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Category: Inflation Reduction Act

  • Appalachians Protest Manchin’s Mountain Valley Pipeline Plan

    Climate activists from as far away as Alaska, Indigenous peoples and Appalachians rallied in Washington, D.C., Thursday against the construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline. The protest — No Sacrifice Zones! — spoke out against concessions to West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin included in the Inflation Reduction Act that would expedite the pipeline slated to cut through Appalachia, as Senator Bernie Sanders gave an address on the Senate floor calling it a “disastrous side deal” to the Inflation Reduction Act that undermines climate activism. We speak with two environmental activists in D.C. who helped organize the protest, Crystal Cavalier-Keck and Russell Chisholm. “We do not want this dirty deal that Senator Joe Manchin is pushing forward,” says Cavalier-Keck. “This project must be stopped, and these extractive industries that create sacrifice zones must also be stopped,” says Chisholm.

    TRANSCRIPT

    This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

    AMY GOODMAN: As California faces a record-breaking heat wave, climate activists joined Indigenous and Appalachian groups at a rally in Washington, D.C., Thursday to protest against the Mountain Valley Pipeline. The protest came a month after President Biden signed the $739 billion Inflation Reduction Act, which included major concessions to West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, the biggest recipient of fossil fuel money in Congress. One provision expedites fossil fuel permitting, including for the controversial MVP — that’s Mountain Valley Pipeline. If built, it will carry 2 billion cubic feet of fracked gas across more than a thousand streams and wetlands in Appalachia, including parts of West Virginia.

    On Thursday, Senator Bernie Sanders, the independent of Vermont, slammed what he described as a “disastrous side deal.”

    SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: In the coming weeks and months, the Senate has a fundamental choice to make. We can listen to the fossil fuel industry and the politicians they pay, who are spending huge amounts of money on lobbying and campaign contributions to pass this dirty side deal, or we can listen to the scientists and the environmental community, who are telling us loudly and clearly to reject this side deal and eliminate the $15 billion in tax breaks and subsidies Congress is already providing to big oil and gas companies each and every year.

    Mr. President, while the legislative text of this side deal has not been made public, according to a one-page summary that was released last month, this bill would make it easier for the fossil fuel industry to receive permits to complete some of the dirtiest and most polluting oil and gas projects in America. Specifically, this deal would approve the $6.6 billion Mountain Valley Pipeline, a 303-mile fracked gas pipeline spanning from West Virginia to Virginia and potentially on to North Carolina. We’re talking about a pipeline that would generate emissions equivalent to 37 coal plants or over 27 million cars each and every year. Mr. President, it is hard for me to understand why anyone, anyone who is concerned about climate change, would consider for one second voting to approve a pipeline that would be equivalent to putting 27 million more cars on the road each and every year.

    AMY GOODMAN: Senator Sanders spoke on the same day as protesters rallied in Washington, D.C., against the Mountain Valley Pipeline.

    We’re joined now by two guests who took part in the protest. Russell Chisholm is the Mountain Valley Watch coordinator for the POWHR coalition — P-O-W-H-R, that’s the Protect Our Water, Heritage, Rights coalition. He’s also an Army veteran of Operation Desert Storm. Crystal Cavalier-Keck is a citizen of the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation in North Carolina, chair of the Environmental Justice Committee for the NAACP.

    Welcome you both to Democracy Now! Crystal Cavalier-Keck, let’s begin with you. And if I mispronounced the name of your nation, please pronounce it correctly for us. But talk about why you’re in Washington and why you went to the White House, as well, for a meeting.

    CRYSTAL CAVALIER–KECK: Meku. Thank you so much for having me here. Well, it is the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation.

    And I am here — well, we were here yesterday to lobby Congress, but we were also here to have a rally, and we organized this rally in less than 30 days. And we were here to have our voices heard all across Turtle Island, which is the United States, to show that our fights are very similar, and we do not want this dirty deal that Senator Joe Manchin is pushing forward. That is the number one reason we were here. But we were here to uplift our voices, especially our Indigenous communities here on the Southeast coast. We are often invisibilized, and we’re not really listened to and heard here.

    AMY GOODMAN: And talk about just what the Mountain Valley Pipeline — what kind of map — describe the map for us and how it goes from West Virginia to North Carolina, and what it would mean.

    CRYSTAL CAVALIER–KECK: So, the map, it starts in West Virginia, and it goes through the mountaintops. And on these mountaintops are our sacred burial grounds of our Monacan, Saponi and Occaneechi nations. And, you know, the MVP, they call these burial mounds “rock piles,” and they often say these do not exist, which often makes us — they’re trying to extinct us or genocide us again. But it’s going through these very sacred mountains, going through waters, boring under rivers — and these sacred waters of, like, the Roanoke, the Dan and the Haw River, which is very sacred to my tribe and my community. This pipeline, the MVP Southgate, Mountain Valley Pipeline Southgate extension, is coming five miles from my home. It’s also going through the backyard of my relative, Renée, who lives in Rockingham County. And so, it’s going to destroy a lot of water.

    And what these companies don’t understand — they don’t come and consult with us, and these agencies, like FERC, do not do a good job of listening to the community. And we are here to talk about the NEPA process, which is the National Environmental Policy Act, which this dirty deal is going to gut. It’s going to cut the time in half of what we, especially here on the East Coast, the state-recognized tribes, we get to respond to that. We get, I believe, about a seven-year period to respond to that, due to the NEPA process, which helps all tribes with the consultation process. But when they gut this, this limits our time to respond back to these dirty pipelines and dirty asphalt plants that are coming through our communities. And usually these agencies, they don’t do a good job of advertising the comment periods. So, therefore, I feel that they’re helping these dirty companies.

    AMY GOODMAN: Russell Chisholm, if you could talk about what you discovered, what happened to your community in Virginia, if the Mountain Valley Pipeline is completed? And what stage is it at right now?

    RUSSELL CHISHOLM: Thank you, Amy. Good morning.

