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As House and Senate Democrats fight over the future of the infrastructure and reconciliation bills making their way through Congress, the infrastructure bill passed by the Senate last month contains a multimillion-dollar handout to a quasi-governmental group with deep ties to the oil and gas industry. The Guardian reports that the infrastructure bill includes $2 million for the Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission, an organization that advocates for oil and gas interests while exempting itself from public records laws.
The commission's vice-chair, climate science denier Wayne Christian, gloated at an oil industry event in August that “we will be helping the energy industry to some of these trillions of dollars.”
That industry bailout is part of a funding package to clean up thousands of abandoned oil and gas wells, as well as abandoned coal mines, left behind when companies go bankrupt. While that cleanup is long overdue, the Senate infrastructure bill does not address the underlying problem: the bonds that oil companies have to post in order to drill are woefully insufficient to cover the costs of cleaning up those wells.
Those outdated bonding rates may be addressed in the reconciliation budget bill currently being considered in the House. The House Natural Resources Committee added a fix to the bill earlier this month that largely mirrors Senate legislation backed by senators Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper of Colorado. But if Congress only passes the infrastructure bill without the reconciliation bill, taxpayers will once again foot the bill for cleaning up after oil and gas companies, while the root problem remains unfixed.
Conservationist Kim Crumbo missing in Yellowstone
A search effort is underway for conservation advocate Kim Crumbo, who was reported missing in Yellowstone National Park on Sunday. Crumbo is a former park ranger and Navy SEAL who has worked with conservation groups across the West, and a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation.
Crumbo was on a four-night backcountry trip through Yellowstone with his half-brother Mark O'Neill. On Monday, search crews found O'Neill's body along the shore of Shoshone Lake, along with a canoe, paddle, and personal flotation device. Our thoughts are with Crumbo's family and colleagues this morning.
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I can't speak for every tribe or even my tribe, but I can make sure that tribal leaders have a seat at the table. Certainly, in this time of climate change bearing down upon us, that Indigenous knowledge about our natural world will be extremely valuable and important to all of us."
