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MANCHIN’S LAST GASP  
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Bill McKibben
July 26, 2024
The Crucial Years
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_ Stop Big Oil's effort to use this lovely moment to lock in
world-breaking LNG export levels _

Joe Manchin coal baron U.S. Sen Joe Manchin speaks with West Virginia
coal miners., Joe Manchin for Senate

 

A story. In December of 2015, everyone who worked on climate issues
was in Paris for the white-knuckled final negotiations of the historic
accords. While that was going on, Big Oil’s friends in Congress
passed—almost without debate—an end to the longstanding ban on oil
exports from the U.S. I cobbled together—with the help of the Sierra
Club’s Mike Brune—what may have been the only oped
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the measure, in a Paris cafe fueled by pain au chocolat. But the
Democratic Senators I reached out to back home laughed—it wasn’t a
big deal, they said, and anyway they were getting a production tax
credit for wind energy in return. They were wrong: America in a decade
has gone from not exporting oil and gas to becoming the world’s
biggest producer. Bigger than Russia and the Saudis.

The moral of the story is: Big Oil is sneaky, and they will use
moments when attention is diverted (say, by the advent of a truly
powerful new presidential candidate) to advance their agenda. And the
point of the story is: THEY’RE TRYING IT AGAIN.

A couple of days ago—while all of us were paying attention to Brat
Summer, heterosectionality, and the general splendor of Kamala
Harris’ first week (huge thanks to the members of the climate
community who came together online last night to raise huge money for
the campaign)—Joe Manchin announced he had cobbled together a new
proposal for “permitting reform.” On the face of it, some of the
new proposal makes real sense: among other things, it would ease the
process of approving the badly needed transmission lines for moving
solar and windpower back and forth across the continent.

But remember: Joe Manchin has taken more money from the fossil fuel
industry than anyone else in DC. And so it’s not surprising that
there’s a huge cost for this sane policy change: the bill will also
try and force the approval of huge new LNG export terminals along the
Gulf Coast. This is not only disgusting on environmental justice
grounds (watch
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Ozane explain the cost to her community) but it is also the SINGLE
BIGGEST GREENHOUSE GAS BOMB ON PLANET EARTH.

Jeremy Symons, the veteran climate analyst who has supplied the most
relevant climate analyses throughout the LNG fight, came up with these
numbers last night. If enacted, he said, the LNG portion of the
Manchin bill would “lock in new greenhouse gas emissions equivalent
to 165 coal-fired power plants or more” and “erase the climate
benefits of building 50 major renewable electricity transmission
lines.” It is exactly, to the letter, what PROJECT 2025 HAS CALLED
FOR.

And yet it has some actual chance of passing. Martin Heinrichs, the
Democratic senator from New Mexico, endorsed
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on Wednesday—which makes a certain amount of local sense, since
the state derives an outsized share
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its government revenues from taxes on gas production. But Heinrichs
is SELLING OUT THE PLANET TO HELP HIS STATE. THE QUESTION IS, HOW
MANY OF HIS FELLOW DEMOCRATS WILL GO ALONG? ENOUGH TO ALLOW THIS
LEGISLATION TO MOVE THROUGH THE UPPER CHAMBER?

Because remember: the ultimate goal of climate policy is not to rewire
America so it can use more renewable energy. That is a good goal, and
it will make money for solar and wind developers which is why many of
them will support this bill. But the goal of climate policy is to
prevent the planet from overheating. And if you make renewable energy
easier in America at the cost of addicting developing Asian economies
to exported American LNG, you have taken an enormous step backwards.
(You’ve also screwed over the American consumers who still depend on
natural gas and will now pay more, which is one reason Senators like
Ed Markey have taken a dim view
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law).

The big green groups have come out strongly against it. Here’s
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position of the League of Conservation Voters, and the Natural
Resources Defense Counci
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and EarthJustice
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and the Sierra Club
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Change International.
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here’s mine: this week saw the hottest temperatures on our planet in
at least the last 125,000 years. Get real.

This week saw the explosion of joy that comes when politicians stand
up to business as usual. Don’t undermine all of it with a “deal”
whose main beneficiary is Big Oil. Don’t give Joe Manchin a gift on
his way out the door. Don’t do what you did in 2015, when you opened
the door to the oil and gas export boom. Don’t turn off the same
young voters that Biden turned off by approving the Willow oil
complex. Don’t get in the way of the momentum we’re trying to
build as November approaches.

And on top of all that political reality, there’s reality reality as
well. Physics doesn’t get a vote in Congress, but it gets the only
vote that matters in the real world. Pay attention to it for once!

BILL MCKIBBEN is founder of Third Act, which organizes people over the
age of 60 for action on climate and justice.

His 1989 book _The End of Nature_ is regarded as the first book for
a general audience about climate change, and has appeared in 24
languages. He’s gone on to write 20 books, and his work appears
regularly in periodicals from the _New Yorker_ to _Rolling Stone_.
He serves as the Schumann Distinguished Scholar in Environmental
Studies at Middlebury College, as a fellow of the American Academy of
Arts and Sciences, and he has won the Gandhi Peace Prize as well as
honorary degrees from 20 colleges and universities. He was awarded the
Right Livelihood Award, sometimes called the alternative Nobel, in the
Swedish Parliament. _Foreign Policy_ named him to its inaugural list
of the world’s 100 most important global thinkers.

McKibben helped found 350.org, the first global grassroots climate
campaign, which has organized protests on every continent, including
Antarctica, for climate action. He played a leading role in launching
the opposition to big oil pipeline projects like Keystone XL, and the
fossil fuel divestment campaign, which has become the biggest
anti-corporate campaign in history, with endowments worth more than
$40 trillion stepping back from oil, gas and coal. He stepped down as
board chair of 350 in 2015, and left the board and stepped down from
his volunteer role as senior adviser in 2020, accepting emeritus
status. He lives in the mountains above Lake Champlain with his wife,
the writer Sue Halpern, where he spends as much time as possible
outdoors. In 2014, biologists credited his career by naming a new
species of woodland gnat—_Megophthalmidia mckibbeni_–in his honor.

Subscribe to Bill McKibben's substack blog THE CRUCIAL YEARS
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* Climate Change
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* Joe Manchin
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* LNG
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* greenhouse gases
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* Project 2025
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