    Currently, the best way to describe this stage of the Mountain Valley Pipeline is segmented all along those 303 miles. For example, the first incomplete stream crossing that they come to is less than three-quarters of a mile from mile post zero on the project. So, what is remaining is some of the most difficult and challenging work and all of the heavy construction work adjacent to, around, under streams, wetlands, rivers, creeks. And Dr. Cavalier has described it well. These are water sources that feed our communities, feed our households, that people use to take care of their livestock. And all of that runs downstream, destroys habitat and puts people’s health and safety at risk.

    So, there is a lot of heavy construction remaining on that project, and yet there is a lot that we can also save, which is why we continue to show up, continue to show up and link up with other frontline communities to stand together, as we did yesterday, to say this project must be stopped, and these extractive industries that create sacrifice zones must also be stopped wherever they are happening.

    AMY GOODMAN: And, Dr. Cavalier-Keck, what do you say to Joe Manchin, to the senator, the largest recipient of fossil fuel money in Congress, his power, and what Bernie Sanders called this “dirty side deal”? What do you say to the other senators?

    CRYSTAL CAVALIER–KECK: So, they need to wake up. I honestly believe — how could this not be an ethics violation? But you are killing millions of people, millions of animals, and you’re ultimately killing our water. This is how we are going to survive. This is how the human race will survive. And it’s at your hands that you’re causing the destruction and death of these. And I just can’t believe that this is happening. Like, I was talking earlier today. Like, this is how government works, these backdoor, side-room deals to help a child who throws a temper tantrum because he can’t get the MVP pushed through? Like, he’s being very childish. And, you know, just disappointed. Like, you’re letting your constituents down. And also, the other senators who are not saying, like, “Whoa, wait. What’s going on?” or the other House of Representatives, do not given in to his demands. Like, he is literally twisting your arm behind your back to get what he wants. Like, this is not how government should work.

    AMY GOODMAN: And the connection of the MVP developers to Joe Manchin, the senator?

    CRYSTAL CAVALIER–KECK: Oh, most definitely. NextEra, they donated to his campaign, as well as, I believe, they donated to Chuck Schumer’s campaign, too. Like, how are you guys not in ethics violation? You should have recused yourself from this and appointed someone else to do this. Matter of fact, listen to Bernie Sanders. He should have been heading up this, and he would have made sure we wouldn’t have had no side deal, especially the MVP coming through our backyard. That’s horrible. Like, in this side deal, well, this whole IRA, you’re going to give the IRA, and you’re going to still push fossil fuels? What is that? Like, come on, President Biden. Like, why did you sign that? So you just think it’s OK to, like, give a little bit of fossil fuels, but it’s OK, because we’re going to give you, what, $700 billion? No, I don’t think so.

    AMY GOODMAN: Crystal Cavalier-Keck, I want to thank you so much for being with us, of the Occaneechi Band —

    CRYSTAL CAVALIER–KECK: Thank you.

    AMY GOODMAN: — of Saponi Nation in North Carolina, chair of the Environmental Justice Committee for the NAACP of Alamance County, and Russell Chisholm, the Mountain Valley Watch coordinator for the POWHR coalition.

    That does it for our broadcast. And we end today on a very sad note. We want to extend our deepest condolences to our Democracy Now! producer María Inés Taracena on the death of your grandmother, Ana Elsa Herrera, in Guatemala. Mama Elsa was 94 years old. And also, dear Maria, on the passing of your brother, David Miller Flores, in a tragic car accident in Arizona. He had turned 26 years old last Sunday. Our condolences to your whole family.

    That does it for our show. Democracy Now! produced with Renée Feltz, Mike Burke, Deena Guzder, Messiah Rhodes, Nermeen Shaikh, María Taracena, Charina Nadura, Sam Alcoff, Tey-Marie Astudillo, John Hamilton, Robby Karran, Hany Massoud, Mary Conlon. Our executive director, Julie Crosby. Special thanks to Becca Staley, Jon Randolph, Paul Powell, Mike Di Filippo, Miguel Nogueira. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks so much for joining us.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • New Report Debunks Manchin’s Claim That Mountain Valley Pipeline Helps Climate

    As climate campaigners and frontline community leaders prepared to converge on Capitol Hill Thursday to rally against a federal permitting overhaul pushed by Sen. Joe Manchin, a newly released report aimed to debunk the West Virginia senator’s false claims about a long-stalled fracked gas pipeline that would likely benefit from the proposed reforms.

    Titled “Why Everything Manchin Says About the Mountain Valley Pipeline Is Wrong,” the analysis by Oil Change International (OCI) spotlights and counters three prominent claims that Manchin has made about the pipeline project as he attempts to usher it toward completion despite the threat it poses to the environment and communities in its path.

    One claim OCI targets is the notion that the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) could actually serve as a tool to fight the climate crisis, namely by displacing polluting coal facilities. As Manchin put it in an April statement, full approval of the pipeline set to run through his home state would enable the U.S. to “domestically produce the natural gas we need today and support our energy and climate goals for decades to come.”

    OCI responds that “if MVP is completed, it would add tens of millions of tons of greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution to the atmosphere every year for decades to come.”

    “These emissions would come from pipeline operations, methane gas leakage, and end users burning the pipeline’s gas,” report notes. “The United States has pledged to reduce GHG emissions at least 50% from 2005 levels by 2030. Manchin and MVP’s owners try to resolve this contradiction by assuming the pipeline will help the Southeast replace coal-fired power with gas-fired power, ignoring the fact that cheap, clean renewable energy is increasingly displacing coal and gas.”

    “The pipeline would have to substantially displace coal emissions over and above the emissions it causes,” the report continues. “MVP’s operators ultimately plan to expand the pipeline’s capacity — and thus its emissions — by 25%. This means MVP would need to replace 25 coal plants by 2030… That’s a tall order for one pipeline.”

