{"id":1157388,"date":"2023-07-27T09:57:25","date_gmt":"2023-07-27T09:57:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jacobin.com\/2023\/07\/gop-republican-party-climate-denialism-spending-bills-fossil-fuel-industry\/"},"modified":"2023-07-27T09:58:47","modified_gmt":"2023-07-27T09:58:47","slug":"the-gop-is-quietly-adding-climate-denial-to-government-spending-bills","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2023\/07\/27\/the-gop-is-quietly-adding-climate-denial-to-government-spending-bills\/","title":{"rendered":"The GOP Is Quietly Adding Climate Denial to Government Spending Bills"},"content":{"rendered":"\n \n\n\n\n

Beholden to fossil fuel industry donors, congressional Republicans are quietly inserting provisions into government spending bills that undermine the US government\u2019s ability to respond to the worsening climate crisis.<\/h3>\n\n\n
\n \n
\n House Appropriations Committee ranking member Rep. Kay Granger (R-TX) speaks during a news conference. (Chip Somodevilla \/ Getty Images)\n <\/figcaption> \n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n \n

As scientists\u00a0warn<\/a>\u00a0of a mass extinction and\u00a0ecological<\/a>\u00a0tipping<\/a>\u00a0points<\/a>, congressional Republicans are helping their fossil fuel industry donors by quietly inserting provisions into annual spending bills designed to bar the American government from combating and researching climate change, according to the fine print of legislative text reviewed by the\u00a0Lever<\/em>. Some provisions also require the leasing of federal lands and waters for oil and gas development, while potentially limiting such leases for wind power.<\/p>\n

In all, Republican leaders have added at least a dozen such environmental provisions to four annual government spending bills as property damage and\u00a0death tolls<\/a> mount from historic heat waves, floods, and wildfires.<\/p>\n

By adding the provisions to annual must-pass spending bills, Republicans who control the US House are attempting to force Senate Democrats to choose between either accepting them or blocking the spending bills and shutting down the government.<\/p>\n

For his part, President Joe Biden has declined to issue a climate emergency declaration, which could\u00a0provide<\/a>\u00a0his administration new authority to circumvent at least some of the Republicans\u2019 tactics.<\/p>\n

The GOP bills are currently in the House Appropriations Committee, chaired by Texas Republican Rep. Kay Granger, who has received<\/a>\u00a0nearly $1.2 million from the oil and gas sector over the course of her career in Congress. Her\u00a0second-largest<\/a>\u00a0career campaign contributor is the oil and gas industry, and she\u00a0brags<\/a>\u00a0on her government website that she has fought to prevent spending to combat climate change.<\/p>\n

Granger\u2019s congressional district\u00a0has been grappling with<\/a>\u00a0a\u00a0heat-related public health crisis<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n \n\n \n \n \n

Blocking Fisheries Research as Oceans Boil<\/h2>\n \n

One of the most aggressive Republican climate provisions moving through Granger\u2019s panel is buried in\u00a0legislation<\/a>\u00a0funding the government\u2019s science agencies. As waters around South Florida\u00a0set records<\/a>\u00a0for the hottest ocean temperatures ever recorded, a line in the bill would bar the Biden administration from spending any money on \u201cclimate change fisheries research.\u201d<\/p>\n

The move comes just weeks after tens of thousands of dead fish washed ashore in Texas due to\u00a0high temperatures<\/a>\u00a0in the Gulf of Mexico, following other recent\u00a0mass die-offs<\/a>\u00a0in Australia. The Center for Biological Diversity\u00a0notes<\/a>\u00a0that intensifying ocean acidification triggered by climate change \u201ccould disrupt the entire marine ecosystem.\u201d<\/p>\n

The subcommittee that originally authored the fisheries legislation is headed by Republican Rep. Hal Rogers, who hails from the coal-rich state of Kentucky and whose top career campaign contributors\u00a0include<\/a>\u00a0donors from the mining and fossil fuel industries.<\/p>\n

Rogers has\u00a0raised<\/a> more than half a million dollars from the mining industry over the course of his career, and $390,000 from the oil and gas industry, according to data from OpenSecrets. In the 2019\u201320 election cycle, Rogers\u2019s campaign paid<\/a> $66,000 to his wife, Cynthia.<\/p>\n

The science funding bill also zeroes out funding for the US Global Change Research Program at the National Science Foundation, which coordinates research across the federal government \u201cto understand<\/a>\u00a0the human-caused and natural processes that influence our planet,\u201d and would additionally block the government from using any funds to carry out climate-related Biden executive orders.<\/p>\n

The bill targets a Biden order\u00a0issued<\/a>\u00a0in January 2021 that directed the federal government to use the procurement process, in which it acquires goods and services from the private sector, to mitigate carbon emissions as part of a broader federal effort to address climate change.<\/p>\n

The order also specifically directed the Commerce Department to \u201cto collect input from fishermen, regional ocean councils, fishery management councils, scientists, and other stakeholders on how to make fisheries and protected resources more resilient to climate change, including changes in management and conservation measures, and improvements in science, monitoring, and cooperative research.\u201d<\/p>\n

The GOP legislation also moves to defund a separate Biden order from April 2022 that\u00a0sought<\/a>\u00a0to enhance the federal government\u2019s forest stewardship and promote \u201cclimate-smart stewardship of mature and old-growth forests.\u201d<\/p>\n\n \n \n \n

