatening product disagree. And they are willing to subvert democracy and even, if necessary, overthrow it.
This polluters-over-people agenda is written out in remarkable detail in Project 2025, the plans developed by the Heritage Foundation for a potential second Donald Trump presidency. Not only does Project 2025 propose dismantling federal climate policy and eliminating key agencies, it plans a broad assault on the institutions undergirding our democracy.
Project 2025 adopts language from the evangelical right to delegitimize environmental protection, calling it “a pseudo-religion meant to baptize liberals’ ruthless pursuit of absolute power in the holy water of environmental virtue.”
In a podcast released today, Chris Hayes speaks with Grist’s Zoya Teirstein and climate scientist Dr. Vernon Morris on the Project 2025 anti-climate agenda.
Of course, carbon capitalists are not relying on a Trump win to push these attacks. They’re using every tool they can to tear apart the climate movement. Fracking pipeline billionaire Kelcy Warren, a major Trump donor, is looking to destroy Greenpeace USA, as retribution for the Dakota Access Pipeline protests:
Energy Transfer’s lawsuit alleges several Greenpeace entities incited the Dakota Access protests, funded attacks to damage the pipeline, and spread misinformation about the company and its project. The case is set for trial in February in a North Dakota state court, where both sides expect a fossil-fuel-friendly jury. Energy Transfer is seeking $300 million in damages, which would likely wipe out Greenpeace USA, according to the group’s leadership.
And we see the conflict playing out this week in Congress, with House Republicans promoting the authors of Project 2025 in a hearing on Thursday. House Democrats are fighting back with a roundtable Wednesday exposing Big Oil’s collusion to fix prices and roll back regulations.
A fracking pipeline in the Houston suburbs erupts into flames, September 16, 2024
Wednesday, September 18
Democrats on the House Natural Resources Committee are exposing the fossil-fuel agenda with a roundtable discussion, Holding Big Oil Accountable for Extortion, Collusion, and Pollution.
The roundtable, chaired by Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-Calif.), will discuss the Project 2025 agenda and Big Oil’s price-gouging collusion. The panelists are Kristina Karlsson, the deputy director of climate policy at the Roosevelt Institute, Alex Witt, senior advisor on oil and gas for Climate Power, Bekah Hinojosa, co-founder of the South Texas Environmental Justice Network, and Chris Marshall, energy and environment director of Accountable.US. The roundtable will take place at 1 pm in 542 Cannon and is viewable as a livestream.
Thursday, September 19
Now in full campaign mode, House Republicans are continuing their efforts to promote the Project 2025 agenda. At 10 am, the House Budget Committee is holding a hearing on Biden energy policy entitled “The Cost of the Biden-Harris Energy Crisis” while the House Energy and Commerce Committee has a hearing on the Environmental Protection Agency spending and regulatory policies under the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law entitled “Holding the Biden-Harris EPA Accountable for Radical Rush-to-Green Spending.”
The witnesses for the Energy hearing haven’t been named, but those for the Budget hearing are all fossil-fueled climate deniers. Diana Furchtgott-Roth, director of the Center for Energy, Climate, and Environment at the Heritage Foundation, is the author of the Department of Transportation chapter for Project 2025. Donna Jackson is with the National Center for Public Policy Research’s Project 21. NCPPR is a Project 2025 partner, and Jackson served on the advisory board for Project 2025. Alex Epstein, whose fossil fuel boosterism Molly Taft has memorably described, recently participated in the extreme-right Alliance For Responsible Citizenship conference convened by Jordan Peterson with support from the Heritage Foundation.
Meanwhile, Senate Energy and Natural Resources chair Joe Manchin (I-W. Va.) holds a hearing on fusion energy technology development with Department of Energy fusion research associate director Jean Paul Allain, nuclear lobbyist Jackie Siebens, and nuclear trade group representative and nuclear engineer Dr. Patrick White.
The following week will be much busier, with world leaders converging upon New York City for the United Nations General Assembly and the associated events of Climate Week NYC, as Congress comes down to the wire for a deal for a stopgap to keep the federal government funded.
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