    OCI also rejects the narrative pushed by Manchin and other pipeline apologists that a completed and operational MVP would help free up gas for export to western European nations — which are currently attempting to wean themselves off Russian fossil fuels — and meet supposedly growing gas needs in the U.S.

    “Expanding existing terminals or building new ones will take several years,” OCI replies. “Even if the United States builds
    new export capacity, it will arrive far too late to help European allies.”

    As for the claim that regions of the U.S., particularly the Southeast, are in need of gas that could be supplied by the MVP, OCI says that “demand in the Southeast, the region MVP would serve, is already well supplied by existing pipelines.”

    The report adds:

    Further, gas demand in the region is expected to fall by at least 7% from 2019-2030. Nationally, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)—which has a long history of underestimating renewables growth—expects gas consumption to fall 2% between 2022 and 2023.

    The EIA says increasing renewable energy generation in the coming years will displace gas (and coal) consumption in the power sector, busting the myth that gas is the primary way to displace coal from our power system.

    Lorne Stockman, OCI’s research co-director at Oil Change International and a co-author of the new report, said in a statement Thursday that Democratic leaders must “understand that Manchin’s desire to see the Mountain Valley Pipeline completed is based on his fossil fuel donors’ interests rather than any value the pipeline actually has for U.S. or European energy security or the climate.”

    “MVP is a false solution looking for a problem,” said Stockman. “It’s out of date and out of time.”

    Manchin, the top recipient of oil and gas industry donations in Congress, secured a commitment from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to pursue the permitting reform package in exchange for the West Virginia Democrat’s vote for the Inflation Reduction Act, legislation that included substantial renewable energy investments as well as limited drug pricing reforms and other changes.

    Manchin said Wednesday that he expects permitting reforms — which would weaken environmental review requirements and pave the way for MVP and other dirty energy projects — to be included in a must-pass government funding measure set to receive a vote later this month.

    But with the Inflation Reduction Act now law and reportedly spurring a surge in renewable energy projects, progressive lawmakers say they feel no obligation to support permitting changes — and some are actively speaking out against the Manchin deal.

    “We will vote this dirty deal down, one way or another,” Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) said last month.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Dangerous Mountain Valley Pipeline Has No Place in Manchin’s Deal With Democrats

    Thanks to Sen. Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) conditioning his vote for the Inflation Reduction Act on a backroom permitting reform deal that would complete the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), this highly contentious fracked gas pipeline has become a household name.

    The attention is not good news for the MVP.

    While the MVP has long been a scourge to rural Appalachian communities in Virginia and West Virginia, with Manchin’s help, the MVP has morphed into a full-blown national scandal.

    Before Congress considers any legislation addressing the MVP, it is vital to understand why this pipeline is a terrible idea.

    Firstly, the MVP is not just another pipeline.

    At 42 inches in diameter and 303 miles long, the MVP is among the largest methane gas pipelines in the U.S. However, what sets the MVP apart is the unprecedented level of risk associated with the pipeline’s route. Over 200 miles of the MVP crosses areas that have experienced landslides in the past and are highly susceptible to future landslides, including over 75 miles of steep mountain slopes.

    No other gas transmission pipeline in the U.S. has ever attempted to cross so many miles of such unforgiving terrain.

    According to data from the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, from 2001-2020, landslides were one of the most frequent causes of “significant incidents” involving gas transmission pipelines in Appalachia. The MVP has already been impacted by multiple landslide events during construction, including one where “the installed pipe shifted … in at least three locations.”

    When a high-volume, high-pressure gas pipeline like the MVP ruptures, the common industry assumption is that there is at least an 80 percent chance of an explosion. Landslides have caused no fewer than five major gas pipeline explosions in Appalachia in just the past four years. Thankfully, gas has never flowed through the MVP — the blast zone is nearly a half-mile wide.

    Secondly, the MVP cannot rightly be considered a critical infrastructure project.

    If it were, then it stands to reason the developers would have selected the route that would give the MVP the greatest chance of success. Not the shortest, and presumably cheapest, route between its beginning and endpoint. Appalachia is crisscrossed by many major gas pipelines — including pipelines considerably longer than the MVP — yet none come close to crossing as many steep, landslide-prone slopes.

    There is no guarantee that the MVP, if completed, will be able to provide the safe and reliable supply of gas touted by its developers. Furthermore, given the increase in heat waves and wildfires in the West, catastrophic flooding in Appalachia and worldwide droughts being driven by climate-busting fossil fuels, bringing any additional methane gas out of the ground is inherently unsafe.

    Furthermore, the U.S. already has more than enough gas to provide households and industry with an ample and affordable supply, and demand is expected to decrease over time. However, the amount of gas exported by the U.S. has increased exponentially since 2015 — and driven up prices domestically. Following a recent explosion at a gas export terminal in Texas that took the facility offline, the price of methane in the U.S. immediately dropped.

    Lastly, facilitating the construction of the MVP through congressional action would mean overriding decades of bedrock regulatory and judicial processes.

    Since construction began on the MVP back in 2018, the project has lost virtually every permit needed to build the pipeline. This includes permits from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to cross streams and wetlands; permits from the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service to cross national forests; and permits from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to disturb habitats supporting endangered species. The permits from the latter three agencies have now been tossed out twice by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

    While many of the legal challenges have been brought by environmental interest groups, this has no bearing on the fact that the courts found grave deficiencies in the permits issued to MVP. Compelling compliance with the law is hardly a radical judicial act, regardless of who brings the case to court.

    As a result of its problematic route and design, the MVP is now more than $3 billion over budget and four years behind schedule.

    Rather than attempting to fix the project’s flaws, however, the developers continue to hold out hope that the rules do not apply to the MVP. Indeed, the project developers are among the top donors to Manchin and Sen. Charles Schumer (D-New York), the chief architects of the backroom deal.