Requiring Offshore Oil\/Gas Leases, Slowing Wind Power Leases<\/h2>\n \n

The Republican spending bills contain several more efforts to undermine the Biden administration\u2019s ability to meaningfully respond to the worsening global climate crisis.<\/p>\n

That includes the bill authorizing funding for the Department of Interior, which oversees public lands. The legislation contains a provision\u00a0mandating,<\/a>\u00a0\u201cNone of the funds made available by this act may be used to consider or incorporate the social cost of carbon.\u201d The bill also\u00a0permanently rescinds<\/a>\u00a0$1.3 billion in grant funding under the Clean Air Act to mitigate the effects of air pollution, as more than a\u00a0quarter <\/a>of all Americans\u00a0now live in areas with dangerous levels of such pollution.<\/p>\n

The Interior spending bill also includes provisions\u00a0requiring<\/a> \u201cthe Secretary of the Interior to conduct quarterly onshore oil and gas lease sales\u201d as well as fossil fuel lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico, according to the bill report.<\/p>\n

At the same time, the legislation bars the government from issuing leases for offshore wind development in Florida until the completion of a study about windmills\u2019 impact \u201con military readiness and training, marine environment and ecology, tourism, and other uses of the Outer Continental Shelf.\u201d<\/p>\n

The latter rider is in response to Florida Republican lawmakers\u2019\u00a0complaint<\/a>\u00a0that \u201cpeople travel from around the world to see our pristine beaches \u2014 not windmills.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Department of Interior funding bill has been spearheaded by Rep. Mike Simpson (R-ID), who has received<\/a>\u00a0nearly $900,000 in campaign contributions from electric utility interests during the course of his career, as well as roughly $440,000 from oil and gas industry donors. In the last few years, climate-intensified wildfires have caused\u00a0billions of damage<\/a> in Simpson\u2019s state.<\/p>\n\n \n \n \n

Defunding Global Climate Investments<\/h2>\n \n

Then there\u2019s the\u00a0bill funding<\/a>\u00a0the Department of State and foreign aid. That legislation would bar funding for the Green Climate Fund \u2014 one of the entities charged with fulfilling the mandates of the Paris Climate Accords \u2014 which received a\u00a0$1 billion<\/a>\u00a0deposit from the Biden administration in April.<\/p>\n

Likewise, the bill prohibits the federal government from financing the Clean Technology Fund, which helps developing countries transition away from dirtier energy sources and also explicitly rejects the concept of climate reparations, decreeing that none of the funds may be used \u201cto pay compensation to any country, organization, or individual for loss and damages attributed to climate change.\u201d<\/p>\n

The bill also prevents the funding of an August 2021 Department of the Treasury guidance<\/a>\u00a0calling on multilateral development banks like the International Monetary Fund and World Bank to limit financing of fossil fuel projects.<\/p>\n

The State Department and foreign aid bill is being overseen by Rep. Mario D\u00edaz-Balart (R-FL), who has received nearly $430,000<\/a>\u00a0in campaign contributions from the energy and natural resources industry during his time in office. His district includes locales that a recent climate\u00a0study<\/a>\u00a0said are among the most likely to soon be underwater due to rising ocean levels.<\/p>\n

The House bill for funding the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), meanwhile,\u00a0seeks to bar<\/a>\u00a0the agency\u2019s\u00a0proposed<\/a>\u00a0climate disclosure rule, which would mandate that publicly traded companies provide a full disclosure of their climate risks.<\/p>\n

The subcommittee overseeing the SEC bill is headed by Rep. Steve Womack (R-AR) who has received more than $175,000<\/a>\u00a0from oil and gas interests during his career. Womack\u2019s home state has recently experienced\u00a0deadly tornadoes and\u00a0<\/a>flash flood warnings<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Finally, the GOP bill funding the Department of Labor will maintain a ban from 1976 that has been reapproved annually under both Republican and Democratic control of Congress that bars the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) from investigating deaths at farms that employ less than ten people, including deaths related to extreme heat. (Due to mass automation in the agriculture industry, this exemption includes many farms that are quite large and profitable.)<\/p>\n

While OSHA has\u00a0yet to issue<\/a>\u00a0a standard governing excessive heat in the workplace, the agency is tasked with investigating deaths or injuries in cases of extreme heat. At least\u00a0436 people<\/a>\u00a0died from extreme heat on the job from 2011 to 2021, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.<\/p>\n

The OSHA bill originated in a subcommittee headed by Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-AL), whose top career campaign contributors include\u00a0donors<\/a>\u00a0from agribusiness and the fossil fuel industry. Nearly a quarter of the Alabama labor force is\u00a0outdoor<\/a>\u00a0workers, and the state recently experienced temperatures above\u00a0100 degrees<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The bills will now move to the full House for approval, and then the final bills must be negotiated with the Senate and passed again through both houses of Congress. If the provisions are kept in the text and Biden vetoes the spending bills, parts of the federal government could shut down.<\/p>\n\n \n \n \n\n \n \n

You can subscribe to David Sirota\u2019s investigative journalism project, the\u00a0Lever<\/i>, here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This post was originally published on Jacobin<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As scientists\u00a0warn\u00a0of a mass extinction and\u00a0ecological\u00a0tipping\u00a0points, congressional Republicans are helping their fossil fuel industry donors by quietly inserting provisions into annual spending bills designed to bar the American government from combating and researching climate change, according to the fine print of legislative text reviewed by the\u00a0Lever. Some provisions also require the leasing of federal lands [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":138,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1157388"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/138"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1157388"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1157388\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1157389,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1157388\/revisions\/1157389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1157388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1157388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1157388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}