Agustín Ruiz
In the wake of an embarrassing defeat on health care, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell may move quickly on other legislation to save face. At his disposal: an energy bill that would speed up environmentally harmful projects by loosening fossil-fuel regulations.
The bill, called the “Energy and Natural Resources Act of 2017,” was introduced into the upper chamber on June 28. It is the latest version of a bipartisan measure lawmakers considered last year. McConnell has fast-tracked the bill by putting it on the Senate calendar, which means it can advance to the Senate floor without going through committee.
The legislation would speed the approval of liquefied natural gas export terminals, resulting in increased fracking. It would also give the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission greater authority to allow new natural gas projects, which the commission generally approves. And it would greenlight millions of dollars for research into frozen fossil-fuel deposits under the ocean floor. Once extracted, these deposits emit powerful greenhouse gases.
According to Benjamin Schreiber, senior political strategist at Friends of the Earth, the bill would also essentially exempt from environmental review large hydro projects, which can be extremely damaging to river ecosystems.
While not all the energy being pushed in the bill comes from fossil fuels, Schreiber describes the legislation as “part and parcel of a huge push” by big oil and gas.
“It’s hard to look at this [bill] independent of the political climate where Rex Tillerson is now the Secretary of State and where Donald Trump has been rolling back environmental protections left and right,” he tells The Progressive.
The energy bill could not be coming at a worse time. Due to climate change, 2016 was the hottest year ever recorded. And the Trump Administration did its part to ensure record-breaking temperatures would continue by pulling the United States out of the Paris climate accord. Continued reliance on fossil fuels, such as the ones championed in the bill, will only exacerbate the problem.
This is why more than 350 organizations have lined up against the legislation, including the League of Women Voters and the Working Families Party, which say the measure would deepen dependence on dirty energy sources. The groups collectively sent a letter to McConnell and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer laying out their opposition.
The bill, said Food & Water Watch executive director Wenonah Hauter, “will hasten our reckless advance toward climate chaos. The bill doesn’t even mention solar or wind energy. It’s simply a license to continue fracking, continue polluting, and continue cooking our planet.” She implored Schumer to immediately “marshall resistance to this dangerous legislation.”
Bill Snape, senior counsel with the Center for Biological Diversity, called the measure a “special-interest bonanza” that would “take our country and our people in the wrong direction.”
And according to the group Oil Change International, the bill “paves the way for fossil-fuel expansion, locking in decades of dirty energy and undermining the necessary clean energy transition.”
Along with resistance from advocacy organizations, as of July 19 more than 150,000 people had signed a petition to stop the measure. The petition, and information about the energy legislation, can be found at CREDO Action.
Because McConnell has fast-tracked the measure, a vote on the energy bill could come at any time. Schreiber says the conventional wisdom is that McConnell is currently focused on health care, not energy policy, but this week’s latest failed effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act “maybe changes that.”
The proposed measure isn’t simply a Republican effort to push dirty fuel sources. While its sponsor is Senator Lisa Murkowski, a Republican from Alaska, the bill’s co-sponsor is Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell of Washington State.
The Hill described the legislation as a new version of a “bipartisan energy bill.” The newspaper reported the measure has “few changes from a bill the upper chamber passed last year,” which enjoyed support from many Democrats, passing with 85 votes in favor.
Negotiations with the House of Representatives to come up with a final draft fell through that time, as the two chambers couldn’t come to a final agreement before the end of the Congressional session. But now the bill is back again.
While President Trump does not seem to have made any public statements about the Energy and Natural Resources Act, the bill would be right up his alley. Trump is a big proponent of fracking, and in March he announced plans to repeal an Obama Administration rule that set standards for fracking on federal land.
Trump has also issued an Executive Order calling on federal agencies to “loosen the regulatory reins on fossil-fuel industries.” And in September 2016, he told a group of fossil-fuel executives, “Oh, you will like me so much.”
Schreiber believes the combination of the bill’s bipartisan history and the fossil-fuel industry’s connections with Trump will make it difficult to defeat. But he still has hope.
“It’s an uphill battle,” he says. “That being said, there’s a huge activist base that really understands and feels strongly about fracking, and anyone that supports this bill will be crossing that base.”