I get emails; you probably have the same one. Organizing for America is urging action against Lisa Murkowski's amendment to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gas pollution.
If her measure becomes law, the effects would be immediate. Nearly every step President Obama has taken to promote clean energy would be repealed. It would wreak havoc on the President's landmark clean vehicle standards that ensure cars go farther on a gallon of gas, and it would block requirements that force large power plants and factories to use new technology and clean energy to reduce their pollution.
This resolution is a giant step backward.
Will you write your Senators?
There is so very much to write about beyond Murkowski's greenhouse gasses. We should contact them and tell them to strengthen not just EPA's authority, but U.S. energy policy in general. Now more than ever the need to get off of fossil fuels is glaringly evident. We've got oil spewing into the Gulf, wells exploding in Pennsylvania and burning in Texas; if one were a believer in signs from some higher power, these would be signs.
While you're making your calls, please tell them to also stop mountaintop removal mining.
Also today, the Tennessee state legislature will be taking another crack at passing a bill to protect Rocky Top by banning mountaintop removal. Kudos to our local allies at LEAF for their relentless push to pass this important legislation. And check out these great editorial cartoons on the issue in the Knoxville News-Sentinel.
Meanwhile, in North Carolina, Duke Energy is making news. The power company, one of the nation's biggest users of coal, is trying to gauge what it would cost to stop buying coal mined by the controversial practice of mountain coal removal. North Carolina is one of the nation's top users of mountaintop coal. About half the electricity used in the state comes from coal-burning power plants, and about half the coal for those plants comes from mountaintop blasting.
...This particular extreme form of fossil fuel extraction, as well as the the Gulf oil spill tragedy which is exposing the the danger of our nation's dirty energy addiction, are compounded by the findings of a new study from the International Energy Agency which reveals that total global subsidies to dirty fossil-fuel energy amount to $550 billion a year.
This is unacceptable and the federal government needs to step in where Tennessee and North Carolina can't or won't. Sadly, it's not the only part of our current energy policy that is unacceptable. On the LNG front, we need to urge our Congresscritters in both chambers to support legislation to take power back from FERC and restore it to the states affected by the energy projects FERC approves. States like Oregon, where nobody wants the damn Palomar LNG pipeline, but FERC said they could. Well fuck FERC.
Senate:
3/2/2010--Introduced. Amends the Energy Policy Act of 2005 to repeal provisions amending the Natural Gas Act to extend its jurisdiction to:
(1) the exportation or importation of natural gas in foreign commerce and to persons engaged in it; and
(2) liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals. States that the Natural Gas Act shall be applied and administered as if such provisions and attendant amendments had not been enacted.
House:
The bill repeals a provision in the 2005 Energy bill that gave the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) the exclusive authority to site LNG facilities.
U.S. Reps. Barney Frank (D-MA), Patrick Kennedy (D-RI) and James Langevin (D-RI) are original co-sponsors of the bill. U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) has introduced the legislation in the Senate.
FERC does not currently seek adequate input from states in LNG siting reviews, and governors lack veto authority for onshore LNG terminals, despite having that authority for offshore terminals under the Deepwater Port Act. Although states and localities face all the potential risks and impacts of a LNG facility, they lack an equal voice in the siting and approval process. Prior to the 2005 Energy Bill, such decisions had historically been made by siting agencies in each state.
Please tell them to support these bills; it isn't right that a bunch of wonks in D.C. get to decide the fates of National Forests and old growth ecosystems clear across the country from them. And it isn't just Oregon; there are LNG shenanigans afoot in Maryland right now, too. This legislation is critically important.
As is the pursuit of alternatives, because the root of the problem is how completely integrated these fossil fuel technologies of the past are into our lives. I can't recommend the eKos diary series enough and mark louis has been doing a great run of renewable energy round-up diaries. The future isn't going to wait for us forever.