Biden is getting plenty of plaudits from the liberal media for returning America to the Paris agreement but when it comes to actual policies, he is reneging on his campaign promises. He is cleverly masquerades pro-fossil fuel policies as climate action.
“No more drilling on federal lands, period. Period, period, period.”
His actual executive order only paused the leasing program for some indeterminate period while the administration reviews it. Indeed, the order was accompanied by an announcement that existing leases and permits — stockpiled by the industry under Trump — would be untouched.
Energy Secretary nominee Jennifer Granholm voiced support for exporting fossil fuels (in the form of liquified natural gas, or LNG). Boosting LNG exports means an increase in fracking in states like Pennsylvania and Ohio — creating a host of serious public health problems — along with building massive new facilities to handle these exports.
The administration is backing plans to create new ‘carbon markets’ in the agricultural industries which would let financial speculators and corporate polluters team up to monetize soil practices that increase carbon removal (which is extremely difficult to measure in the first place). The point of all of this is to allow fossil fuel corporations to purchase ‘carbon credits’ from farmers instead of actually reducing their own pollution.
Carbon capture schemes sound great in theory, but the technology, to the extent it works, is used to pump more oil out of the ground — the opposite of climate action. Several high-profile carbon capture projects have been shuttered recently, mostly because relying on ‘market incentives’ to coax compliance from fossil fuel corporations is a fool’s errand. If these companies can’t find a way to make the numbers work, they’re not going to bother disturbing their business model.
Increasing the amount of drilling to send fracked gas overseas, or creating accounting tricks that conceal continued reliance on fossil fuels, aren’t climate progress. It is a matter of old wine in new bottles.
No comments:
Post a Comment