    Congress must not overrule the very safeguards put in place to protect the public against harm from proposed energy infrastructure projects. Especially not for a project as dangerous and unprecedented as the MVP.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • The Inflation Reduction Act Is a Disappointing Act of Federal Greenwashing

    Congressional Democrats were very proud of themselves for passing the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), a bill that includes $370 billion for climate and energy initiatives, in addition to much-needed subsidies on prescription drug costs and Medicare benefits. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, who worked with the intractable Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, said the bill “will put the country on track to meet the climate goals we need to preserve for our planet for our children and for our grandchildren.”

    It’s tempting to believe him: Many environmental advocates are reporting that the IRA, while imperfect, is a good start. We desperately need climate legislation and could use a win to stay optimistic about our future. Besides, there are aspects of the bill to celebrate, like funding to address air pollution and a tax on coal to support miners with Black Lung Disease.

    But unfortunately, in order to win Manchin’s approval the Inflation Reduction Act was turned into a profit-fest for fossil fuel giants like ExxonMobil, and the parts of the bill that do invest in clean energy and greenhouse gas reductions are largely premised on false solutions. We cannot call something that does such grave harm a success, especially when the harm will fall hardest on disadvantaged communities. The Inflation Reduction Act is a disappointing act of federal greenwashing.

    Despite all of the research reporting that the first step to reducing emissions is to halt new fossil fuel development, the IRA includes multiple provisions to increase fossil fuel production. Three canceled oil and gas lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico were revived by the bill, and to ensure “energy security,” the federal government is required to lease 62 million acres of public lands and waters to oil and gas developers before offering any solar and wind leases.

    The bill also ensures that the fossil fuel industry will rake in $3.23 billion in subsidies for Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage (CCS) technologies. CCS is mostly a smoke-and-mirrors trick: The technology isn’t really there yet, and it doesn’t solve the underlying problem. Ninety percent of CCS projects are used for enhanced oil recovery, a process in which captured carbon is stored underground, where it can be extracted again as oil. The entire idea of CCS is to slow the transition away from fossil fuels and continue the cycle of extraction.

    The Inflation Reduction Act approaches clean energy with the same extractive and profiteering model beloved by the fossil fuel industry. With the discounts provided in the bill, extractive industries will move onto yet more Indigenous lands and into the backyards of other disadvantaged communities to set up poisonous projects like mines and nuclear power plants.

    The Indigenous Environmental Network has called the Inflation Reduction Act a trojan horse for frontline communities: While it includes a myriad of grants for disadvantaged communities, recipients are forced to compete for eligibility with one another and well-funded industries and NGOs.

    Indigenous human rights lawyer and Water Protector Tara Houska responded to the bill by saying, “It doesn’t really work to throw money at us if we don’t have habitable places to live. If our communities are underwater or if our air is poisoned and we have pipelines and mines and all the things that are destroying our lands actively, how are some investments in block grants supposed to help us?”

    We cannot get out of the climate crisis using the same model that got us into this mess. Rewards for industries that prioritize their own profit and have no accountability to the local communities that their projects exist in are not the solution. We need to invest in community. If President Biden and Congressional Democrats truly wanted to help frontline communities, they could have invested in public transportation instead of privatized electric vehicles, supported community participation in the design and articulation of energy projects, supported community-owned renewables, and given communities experiencing environment injustice the legal right to recovery.

    Money created the Inflation Reduction Act. Both Schumer and Manchin have received major donations from the pipeline company that benefits from their deal: NextEra Energy. And, at the end of the day, this bill was designed to reduce inflation — not save the planet.

    We cannot allow the federal government to greenwash this economic package and call it progress. The Inflation Reduction Act will create countless sacrifice zones in the name of “green” energy, already visible in places like Thacker Pass in Nevada. President Biden says that progress requires compromise, but his version of a compromise involves sacrificing disadvantaged communities. You cannot call that a “start” on climate.

  • Inflation Reduction Act’s Subsidies May Prop Up Aging Nuclear Plants for Years

    The much-heralded Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), while offering a vital lifeline to the renewable energy industry, also contains massive subsidies to keep dangerously aging atomic power plants operating for years to come.

    Meanwhile, six decrepit atomic reactors are now caught in a terrifying military crossfire in southeastern Ukraine, showing exactly why it is so important to shut down nuclear plants instead of subsidizing them. The Ukrainian reactors, located at Zaporizhzhia, the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, are now being used as a shield for Russian artillery arrays. A single errant shell could send far more atomic radiation pouring over Europe than did Chernobyl, with an unimaginable toll of downwind death and destruction from which the continent might never recover.

    At Chernobyl itself, Russian occupation left the dangerously unstable site in serious danger of yet another explosion.

    In France, half the nation’s 56 reactors are offline for maintenance and corrosion-related repairs. The Tricastin, Saint-Alban and Golfech nuclear power plants have curtailed production because temperatures on the Rhône and Garonne rivers are too hot to safely cool them. Long a high-profile exporter of atomic power, France now imports high-cost fossil-fueled juice from Switzerland, Germany, and elsewhere.

    Meanwhile, 92 U.S. nuclear reactors with an average age of 39 years old operate without coverage from a private insurance industry unwilling to step forward and take the risk. And in a fiercely competitive energy market increasingly dominated by low-cost renewables, atomic reactors can’t operate without massive public subsidies.

    The new Biden-Manchin IRA megabill contains atomic subsidies that could go as high as $30 billion or more over the next 10 years. Although the nuclear industry is increasingly unable to compete with skyrocketing wind, solar, battery and LED/efficiency programs, the IRA handouts could mean many of the country’s 92 atomic reactors will operate far longer than if they were pitted against green power in the open market.

    On the other hand, the IRA includes crucial help for a renewable energy industry that’s been under brutal industry attack. By extending major federal green power tax credits, the IRA has guaranteed survival for a rooftop panel industry plagued by pricing instability and a supply chain filled with problems ranging from manipulation by China to hostile regulations imposed by fossil-nuclear competitors.

