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ACCORDING TO LIZ - “The real question isn't whether we can afford to act, but whether we can afford not to.” So asserts Andreas Sieber, associate director of policy and campaigns for 350.org.
Particulates from fossil fuel plants in the U.S. kill more than 13 thousand Americans each year. Exponentially more suffer from illnesses initiated or exacerbated by breathing polluted air from the manufacturing and transportation sectors.
Worldwide, more than three million people die each and every year from pollution created by burning coal, oil, and gas. And that doesn’t include those maimed and killed in mining and drilling.
Over the past hundred years there has been a drastic rise in carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gas emissions leading to steady increases in the average worldwide temperature, more and more extreme weather events, rising sea levels, agricultural disruption, and biodiversity die-offs.
Climate catastrophe isn’t in our future, it is upon us.
Ecologies – natural and cultivated – are suffering from the divergent weather patterns directly attributable to climate change.
Hurricanes grow increasingly powerful as rising ocean temperatures magnify the power of storm systems.
Wildfires are growing in magnitude and ferocity in the western United States and Canada – hello, Los Angeles ring of fire! – and are increasingly impacting parts of the northeast, Europe, and Australia.
Furthermore, the hazardous smoke and other effects from those fires reach far beyond the burn region.
Look out your windows, Angelenos! Even those who can’t see flames are affected. How many schools and businesses are closed due to dangerous smoke? How many people are without power?
In the summer of 2023, smoke from the hundreds of forest fires that raged across Canada generated air quality alerts impacting millions of Amercans in the eastern U.S.
The number of areas affected by extreme heat and the temperatures reported are spiking dramatically. In American cities, in Europe, in India, millions suffer, and thousands die.
Temperatures in California’s Death Valley hit almost 130° last July, and the highs and lows there over the three-month summer period – far more indicative of significant climate aberrations – were the highest ever recorded.
Yet even many Democratic politicians are buying in and selling out their constituents’ best interests to Wall Street by supporting Senator Manchin’s Mountain Valley Pipeline.
Mountain? Valley? Thoughts of dappled water bubbling down a hillside.
How does a pipeline get attached to those adjectives?
On December 19th, the Manchin/Barrasso Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024 which fast-tracks fossil fuel projects by gutting environmental safeguards and eliminating community input was placed on Senate Legislative Calendar of items awaiting Senate floor action.
While now in limbo, it will almost certainly move forward under the auspices of the profit-obsessed Trump retinue including key cabinet choices:
- Lee Zeldin who, as part of his unswerving allegiance to the fossil fuel industry, has vowed to loose the climate denial deregulationist dogs on the Environmental Protection Agency he is set to chair
- Chris Wright, Liberty Energy CEO and fracking afficionado with nada in the way of government experience, will certainly use his bully pulpit as Trump’s Secretary of Energy to advocate for expanding fossil fuel use around the world
- Devin Nunes, ardent anti-environmentalist who jumped from California Congressman to mismanaging the Trump Media and Technology Group, has segued to… chair of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board?
- Doug Burgum, failed presidential candidate and fossil fuel fan, can’t wait to be confirmed head Department of the Interior so he can throw open more public lands and ocean waters to oil and gas drilling
Under the guise of accelerating clean energy projects (supporting the objectives of the above), the Energy Permitting Reform Act would:
- fast track oil and gas projects, undermining climate and energy goals meant to reduce global warming and increase efficiency
- mandate reforms to onshore oil, gas, and renewable energy leasing to favor the fossil fuel industry by expediting applications
- shorten the window for judicial review from six years to 150 days, stripping any possibility for in-depth analyses and assessments of cumulative impacts and leaving those who will be affected far too little time to comprehend, organize, fundraise, and oppose clear and present dangers to their communities
- gut the 55-year-old National Environmental Policy Act which remains one of the few resources ordinary people have against powerful polluters
- waste valuable time and tax dollars on unproven and often detrimental technologies such as biofuels, hydrogen, and carbon capture and storage that exist solely to extend fossil fuel dependence and actually increase greenhouse gas emissions
- grant fossil fuel companies unlimited access to public lands and offshore oil reserves to develop projects that that will accelerate climate change.
- put all humanity, but especially the most vulnerable communities that live near these projects, at expanded risk from life-threatening extreme weather events and mega-storms
Yes, in the increasing contentiousness of geopolitics, the United States desperately needs energy self-sufficiency but that is far better served by accelerating renewable sources and not investing in further fossil fuel infrastructure that aggravates health and safety issues and will become ever more expensive as easily accessible sources shrink or face early obsolescence.
Reducing and eliminating fossil fuels is also a question of social justice… Unfortunately, justice is almost always on the side of those who can pay for it.
Manchin claimed Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer “supports a push to pass this permitting bill in the lame duck session to make it easier to build energy projects” but “making it easier” would clearly jeopardize American livelihoods, health, and the future of the planet.
Joining the fossil fuel plutocrats in the push to expand oil production is the entire weight of the profitable plastics industry.
Almost all plastic in use today is cheaply synthesized from crude oil, first into smaller molecules like ethylene and propylene and then chemically polymerized into long chains that form the bones of a hugely diverse selection of merchandise.
At the recently concluded international plastic treaty discussions in South Korea, there was so much push back from major oil and plastic producing countries and companies trying to delay and derail negotiations, that now there will have to be a sixth round of negotiations if the United Nations approach is to achieve anything.
Moreover, plastic, fossil fuel, and chemical industry lobbyists for companies like Dow and ExxonMobil vastly outnumbered any country in attendance. Why are they even there?? They are the problem, not the solution.
Rich nations avoid action claiming fiscal restraint but still spend trillions of taxpayer dollars directly and indirectly on subsidizing fossil fuel interests.
Especially the United States, with its outsize military budgets and conscious fomenting of foreign wars for profit.
A report from Oil Change International underlines that Global North countries have the means to muster over $5 trillion a year for climate action worldwide ending “public finance, direct subsidies, and state-owned company investments in fossil fuel” which, along with a “climate damages tax” on fossil fuel extraction, a 25% minimum corporate tax rate on multinationals and other exceedingly profitable companies, and a wealth tax on billionaires could raise $5 to $6 trillion a year worldwide every year.
And, if they would crack down on tax evasion by large corporations and the rich…
Global South countries already lack funding for urgent necessities and face multiple obstacles to transition from fossil fuels. Reliance on private financing only increases income for First World profiteers and exacerbates unsustainable debts, further draining Third World economies and increasing the suffering of their people and contributing considerably to immigration crises.
To start, Global North nations must change unfair global financial rules that benefit wealthy economies at the expense of struggling ones.
350.org’s Andreas Sieber also points out that: “It is a bitter irony that rich nations hide behind claims of fiscal restraint, yet trillions are still spent on fossil fuel subsidies and militarization. The truth is simple: the money exists, but the political will does not.
“By treating climate finance as a zero-sum game, wealthy countries not only deepen global inequality but also undermine their own futures. The energy transition isn't charity—it's an investment in global stability and security”.
Climate change is not climate fiction.
And its consequences know no borders.
(Liz Amsden resides in Vermont and is a regular contributor to CityWatch on issues that she is passionate about. She can be reached at [email protected].)
