Earth Matters: Republican energy-transition saboteurs; Biden's eco-work; are EVs truly green?
At Sierra magazine, in a no-paywall article, veteran investigative reporter Rebecca Burns writes on Climate-Science Deniers, Right-Wing Think Tanks, and Fossil Fuel Shills Are Plotting Against the Clean Energy Transition. Two or three paragraphs cannot do justice to her piece, but here are a couple anyway:
In order for the Biden administration to hit its goal of a 100 percent clean power grid by 2035, the nation needs to rapidly increase the rate of new wind and solar power installations. Hard-won federal policies like the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act put that target within reach. But at the local level, challenges are mounting. A report from Columbia University's Sabin Center for Climate Change Law identified nearly 230 local measures across 35 states that have been enacted to restrict renewable energy development. Matthew Eisenson, the report's author, said these could amount to a "serious obstacle" to achieving US climate goals.
Many such measures bear the fingerprints of "wind warriors" who have reemerged in dozens of local fights to stymie the energy transition at key points. For more than a decade, climate deniers and fossil fuel interests have quietly cultivated ties with these activists, equipping them with talking points, legal muscle, model ordinances, and other tools to try to subvert renewable energy adoption. Now, from coastal hamlets in New York to rural farming towns in Ohio, residents supporting wind and solar in their communities are running up against the same barrier: a chorus of disinformation, much of it tied to, or even circulated directly by, fossil-fuel-backed groups waging an existential fight to preserve the status quo. [...]
It should be no surprise that the fabricators of climate science denial are still hard at work using whatever tools they can muster to undermine U.S. efforts to address the climate crisis. If that means setting up a fake grassroots citizens group pretending to be worried about offshore wind turbines’ effects on whales, as Burns points out, they’ll happily do so even if none of them ever gave a thought to whale harm when it comes to offshore drilling for gas and oil, with all the potential for spills that damage entire ecosystems. Outright lying is their chief tool. In some states, they’ve taken that directly into legislation.
For example, in Arizona, bills have passed in both Republican-controlled houses that would ban public spending on climate action and restrict data collection. One of these would have to signed by Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs; the other would send the matter directly to the voters. Here’s Adam Aton at ClimateWire:
All versions of the bill would bar any public entity — from the state to cities to universities — from advocating, planning or joining an association that promotes a sprawling list of policies. Any registered voter in the state would be able to sue a public entity to enforce it.
The legislation would prohibit spending public money to reduce greenhouse gas emissions; develop a climate plan; collect data on emissions; or seek to displace car travel with biking, walking or mass transit.
Meanwhile, from the ideological bunkers of the right, the Heritage Foundation’s manifesto-made-blueprint—Project 2025—calls for a withdrawal not only from the 2015 Paris Agreement, but also from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change treaty. Robin Bravender and Sara Schonhardt report:
“It would basically mean we’d just be thumbing our nose at the entire world,” said Alden Meyer, a senior associate at E3G who has followed global climate negotiations since they started.
“Pulling out of Paris is already bad enough because that’s the signature agreement under the framework convention,” he added. “But pulling out of the framework convention would be a higher level of insult because it would mean that we don't think the whole topic of climate change is serious, and we don’t need to be part of any multilateral process to address it.” [...]
The international response to a U.S. move to withdraw from the UNFCCC would be “overwhelmingly negative,” [former Clinton White House climate office Paul] Bledsoe added. “This could have really bad implications for U.S. security policy, economic policy and trade policy. You could see our allies begin to turn against us on these other issues.”
Trump could, as he did in when he occupied the White House, withdraw from the Paris Agreement if he were elected come November. But whether he could withdraw from the UNFCCC treaty without the Senate’s okay is a matter of legal dispute.
On a whole range of issues, so very much depends on voters broadly ditching Republicans when they mark their ballots this fall. Name any issue—immigration, reproductive rights, the economy, national security, crime, rule of law, child labor, racism, democracy itself—and the vast majority of elected Republicans are gleeful over their dystopian proposals to stall or crush corrective measures.
This is not new. It did not start when the Trump crime family captured the GOP. And, of course, climate change is on the list. The party has long shown itself profoundly hostile to any legislation designed to confront the current and future impacts of the climate crisis. Whether they win the presidency and majorities in Congress or not, the bulk of elected Republicans—at the national, state, and local level—are determined to do everything they can to sabotage even modest attempts to ameliorate the damage we are causing to the Earth’s systems that sustain us and millions of other species. But with ever-more dire climate and biodiversity news cudgeling us on a daily basic, it’s clear that whoever wins in November, climate hawks are going to have to step up their activism.
—MB
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