    In California, a booming rooftop solar industry is on the brink of being gutted by a package of legislation that includes fossil fuel- and nuclear-sponsored taxes and regulations. Supported by “progressive” Gov. Gavin Newsom, the anti-solar package would undercut a statewide industry that now employs some 70,000 people — more workers in just California than now dig coal in the whole U.S.

    Ironically, Florida’s extreme right-wing Gov. Ron DeSantis recently vetoed a similar package, a decision clearly motivated by fierce opposition from more than 80 percent of the state’s citizenry.

    The U.S.’s fossil fuel and nuclear industries are terrified by the accelerating spread of renewables, especially as they are deployed on individual homes. With solar panels on rooftops feeding neighborhood microgrids, an empowered citizenry would no longer need to buy its energy from centralized utilities. A massive green shift would spell the end of the traditional investor-owned utility and mark the dawn of an era in which independent communities can generate and manage their own power supplies.

    Nowhere is this possibility more immediately manifest than in California, where rooftop solar arrays now number well over a million. Yet nowhere has industry resistance locked horns more bitterly with popular opposition to atomic energy.

    Since their planning stages in the 1960s, the two reactors at Diablo Canyon, on the Pacific Ocean nine miles west of San Luis Obispo, have incited fierce opposition. As they opened in the mid-1980s, more protesters (including myself) were arrested there than at any other U.S. nuclear site.

    After three decades of unsteady operation, a broad coalition signed a comprehensive landmark agreement to shut the two aging reactors by 2024 and 2025, when their Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) licenses are set to expire. The plan was endorsed in 2018 by then-Gov. Jerry Brown in concert with the Public Utilities Commission, the legislature and local towns, unions and environmental groups, including the Sierra Club and Natural Resources Defense Council.

    The case for a shutdown is deeply rooted in economic, ecological and engineering realities. A 2008 NRC inspection showed Diablo Canyon Unit One to be seriously embrittled, a dangerous internal fault virtually guaranteeing a massive explosion in case of a meltdown. Michael Peck, an NRC site inspector, later warned that the reactors could not withstand a credible shock from the dozen seismic faults surrounding the plant — including the San Andreas, just 45 miles away. Ensuing catastrophe would send radioactive clouds into Los Angeles, the Central Valley or the Bay Area, wreaking irrevocable apocalyptic human, ecological and economic harm.

    Diablo’s steadily declining performance and rising operational costs have jacked its power well above market rates, losing some $3.5 million/day — more than $1 billion/year. The plant’s cooling system violates state laws, which technically require towers to mitigate the devastating hot water emissions imposed on local marine life. The site also lacks sufficient room for radioactive waste generated beyond 2025, requiring complex, dangerous manipulations of the plant’s aging spent radioactive fuel pools.

    Newsom’s support for extended operations at Diablo stems from fear of power shortages that renewable advocates say could be avoided with a stronger solar push. Accordingly, Newsom’s simultaneous support for anti-solar regulations has sparked intense outrage throughout California’s powerful environmental community. Such anger has spread nationwide, as none of the U.S.’s reactors are insured against major catastrophes that many fear are increasingly likely. All are subject to the dangers of old age, a declining workforce and spotty regulation. Pacific Gas & Electric, Diablo’s owner-operator, has been twice bankrupt in this century and twice convicted of felony manslaughter involving more than 80 deaths.

    Few reactors can now compete with current prices from wind and solar facilities, now majorly augmented by battery and LED/efficiency technologies. The 1,500 workers at Diablo are set to enjoy an orderly shutdown. Some will stay on for the complex, demanding job of decommissioning the reactors. Others will retire. And many — especially the younger ones — will be retrained for work in wind, solar, and other green technologies. They will join the roughly 770,000 Americans now working in wind, solar, battery and efficiency industries whose ability to help mitigate the global climate crisis without atomic energy is irrefutable.

    Worries over prolonged operations at Diablo are matched at other old reactor sites like Ohio’s Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station, riddled with structural and operational problems while its owner-operator faces multiple felony charges for a $61 million bribe to the Ohio legislature.

    Nearby Perry, also in Ohio, and Virginia’s North Anna power plants have both been damaged by earthquakes. Nebraska’s Cooper and Fort Calhoun plants have been threatened by floods. Florida’s Turkey Point Nuclear Generating Station was hammered by Hurricane Andrew. Feedwater pumps in South Texas have frozen.

    Waste from California’s shut San Onofre power plant is being stored just 100 feet from the tide line. New York’s Nine Mile Point is 52 years old.

    Of this first generation of atomic reactors, 253 were ordered, about half were canceled and roughly another 30 now shut down. Two that remain under construction at Vogtle, Georgia, have soared over $30 billion in cost, more than twice their original projected $14 billion price tag. If they open — still not a certainty — the cost of their electricity will be very far beyond that of electricity generated by wind and solar.

    All atomic reactors spew massive quantities of waste heat, radiation and carbon. Despite billions spent on decades of research, there is still no viable solution for long-term management of spent fuel rods and other high-level wastes.

    Thus, the idea that more large nuclear reactors might be built in the U.S. has become essentially moot. Bill Gates and others are pushing Small Modular Reactors, but the first of these could not come on line until 2028 or 2029, guaranteeing the price of their power will be far greater than renewables. Large numbers of such nuclear plants deployed throughout the U.S. would also be extremely vulnerable to terror attacks.

    Indeed, while no U.S. or French reactors are currently under military attack like those at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia, the fear of a major catastrophe still rules the insurance industry. To spur nuclear development in the first place, the U.S. Congress passed the 1957 Price-Anderson Act, exempting commercial reactors from disaster liability. The act was to be in force for just 15 years so the private insurance industry would gain confidence and step up.

    But 65 years later, that still hasn’t happened. After numerous renewals, Price-Anderson is set to again expire in 2025. Only a small federal fund — less than $20 billion — is in place.

    With the IRA’s subsidies set to prolong reactor operations, nuclear backers will also have to persuade the private insurance industry to finally step forward, or else once again get Congress to continue protecting this ever-more dangerous industry with taxpayer money. The fight over the Small Modular Reactors being proposed by Bill Gates and others will become even more heated. These new machines would also have to secure private disaster insurance or persuade Congress to put up the now-standard Price-Anderson federal guarantees.

    Hopefully, as the issue is being debated, the earthquake faults at Diablo Canyon will stay silent, and no U.S. reactors will come under siege, like Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia, or blow up like Chernobyl or Fukushima.

    And safe energy activists, armed with true green technologies, will aim to thoroughly bury the atomic tyrannosaurus that no one will again think of again unleashing it upon a planet — and a human species — it could so easily destroy.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Opinion: The Democrats’ sweeping economic package doesn’t go far enough for low-income families

    By: Mark Wolfe

    See original post here.

    The Inflation Reduction Act, the Democrats’ tax, climate and health care bill that the Senate just passed, sets the nation on a path to meet its climate goals, and provides a set of practical initiatives that will help lower-income Americans who have fewer resources than other households to invest in reducing their energy use and adapt to rising temperatures. It will provide tax credits and rebates designed to help them afford electric vehicles and home retrofits and reduce their use of fossil fuels.

    But helping low-income families transition to clean energy is not a substitute for helping them afford basic needs, like food, rent and utilities, or for reducing child poverty rates in the US, which are among the highest in the developed world.

    Congress must do more to help families afford basic needs and reduce the nation’s high rate of child poverty.

    The Build Back Better bill, the House-passed, larger version of the Inflation Reduction Act, would have extended the enhanced Child Tax Credit for families with children, as it was only in effect for one year. The plan increased the size of the credit from $2,000 to $3,000 for children over the age of 6, and to $3,600 for children under the age of 6. And it was fully refundable, so lower-income parents who did not have sufficient taxable income could take full advantage of it.

    These enhanced credits provided an additional income boost to families, especially those who needed it most, and extending them would have kept millions of children out of poverty.

    In fact, the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at the Columbia University School of Social Work estimated that the rate of child poverty increased from 12.1% at the end of December 2021 to 17% in January 2022, which is when the credit ended.

    The Build Back Better bill would have also increased lower-income families’ ability to participate in the labor force, especially lower-income women with children or dependent elderly relatives, by providing subsidized child care, universal prekindergarten for 3-year-olds and 4-year-olds and home-based care for older adults and people with disabilities. The bill would also have required employers to provide up to four weeks of paid family and medical leave.

    Further, the bill would have addressed the racial disparities in health coverage in the country. It would have provided a pathway to Medicaid coverage for the two million low-income Americans in states that haven’t expanded it. In 2019, people of color made up 60% of those in this coverage gap, including 28% who are Latino and 28% who are Black.

    The loss of these benefits is significant.

    For example, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the enhanced Child Tax Credit provisions had been projected to reduce child poverty by more than 40%. precisely because families receiving the enhanced child tax credit used these funds to pay for basic necessities including food, child care and school expenses.

    If the Senate had agreed to the social welfare provisions in the Build Back Better bill, it would have represented the most significant increase in social spending for families in several generations. And the need for these benefits is only getting worse, as rising inflation in basic goods is forcing families to choose between necessities like food and medicine.

    Congress needs to tackle these issues head-on and revisit funding for the suite of social welfare provisions included in the Build Back Better bill. While it does not appear likely it will do so this year, there are opportunities to include at least some additional funding to rental assistance and child care during the regular appropriations process, which would help low-income families. In addition, Congress could add at least some of the provisions back at the end of the year when it considers extending certain business tax breaks that are set to expire.

    Energy-efficient housing is a must, but it is not going to put food on the table or pay the rising cost of gasoline for the country’s struggling families. We shouldn’t have to wait for another generation for these provisions to become law. The midterm elections are coming up in the fall, and voters will have the opportunity to send a message to Congress about the importance of providing strong support for hard-working American families.

    The post Opinion: The Democrats’ sweeping economic package doesn’t go far enough for low-income families appeared first on Basic Income Today.

  • Is The US Inflation Reduction Act A Case Of Too Little Too Late?

    Eugene Puryear of BreakThrough News analyzes the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act which seeks to address inflation, climate change, and healthcare.

    The US Senate (and subsequently the House of Representatives) passed the Inflation Reduction Act that seeks to tackle issues of inflation, climate change and health care. Will the provisions in the law actually help address these issues? Will the Democrats gain an electoral advantage in the October mid-terms due to this law? Eugene Puryear of BreakThrough News explains.

    The post Is The US Inflation Reduction Act A Case Of Too Little Too Late? appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Activists Stress Need for Much More Climate Action After IRA Passes in the House

    While welcoming U.S. House lawmakers’ passage of the Inflation Reduction Act on Friday, climate campaigners and some progressive lawmakers said the $740 billion bill does not do nearly enough to address the worsening climate emergency.

    “Today, we celebrate the power of organizing,” Varshini Prakash, executive director of the youth-led Sunrise Movement, said after House lawmakers voted 220-207 along party lines to pass the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

    The historic bill — which was passed in the Senate earlier this week and which President Joe Biden says he will sign into law next week — includes major investments in renewable energy development, a minimum tax on large corporations, and a landmark requirement for Medicare to directly negotiate the prices of some prescription drugs.

    “But the science of the climate crisis does not grade on a curve — and it’s clear that the IRA is not enough,” she continued. “We need more from our government — and we need better leaders who will not let the fossil fuel industry stand in our way.”

    “As Americans across the country suffer right now from record flooding, crippling droughts, and deadly heatwaves, we need President Biden, Congress, and elected officials at every level of office to treat this crisis like the emergency that it is,” Prakash added.

    Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) said in a statement that she was “proud to vote in support of the Inflation Reduction Act, which will take historic and much-needed actions to address the climate crisis and make healthcare more affordable.”

    Bush continued:

    To be crystal clear, there are provisions in this bill that I do not support, such as the dangerous expansion of fossil fuels, insufficient protections of environmental review, and inadequate investments in environmental justice communities.

    Despite these flaws, I believe that ultimately the good that this bill delivers, will have a profound effect on our ability to address the climate crisis with the urgency it demands. I will continue to work with my colleagues in the House, as well as with movement leaders and advocates, to mitigate harm from any provisions that expand fossil fuels, and to ensure that the good provisions are equitably distributed.

    Robert Weissman, president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, called Friday “a very good day for America,” lauding the IRA’s prescription drug relief and climate provisions in particular.

    However, Weissman said that “there is an urgent need for much more aggressive and far-reaching measures to prevent climate chaos and to build on the Inflation Reduction Act’s down payment with far greater investments in and measures to advance environmental justice.”

    Weissman added that “there is a need to mitigate the harmful pro-fossil fuel measures” in the IRA, “including those which will concentrate pollution and ecological destruction on the Gulf South, Native American lands, and in communities of color.”

    Food & Water Watch noted that “the legislation does not include any policies that require emissions reductions, and does not address measures to restrict fossil fuel development.”

    While proponents tout the IRA’s $369 billion in climate and energy security investments, critics point to measure’s multibillion-dollar allocation for carbon capture — which Food & Water Watch’s Mitch Jones says exists “solely to extend the life of the fossil fuel industry” — as a major cause for concern.

    Moreover, the legislation forces a continuation of fossil fuel leases — and enables future drilling in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico — in exchange for expanding wind and solar energy production on federal lands.

    Union of Concerned Scientists president Johanna Chao Kreilick said that “this bill is not perfect. It contains some troubling provisions, including some that risk expanding fossil fuel extraction and use; and it doesn’t go far enough to remedy the myriad ways in which oil and gas companies are polluting low-income communities and communities of color.”

    “The critical foundation the bill provides must be built upon to ameliorate those impacts, deepen U.S. emission reductions, and help communities become more resilient to climate change,” she stressed.

  • Private Equity Gave Sinema $500k, So She Exempted It From Corporate Minimum Tax

    Last week, Democratic leaders clinched conservative Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s (D-Arizona) key vote on the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) by taking out a provision to close a loophole allowing private equity investors and hedge fund managers to pay a lower tax rate on their incomes than the tax rate they would normally face, while providing an exemption from a 15 percent corporate minimum for private equity subsidiaries.

    Now, new filings find that private equity executives gave Sinema over half a million dollars before she negotiated to keep the tax loophole, known as the carried interest loophole, intact and give the industry special tax privileges — suggesting for the umpteenth time over the past year that Sinema’s ties to corporate and wealthy interests may be guiding her policy decisions from her powerful seat in the Senate.

    The Financial Times found in an analysis published on the same day the Senate passed the IRA that, during this campaign cycle alone, Sinema has gotten over $500,000 in political contributions from executives from private equity corporations like KKR and Carlyle — groups that have a massive influence in a wide range of industries, from health care to housing and more. In total, these donations represent 10 percent of her fundraising from individual donors this election cycle.

    Sinema isn’t up for re-election until 2024. But the timing of the donations, which often come in amounts of tens of thousands of dollars from executives from the same company, suggest that Sinema may have been swayed by deep-pocketed interests to kill the tax provision in the IRA.

    Private equity donors have for years aggressively lobbied both Democrats and Republicans to keep the carried interest loophole alive, and indeed flew into action when the IRA was released.

    They waged a campaign specifically to keep the carried interest loophole from being axed in the IRA, and, just an hour after the first draft of the IRA was released, private equity lobbyists flew into a blitz to get the industry exempted from the bill’s corporate minimum tax. After the bill went through negotiations with Sinema, private equity won both battles.

    Sen. Chuck Schumer, who negotiated the IRA with coal baron Sen. Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) and later Sinema, also benefits from this lobbying, the Financial Times found. In all, the Senate majority leader has received $1.28 million so far this election cycle, which represents about 4.4 percent of the amount he’s received from individual donors.

    While it’s unclear if Schumer was swayed by these donations — the provision was in the original bill that he negotiated with Manchin for months — and it’s impossible to know the purpose of these donations, Sinema has shown herself to be deeply in the pockets of industry lobbyists and wealthy interests over the past year.

    Sinema herself has even essentially admitted as such. In April, during a meeting held by conservative lobbyist group Arizona Chamber of Commerce, Sinema reassured corporate donors that, as talks for the Build Back Better Act were revived, she would obstruct the bill in the same way that she did all of last year.

    Last year, industry donors had targeted Sinema, successfully convincing her to oppose nearly every major provision in the Build Back Better Act. Big Pharma donors showered Sinema and other conservative Democrats with campaign cash as the lawmakers colluded to kill a provision to allow Medicare to access lower drug prices; Sinema was also targeted by Exxon lobbyists as she neutered the portion of the bill that would address the climate crisis.

    Meanwhile, the conservative Democrat has been raking in cash from conservative interests. While wooing fundraisers last year, the former progressive activist billed herself as a rank and file Republican, selling herself as anti-government and anti-tax. Conservative billionaires who had never donated to Democrats before were suddenly funneling donations to Sinema and Manchin last year as they worked in tandem to kill the Build Back Better Act.

  • Nearly All Senators Vote Against Sanders’s Amendments to Inflation Reduction Act

    During the Senate’s 16-hour amendment marathon for the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) over the weekend, nearly all senators united against several amendments that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) introduced to expand the bill, which is a mixed bag for the climate crisis and prescription drug prices.

    Through Saturday and Sunday, lawmakers proposed dozens of amendments to the bill during the so-called vote-a-rama that precedes a vote on a budget reconciliation bill; following the vote-a-rama, the IRA passed by a party line vote of 51 to 50, with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tie-breaking vote. Many of the amendments were introduced by Republicans on unrelated issues like reinstating Title 42, a racist and cruel anti-immigration policy.

    But Sanders brought several proposals to consideration before the Senate that would have expanded the U.S.’s social safety net and ensured that the bill — which has been advertised by Democrats as a groundbreaking climate proposal — falls much more in line with what leftists and climate advocates have called for to combat economic and climate crises facing the public.

    Nearly all of the amendments were proposals that had been considered during last year’s negotiations on the Build Back Back Better Act (BBBA) — and all of them got near-unanimous disapproval from the Senate.

    One amendment would have provided $30 billion for climate spending, including for the formation of a Civilian Climate Corps. Democrats had pushed for the inclusion of a Civilian Climate Corps in last year’s bill, saying that such a jobs program could boost conservation and resilience efforts across the U.S. That amendment failed 98 to 1, with Sanders casting the lone “yes” vote.

    Another amendment would have removed some of the giveaways for the fossil fuel industry that were included in the bill to woo coal millionaire Sen. Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia). Sanders proposed removing a tax credit for carbon capture — which some climate advocates say is a scheme to give fossil fuel facilities funding for greenwashing — and nixing a royalties cap on offshore oil and gas leasing. That amendment was rejected 99 to Sanders’s 1.

    Senators also denied Sanders’s attempts to add social spending provisions to the bill. Proposals to expand Medicare to cover dental, vision and hearing and to allow Medicare to halve prescription drug prices by accessing the same rates offered to the Department of Veterans Affairs were defeated 97 to 3 and 99 to 1, respectively. The Vermont progressive’s proposal to implement the expanded child tax credit, which expired in December and kept millions of children from experiencing poverty, was rejected 97 to 1.

    Democrats argued that their “no” votes were justified in order to keep the vote on the IRA straightforward, claiming that they feared adding any of the amendments to the bill would have threatened its passage. But Sanders argued that there was no harm in allowing 48 Democrats to vote for his amendments if his amendments wouldn’t garner enough support to be added to the bill anyway.

    Indeed, Sanders has argued several times over the past year that the Senate should vote on proposals that are overwhelmingly popular with the public, like expanding Medicare; this would ensure that senators’ objections are on the record instead of only known to those involved in high-up, secret negotiations, Sanders said. It’s also a messaging opportunity for Democrats, who would be able to point directly to lawmakers who oppose policies that would benefit tens of millions of Americans.

    Following the vote, Sanders had limited praise for the bill but continued to criticize it as insufficient, as he has for the past week. While the bill is “a step forward,” he said, “this legislation goes nowhere near far enough for working families.”

  • Manchin’s Climate Reversal Comes With Major Caveat: Expanding Oil and Gas

    Conservative coal baron Sen. Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) announced on Wednesday that he has come to an agreement with Democratic leaders for a reconciliation bill with key climate, prescription drug price and tax reforms — with a major caveat to expand oil and gas exploration.

    The bill, named the Inflation Reduction Act, contains roughly $433 billion in new spending, $369 billion of which is for climate and energy proposals, according to a one page summary of the bill.

    That there are climate provisions at all is an improvement over Manchin’s supposed opposition to any and all climate spending, which aides and staffers thought was his position two weeks ago. But the climate provisions could be severely undercut by new proposals put in on behalf of Manchin to expand oil and gas exploration on public lands.

    Crucially, according to Bloomberg, the bill essentially locks the government into permitting new oil and gas leases for the next decade; any time the Interior Department wants to allow new wind and solar rights on federal lands, the bill mandates that the agency will have to hold oil and gas lease sales first.

    This is a major caveat to the bill’s touted climate spending, undermining years of climate activists’ calls for President Joe Biden to end oil and gas lease sales and going against even conservative energy organizations’ recommendations for the country to stop all new fossil fuel projects or else completely miss the global goal of limiting global warming to under 1.5 degrees Celsius.

    According to the bill’s summary, it would cut U.S. emissions by about 40 percent by 2030, though it’s unclear where that figure comes from. Still, it falls short of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-New York) promise of 45 percent reductions last year, and falls even further from the goal of cutting emissions in half by 2030 that Democrats promised last August.

    It would achieve these reductions through electric vehicle and clean energy tax credits, as well as provisions to incentivize oil and gas companies to cut their methane emissions and consumer incentives for things like heat pumps and rooftop solar. Previous suggestions like the Clean Electricity Performance Program to punish utilities for failing to make certain clean energy shifts are out.

    The bill also allocates $64 billion toward extending enhanced subsidies for the Affordable Care Act to lower premiums for low-income Americans. These proposals, as well as a $300 billion reduction in the deficit, are paid for by several revenue raising provisions.

    The bill would raise roughly $388 billion from allowing Medicare to negotiate prices for a limited number of drugs and would cap annual out-of-pocket drug expenses for seniors at $2,000. The rest would be raised by tax reforms, including a 15 percent corporate minimum tax, an increase in funding for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to increase tax enforcement, and closing the carried interest loophole, which allows private equity managers and other wealthy taxpayers to dodge top tax rates.

    Nearly all of these proposals are far smaller than the bill that Democrats and progressives had been fighting for last year, and provisions like paid family and medical leave, universal pre-kindergarten, a Civilian Climate Corps and Medicare expansion are left out completely.

    There’s still no guarantee that the bill will pass. Climate advocates will surely take issue with the oil and gas leasing provisions, while conservative Democrats like Rep. Josh Gottheimer (New Jersey) and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (Arizona) may oppose proposals to tax corporations and the wealthy, drug pricing provisions and what climate spending is in the bill.

    Gottheimer has already been rallying fellow conservatives to oppose any new taxes in the bill and was key last year in killing Democrats’ larger prescription drug pricing goals for the Build Back Better Act. Meanwhile, Sinema, who has yet to comment on the Inflation Reduction Act, dealt a major blow to the climate portion of Democrats’ reconciliation bill last year and ultimately played a large hand in killing the bill altogether.